22 thoughts on “Brass Crescent Awards for Best Non-Muslim Blog – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Richard – Goldman is an exciting young writer. I believe she is originally from Canada by the way, not the USA. Her essays on her trip to Beirut was one of the more interesting pieces I read this year. I’m not convinced you are giving credit where credit is due.

  2. Maybe next year a nomination for Tikun Olam is in order… I hadn’t heard of this contest before.

    On a follow-up note, you mentioned Israeli Arab blogs. Do you know of any? I’ve been wanting to find some for a long time.

  3. I believe she is originally from Canada by the way, not the USA.

    Ramsey: Thanks for the correction. I’d already corrected it sometime before you wrote yr comment. There may be useful or interesting things that Goldman does as a blogger. But overall I’m afraid my opinion stands. But I’m glad you find her work helpful to you.

  4. Richard –

    I haven’t looked at your blog for a long time, but this post popped up on my Google Alerts. It is mean-spirited and petulant, as are most of your posts, but that is not why I have decided to respond. Rather, I would like to correct your factual errors.

    1. I am not the Israel editor for Global Voices – I stopped volunteering for them in August 2006.

    2. None of those GV links to Israellycool that show up on the Google search you link to were posted by me. The links were posted by the Bahraini MENA editor, Amira Al Hussaini. If you object to their appearance on the GV site, I suggest you contact Amira.

    3. I linked to Yudit Ilany’s OCCUPIED in several of my GV posts. In fact, Yudit is a friend of mine.

    4. Dave of Israellycool actually wrote to me to complain, when I was still writing the roundups about Israel, that I did not mention him frequently enough for his tastes.

    5. If you would take the time to look through the archives of my posts for GV, you will see that not I actively went out and recruited a Palestinian-Israeli friend, Fayrouz, to start blogging. Her blog was called The Land of Sad Oranges, but unfortunately she decided after a short time to stop writing. Since then I have been unsuccessful in recruiting Arab citizens of Israel to blog in English. There were none before Fayrouz, and no-one has replaced her.

    6. Robert Rosenberg, who died last year, was also a friend of mine – as is Simon Spungin, who has replaced Robert as Ariga editor. You know perfectly well, because both I and Robert wrote to you in response to your complaints, that I had always seen Ariga as an online newspaper rather than a blog. Since GV does not allow links to newspapers unless they are mentioned in blogs, I did not include him in my posts – however much I would have liked to. Robert later corrected me and said that he did, in fact, consider Ariga to be a blog, which is why I included it in my later posts for GV.

    7. Robert and I worked as colleagues at Haaretz. He was a translator and occasional contributor, while I edited news copy and the commercial supplements. He did not hire me, nor did he have the power to fire me. I left Haaretz because I was tired of working 60-hour weeks for a salary of $1,200 per month. I am now a freelance journalist.

    8. As I wrote to you in 2006, my GV posts were about the Israeli blogosphere. In other words, they covered the blogs of Israelis and Israeli residents. You are neither. If you lived in Israel, then I would have included your blog in my roundups. There are many Israel-centric blogs by non-Israeli Jewish bloggers all over the world, and I never mentioned any of them. If the Palestinian and Lebanese GV authors wish to mention your blog because it suits their political agenda (a Jew who agrees with them), then that is their business. I do not work like that. As far as I am concerned, the Palestinian and Lebanese GV authors should stick to writing about Palestinian and Lebanese blogs.

    9. Again, as I wrote to you in 2006, I purposely sought to show the diverse political opinions from across the Israeli blogosphere. I did not pick and choose blog posts that meshed with my political opinions because that would be censorship. In fact, I frequently linked to bloggers with whom I disagreed. That is called balance.

    10. If you are upset at the Brass Crescent Society for not nominating your blog, then you should address your concerns to them. Anyone can nominate a blog for the competition (you could have nominated your own), but the organizers select the finalists.

    Regarding your tepid “support” of the three Israeli journalists who are currently under police investigation, I have two things to say: your comments show that you understand absolutely nothing about the matter; and I certainly do not need – or want – any mention of this matter on your blog.

