Friday, March 07, 2003

1924.org is a British Islamic site. Interesting thing is that it's more anti-Western than it is anti-Israel. The writers (apparently many of them Pakistani) blame everything on capitalism and colonialism rather than Zionism.

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

The death toll from today's bus bombing in Haifa is currently 15 (report). Note that 40 attacks were foiled in February. The bombing was in Imshin's old neighborhood. Photos here.

Saeb Erekat condemned "any attack that is targeting civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli." and the international media apparently didn't ask him when Israelis have ever targeted civilians. And the PA sandwiches its condemnation with incitement: "The leadership announces its condemnation to this operation in which civilians, who are not part of the war of annihilation waged by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people, were killed"

At Tel Aviv's Dizengoff square, the bombing that killed 13 people was commemorated yesterday (on the 7th anniversary). I remember the outrage everyone felt back then - "this was supposed to be peace". Nowadays people barely talk about the attacks.

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Jpost's Bret Stephens describes a symposium of foreign correspondents that happened here two weeks back.

I was there myself and took a lot of notes that I should try to write up later. Eric Silver of the Independent was a subdued and reasonable moderator, though the questions that he tossed to Nabil Khatib of Saudi MBC television were softballs, and Silver kept making annoying transitions that seemed to equate Israeli settlers with the Hamas, Yigal Amir with Osama Bin Laden etc. Stephens and Khatib were mostly cautious and defensive, so it was France 2's Charles Enderlin and Amira Hass of Haaretz who did most of the talking.

I was quite fascinated by what Hass had to say: she is very sincere and sees her role as giving a voice to the oppressed rather than the pursuit of an ideal of objectivity. Enderlin, in contrast, was pompous and is certain that "the real story" these days is the Palestinian humanitarian crisis, and that if the Israeli media's evaluation is different it's "censorship". Enderlin let it slip that he considers Palestinian threats to murder Israeli journalists a mere tactical error. Enderlin also mentioned that he advised Italian photographer Raffaele Ciriello that it was dangerous to enter the square in Ramallah where he was shot by the IDF a short time later.
If Israel had it's own 24-hr news channel, the population would go raving bonkers. That's probably why we don't have one.

I set up my home 802.11b network with equipment that I picked up in the US. 802.11 gear is not available in shops here. Does using WEP impact performance?

Out-of-work Israelis are modifying their CVs to appear less experienced (report). That this makes sense is confirmed by my own experience: a headhunter that I worked with changed the summary section at the top of my CV and removed the company names. This got me a bunch of interviews.

Here's a blog maintained by a Jihadi-type Muslim college student in the UK.