Mondoweiss

Some commenters can't read

The comments policy at the right is clear. No harsh obscenity or vicious name-calling. No imposture. If it needs explication, I'd say: the word "filth" used to describe someone with whom you disagree is off-limits.
Vicious commenters have hurt this site. Impostors have hurt it. 
I thank those who have gotten in touch with Adam and me when they feel the policy is being violated.

We had a fundraiser. You delivered. What next?

Our first fundraiser is over, and we've raised the $8000 we asked for two weeks ago. "Thank you!" doesn't begin to describe my/our gratitude.

Google has 'disabled' my ad revenue. Why? Where do I go?

Maybe you've noticed that we no longer have Google ads on this site. Last Saturday, the 14th, I received an email from Google Adsense that I reproduce below, saying that this site poses a "significant risk" of financial damage to advertisers. My account was "disabled;" and the Google AdSense Team thanked me in advance for my understanding.

The letter referred me to this page on disabled sites. It seems to suggest that the risk I posed was from fraudulent click activity. Though there are suggestions there that content may also play a role in such decisions.

I appealed the decision a week ago, making it clear that I take this very seriously and want to be a member of the Adsense community. I've heard nothing back. The process seems opaque and arbitrary, with a faintly tyrannical edge. What did I do wrong? Why is there no accountability here? What is Google's responsibility, as the web-boss, to sites like mine with real traffic? Also: Google ads were a source of income for me. Not much, but when you're not getting to write for the MSM, every trickle counts.

Anyone who has any clue what's going on, and how I can fight it, please advise. Thanks, Phil.

The letter:

'Israel today is like the Old South' (read the post to get the punchline)

I can only do this site with help from genius friends. It's social media. One of them sent me some links and comment this morning:

Here is some more good stuff on Schumer's closet-neocon agenda from Glenn Greenwald (overlapping with our points of last night and adding some). Greenwald:

The real goal, as always, was to ensure that there is no debate over America's indescribably self-destructive, blind support for Israeli actions.  Freeman critics may have scored a short-term victory in that regard, but the more obvious it becomes what is really driving these scandals, the more difficult it will be to maintain this suffocating control over American debates and American policy. 

Also, this by the Israeli psychologist Carlo Strenger, from the Guardian on Israel's rightward turn [Weiss: the kind of stuff you don't see in the US]:

Binyamin Netanyahu will soon present a narrow, right-wing government to the Israeli Knesset. It is worth pondering a commonality between him and this government's second main force, Avigdor Lieberman. Both have a clearly defined world view. At its core is the belief that the Middle Eastern conflict is in essence the expression of a clash of civilisation between the Judeo-Christian west and Islam. Netanyahu has written books about this, and Lieberman has said it time and again. Neither of them sees the solution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as something that is of any value if detached from the geopolitical configuration as they see it...

The person who sent me the Strenger noted that he fails to point out that ANY Israeli government today would be bad--given the warlike disposition and close-mindedness of 90% of the people and the foreknowledge that whatever they do will be supported by the U.S. And she quotes a friend: "Israel today is like the Old South--it didn't matter who ran for governor."

Portrait of an internet journalist who mixes dentistry and commitment

Lately I've become a big fan of a journalist who works on Daily Kos called "Rbguy." He writes a diary tracking what Congress is doing on the Middle East.

Rbguy interests me because when I'm at dinner parties with other print journalists of yesteryear I hear a constant lament about the decline of the great newspapers, the bulwark of our democracy. One article of faith among my friends is that newspapers covered the inner workings of government with perspicuity and breadth. We're losing that.

Well maybe we're not losing that, I say: Rbguy is doing some of that work.

I got curious about the conditions of Rbguy's employment. So I wrote him to ask whether he thinks the internet is destroying the bulwark of democracy. "And how do you support yourself, if you don't mind my asking?"

Rbguy's real name is Rob Browne. He is 41 and lives on Long Island. He wrote back:

It's an interesting question you pose.  I sort of feel as baffled as Danny Aiello's character in Moonstruck when Olympia Dukakis asks him why do men cheat on their wives.  I have a feeling my answer will be as cloudy as his.

With respect to the NY Times, I believe that they, like many institutions, established a reputation and coasted on that for many years.  The events of the last eight years revealed that many of these institutions, like the NY Times, were not as noble and accomplished, as they were thought to have been.  That is not to say that there are not good writers or good stories found there.  It's just not a guarantee that every writer and every article is at the highest level.