  5. Richard – My fault. I missed the earlier reference to her as Candian-Israeli and I got confused by the later sentence “mostly Anglo or American-Israelis like herself” which is actually correct since it also covers Canadians.

    Here is a letter that Lisa received that I think you will enjoy.

    Cheers.

    http://ontheface.blogware.com/
    Over the past month I have received dozens of beautiful, heartfelt, supportive emails from Lebanese readers. Amongst the writers were people who described themselves as ex-Hezbollah supporters, secular Shi’a, Syrian, Sunni and Christian. Most of them used their real names, and I was very touched by their willingness to trust me. Interestingly, the only person who sent me a couple of unpleasant emails was a non-Lebanese NGO worker who described Beirut as his adopted home. Given the length of his emails, I don’t think his NGO is keeping him very busy.

    Only a couple of the people who wrote me asked me to refrain from publishing their letters, but they did not need to ask: I would not publish a letter unless the writer granted permission up front. But yesterday, I received the following letter from a Lebanese-Canadian who did just that. I’ve made one small edit, at his request. I cannot think of a better way to complete my series of blog posts about Lebanon, one year after the war. Thank you, Alain – and thank you, Alice Elfassy, for creating the connection.

    ****

    Hello Lisa (can I call you Lisa?),

    My name is Alain Chammas, I am the husband of one of Alice Elfassy’s two colleagues ;-). I read the article as well, thought it was excellent, and forwarded it to a few Lebanese and Israeli friends.

    I really enjoyed the article. Kudos for going there, kudos for writing your report, kudos for showing ordinary Israelis another, truer picture of what Beirut really is.

    I have looked up and read a lot of the comments on your article, as well as the Daily Star reaction and your response to that. A little comment:

    The human interest aspect: This is what it is all about. It is a tremendous opportunity to have Israelis get a picture of Beirut and the Lebanese differing from what they usually hear in the media, it is essential for them to see and understand that the average Joe in Lebanon isn’t that different from the average Joe in Israel.

    Unfortunately, the reverse isn’t happening. You correctly point out in your reaction to the Daily Star that that newspaper often carries articles authored by Israelis, and that many Lebanese news outlets (LBC, Al-Manar, etc.) even have correspondents who broadcast live from Israel. But what is it they broadcast? Mainly pieces showing the political events or Palestinian sorrow. Not once have I seen or heard of a piece in any Lebanese or Arabic medium that would portray or interview ordinary Israelis, not once have the Lebanese and Arabs heard of a bon vivant Israeli population, with whom it can be fun to associate and enjoy oneself.

    How can a country be demonized if its denizens are similar to us in many ways? We eat the same, sleep the same, bleed the same, laugh the same… this is not something the powers to be want to be known, lest the sense of the state of war with Israel be challenged.

    You have met many Lebanese who think different, that is where the strength of our country lies. Many Lebanese would love to see the relationship with Israel normalized eventually. Of course, last year’s war didn’t help us move in that direction, it actually was the most counterproductive blunder of recent memory and it threw hopes for normalization back by decades. Most Lebanese will not state what I am saying in public, especially if they are living in Lebanon, but agree privately. This is (with the economy, which ties into the political situation) the main reason for the current wave of emigration, of which Lebanon has seen many in the last 35 years.

    So, the path to normalisation should be helped along tremendously by work such as yours, and I hope to see more such reports from both sides of the border. It may be wishful thinking, but what else do we have than hope 😉

    About myself: I was born in Beirut in 1962 in a well-to-do family of Lebanese immigrants (ancestry is Assyrian, Armenian, Turkish, Greek, Albanian and Russian – in other words, a typical lebanese ;-)). In 1967, I was 5 years old, we had to paint our lightbulbs blue and put dark blue craft paper on all window to throw off Israeli bombers. When I asked my mom who the Israeli were, I don’t remember her exact words, but it was scary, in my mind, they were some sort of alien monsters.

    In 1978, we moved to France, where friends introduced me to the writings of Ephraim Kishon, an Israeli journalist and writer. What a discovery! All of a sudden, the “alien monsters” had a human face, a sense of humor. My favorite pieces were those where he would write about his family, his sons Rafi and Amir and his daughter Renana, if I remember their names well. It was hilarious, they seemed to go through the same growing pains my sisters and me experienced, it was so close to the way I remembered life in Beirut.

