My third piece for the Guardian newsblog is about bloggers who don’t like to write about politics. It starts like this:

One of Israel’s most famous bloggers never writes about politics. “It bores me,” explains Liat Bar-On, a 36-year-old journalist. “I consider myself a leftist and I was against the Gaza war, but I don’t want to write about the violence and the corruption and the crappy reality around me. I prefer to bury my head in the sand and ignore it all.”

Bar-On’s blog, Doda Malka (Auntie Malka), is about “life and relationships – that is, about my relationships.” She channels her considerable writing talents into musings about topics that range from why she gets irritated with friends who send long text messages to her mobile phone, to whether or not she would like to become a single mother via artificial insemination.

Click here to read the rest.

I’m writing a series of articles for the Guardian’s newsblog about Israeli political bloggers and what they’re saying about the upcoming national elections. Each post will cover a different demographic / political orientation. The first one, If bloggers were representative of the mainstream, was published today. The article starts like this:

Assuming the polls are accurate – and they have been quite consistent – Israeli voters are poised to elect a rightwing government in next week’s elections. But if bloggers were representative of the mainstream, Israel’s next government would probably be a Jewish-Arab coalition of socialists, social democrats and environmentalists.

Click here to read the rest.