The best thing about the blogosphere

is that I can run this AP photograph from Gaza, taken in January by German photographer Anja Niedringhaus, as often as I like. I've run it once. I ought to run it every day. The boy at the right is Mohammed Kutkut. He's 14. His dead classmate--of three killed classmates, the boy who shared his desk--was Ahed Qaddas. I wonder what these boys even think about the two-state solution, or their own futures.

And yes, I reflect that when I was 12, my best friend J.R. Krevans ran up to me in Mt. Washington Elementary School and crowed that the Israeli army had just destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian air force on the ground. I had little idea what J.R. was talking about. I got lucky that way. Missed my inoculation.

help sought

Adam Horowitz and I (Phil Weiss) are trying to think up a new phrase up top to replace "Iraq comes home, the war of ideas" as we revamp this site. Maybe just "The war of ideas." Or maybe something like "Tearing down the walls."

What does this have to do with the picture at left? Just a vibe. My niece Isabel Friedman is in Varanasi, India, on a cross-cultural student program. She went to three weddings last week. I loved this picture. She tells me, "The two girls were nieces of the bride, I believe.  They hovered around our student group for a good chunk of the wedding,  most likely curious and confused as to why 12 westerners showed up at their auntie's wedding.  They were intrigued, playful, modest and spent a lot of their time herding around their younger family members."
That sounds about right. We'll continue to be a serious news/opinion site re the Middle East and Israel/Palestine, but we want words that can include the hopeful engaged spirit in that girl's eyes. Ideas?

Our side truly is winning (but will I overcome my alienation?)

Today's an important day, I can feel it. Our side is winning; I've gotten a number of signals about this already today.

Something politically-huge is happening: the split between the conservative American Jewish leadership and the once-liberal "Jewish street" is finally taking place. Gaza was the first blow, now Avigdor Lieberman's ascension is the next one. The National has got it right: Lieberman is causing concerns that the special relationship will come to an end. Even Morton Klein of ZOA thinks it might be a bad idea if Lieberman is given ministerial responsibility because that could shatter the Israel lobby in the U.S.

If you think I can't stitch 'Slumdog' into my hopeful narrative of Israel/Palestine, you're wrong

I write my stuff so hurriedly these days that I seem to miss everything. I would just like to note that in the excerpt I offered yesterday from Bernard Avishai, Avishai points out that a Palestinian scientist who participated in a major breakthru in Israel recently is "the child of a family which a 1948 version of national unity failed to drive away."

This is a beautiful and ironic statement (about Avigdor Lieberman and liberalism) that will I think be the doorway for a lot of Jews-- this morning and tomorrow morning and the morning after that-- to a bigger understanding of Israeli history in the age of Obama. The failure to do anything about the 1967 borders has made 1948 the new backstory-- not 1967-- and 1948 (as Walt and Mearsheimer and Jerry Slater have shown us) was about ethnic cleansing and a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Avishai is trying to undo Exodus, the story by Leon Uris that so baked the American and American Jewish understanding of Israel/Palestine 50 years ago. We are all in our way, undoing Exodus. Barack Hussein Obama, Slumdog and a stage filled with South Asians at the Academy Awards... culturally the global moment is ours.

Anger over the media transformation reflects a generational massacre

Item: A young friend of mine is looking for a job in journalism. On his behalf, I reluctantly emailed a friend who works at a big company. He wrote back to say there are actually a lot of opportunities at his company, but they are of a new character, internet-related.
Item: A friend lately pointed me to this website dedicated to the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn. This blogger plainly loves Bushwick and covers it like a glove. Note the words at the top of his page: "Let's cover Bushwick. Now paying writers!"

There are a lot of smart journalists these days talking about the end of the newspaper and the end of reporting. Some of this opinion is purely generational and fearful: they fear they are going to lose their high-paid jobs. It is a completely legitimate fear (let me tell you; my own household is in media freefall), but what these journalists neglect to focus on is that a willing social transition is taking place to new forms of reading/writing, and with the proliferation of these forms, lots of journalists are finding work.

But they are finding work on new terms: shorter pieces, and a lot less money for them. As Michael Hirschorn wrote (in this piece that upset a lot of print journos), the age of public intellectuals sustained in "semi-charmed lives" by big media profits is over.