    In later years, I developed many good contacts with Jewish and Israeli friends. One of my favorite encounters was with one guy, a journalist in Ottawa (he may be elsewhere by now, I lost sight of him). He is my age, was born in Beirut like me, moved to Israel in 1967, and came back as a soldier in 1982. After leaving the IDF, he moved to Canada, where I got to know him through an online forum and eventually met him in Ottawa in 1995.

    I am now living in Montreal (since 1989, actually), married (Micheline is also Lebanese, I met her in Montreal), two children, Jean and Rebecca Sarah Sadie Rachel (yes she has 4 names ;-)). Many people ask me about her Jewish heritage, I tell them that I just like the names… and the people ;-). (Actually, the last 3 names are from Micheline’s and my ancestry, and we really liked Rebecca (or Raf’a, Rivka, and any variations ;-))

    So, I’ve rambled on enough, I guess. I hear from Alice that you will be in Montreal soon. If you can spare the time, I would be delighted to meet you and introduce you to the family.

    Take care,

    Alain Chammas

    PS: Feel free to use any of the stuff above, including my name, in any way you find useful.

  6. It is mean-spirited and petulant, as are most of your posts

    And your posts and comments about me here and at Jewlicious are not? Really, Lisa. I criticized your work at Global Voices & instead of trying engage my criticisms constructively you got into a huff & decided I was a very bad man. Tant pis, as the French say.

    Most of my posts aren’t mean-spirited or petulant. As you yourself admit you hardly spend any time here & when you do it’s only to read about yrself I’d venture to say. So you hardly have a balanced impression of my writing.

    My posts about right wing Jews who are prob. friends of yours like Aussie Dave or David Abitbol ARE less than charitable because they are. I believe in giving as good as I get & don’t take insults lying down. As for you, I guess since I don’t want you to win the Brass Crescent Award this yr that would make my post mean-spirited as far as you are concerned. But the fact is that the other blogs I’m familiar with in this category at least have a grounded political understanding of the Israeli Arab conflict whereas you don’t. I guess having an opinion that you don’t like qualifies me as mean-spirited, but only in yr own eyes..

    I am not the Israel editor for Global Voices – I stopped volunteering for them in August 2006.

    I noted the fact that you may no longer be affiliated with them.

    The links were posted by the Bahraini MENA editor, Amira Al Hussaini. If you object to their appearance on the GV site, I suggest you contact Amira.

    I shall.

    Dave of Israellycool actually wrote to me to complain, when I was still writing the roundups about Israel, that I did not mention him frequently enough for his tastes.

    Why does that not surprise? God’s gift to the Israeli blog world would certainly believe he should be quoted everywhere at every time.

    Regarding Israeli Arab bloggers, I’m glad to hear you made such an effort to recruit them. When I criticized this aspect of the Israel section a yr ago you did not respond to this particular criticism so I had no way of knowing what yr view of this subject was.

    Robert Rosenberg, who died last year, was also a friend of mine

    I made a mistake in getting Robert involved in this post since he’s not around to comment on anything you or I write. But since I already brought it up I have to say he indicated that you applied for a Haaretz job for which he didn’t find you qualified & that he thought you might be miffed when you were not hired for it. Sometimes even friends (if he was one) have to disappoint ea. other. He never indicated to me that he thought of you as a friend & I would’ve thought he would if he did given the subject we were talking about which was GV & yr editing of it. But of course that doesn’t mean that he didn’t consider you a friend. Just that I got no notion of this fr. what he wrote.

    I had always seen Ariga as an online newspaper rather than a blog.

    But that’s not the way Robert saw it and he told me so. It seemed fr. what he told me that he’d told you so as well at an earlier pt. although I can’t be sure of that.

    Robert later corrected me and said that he did, in fact, consider Ariga to be a blog, which is why I included it in my later posts for GV.

