Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

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As any of you who’ve been following the JIBA slug fest between Aussie Dave and myself here will know, I’ve been pointing out inconsistencies, self-dealing and bias in the Awards for a few weeks now. Now it’s come to my attention that another contention of Dave’s may be unreliable at best.

The blog that never made it into JIBA

I’ve criticized the JIBA rule that blogs insufficiently supportive of Israel could be disqualified according to its rules. To which Aussie Dave has replied that no blogs were disqualified. But a blogger (who wishes to remain anonymous since he/she has a lower tolerance for the type of insults and invective of which Dave is capable) has revealed to me:

I nominated a blog for the “Life in Israel” category – Step By Step. The writer has shown on a number of occasions that she is left of center, and her blog wasn’t accepted…

Step by Step is an intimate, personal account of a woman’s experience of making aliyah to Israel alone and without immediate family. I contacted Yael Kaynan, who writes this blog and she never knew she had been nominated.

I hesitate using categorical statements until Aussie Dave gives us the lowdown on what happened. Given that Step by Step appears a quite interesting and non-threatening blog (at least in terms of its politics), I find it hard to believe it would’ve been disqualified for its politics. But why didn’t it appear in JIBA? At the very least, one might ask how Aussie Dave and the Post guarantee that all nominated blogs actually appear in competition. They’ve either screwed up or deliberately removed Step by Step for some reason. Or the Post’s server “ate” the nomination form submitted by the mystery blogger. Which is it, guys?

One more thing: why were some blogs which were nominated in multiple categories reduced to appearing in only one–while some blogs appear in multiple categories? This happened in at least one case I know about personally. And why wasn’t the decision communicated to the person who nominated the blog or to the nominated blogger?

Knowing of Dave’s level of paranoia concerning every statement I make, I want to assure him and everyone that I have e mails from the mystery blogger in question in which he/she identifies him/herself and his/her blog. I have absolutely no reason to doubt him/her (though Dave might find one or two).

As for my comment about self-dealing above…here’s an interesting tidbit from mystery blogger. One of the JIBA nominated blogs is Treppenwitz. The only problem with this is that Treppenwitz is also featured in the Post’s own blog section. So in effect Treppenwitz has a built in advantage over the other nominated blogs because it receives all that extra promotion from its appearance in the Post’s separate blog section. Furthermore, Treppenwitz’s spouse has designed the JIBA logo (and a nice one it is). But isn’t it a bit odd that the spouse of a JIBA nominee is designing the logo? It’s just a bit too cozy and “I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you’ll-scratch-mine.” Or as mystery blogger put it:

…Had this been a proper competition, such connections would never be allowed.