    Yr memory seems to be selective. Robert corrected you because I asked him why he wasn’t included & he told me you didn’t consider him eligible. I complained publicly that you did not include Ariga. At the time I complained, you did not include Ariga. If you did incorporate Ariga into GV later it was because I noted his absence & because I talked to him about it. I wrote publicly that Ariga should be included and that Robert felt he should be included because he felt it was like a blog.

    my GV posts [the Israel section Goldman edited] were about the Israeli blogosphere. In other words, they covered the blogs of Israelis and Israeli residents.

    Your view is at variance with the GV website which invites blogger who write from or about specific countries:

    1. Help us cover the global conversation by becoming a contributing author

    …Do you blog from or about a region or country that is ignored by traditional media? Do you follow the “conversation” in the blogosphere in your own country or some other country you know well?

    The rules say nothing about having to live in or be born in a country to be included as a GV author. Besides, in a global world this notion is hopelessly narrow, provincial and out of date. I write about Israel. I follow both the blog and media conversation in Israel, a country I know well. You rejected my participation. Your decision was at variance with GV policy.

    As far as I am concerned, the Palestinian and Lebanese GV authors should stick to writing about Palestinian and Lebanese blogs.

    Aren’t we glad you’re not editing those sections.

    I purposely sought to show the diverse political opinions from across the Israeli blogosphere. I did not pick and choose blog posts that meshed with my political opinions because that would be censorship. In fact, I frequently linked to bloggers with whom I disagreed. That is called balance.

    I have already written about a typical week at GV’s Israel section under yr editorship & pointed out the imbalance. Naturally, someone with a vague political sense of the I-P conflict is going to feel she has impeccable editorial taste. But since you’re no longer editor this is a moot pt.

    If you are upset at the Brass Crescent Society for not nominating your blog

    I wrote that I was upset I was not included in GV under yr editorship. I never wrote here I was upset for not being nominated for the Brass Crescent nor am I. Assuming otherwise is a typical act of presumption on yr part. I wouldn’t mind if I was nominated in future. But that’s not the issue here. You’re trying to make this out to be sour grapes when it isn’t. I don’t think you deserved the award last yr. when yr competition was especially weak. Nor do I think you deserve it this yr when the competition is much stronger & you’re likely to lose. It has nothing to do with me or how I feel about not being included.

    Regarding your tepid “support” of the three Israeli journalists

    You are a dolt. My support for you and the other journalists was whole-hearted. I dare you to quote a single phrase that was anything less so. I support you traveling to Lebanon & oppose the police investigation of your work without an iota of reservation. But I do so in spite of my reservations about yr political understanding of the conflict. For you, the only type of support you accept is that which never disagrees with you. Sorry, but I don’t give anyone uncritical support.

    I certainly do not need – or want – any mention of this matter on your blog.

    Who cares what you want? I don’t write for you. Israeli police investigation of journalists is the type of issue I write about. I would’ve written about this whether it was you or Joe Shlemazel who was being investigated. And I’ll go on writing about this type of story whether it includes you or not. If it does include you I will talk about the story and you whether you like it or not.

  7. My name isn’t Robert. My correct name is emblazoned above every comment I write.

    Go back & look at that comment you wrote about me at Jewlicious & tell me who’s petulant & petty. You just can’t take criticism of any kind. If you’d been able to respond to my initial comments about Global Voices with any equanimity I wouldn’t have had to be as adversarial as I have.

  8. Ramsey: Lisa Goldman may be well-intentioned and good-natured. I don’t dispute that though her responses to me both publicly & privately have never shown that side of her. But there is more to blogging intelligently about the I-P conflict than being merely good natured or well intentioned. You need to have a strong point of view and political understanding of what is happening. You need to have a critical perspective on the conflict. You need to have more than vague notions of dialogue & discussion.

    And I wish, Ramsey, that you’d use a valid e mail address when publishing comments so I could communicate directly with you via e mail. That’s not required of course, but it helps when you want to write to a reader directly.

  9. Richard – Hadn’t realized that I’d left off a digit in the email address. It’s been corrected.

    I’m in agreement with you about the need to have a critical perspective on the conflict, but I’m not convinced that Lisa doesn’t have one. I think that when you actually live in the region your perspective becomes a bit more nuanced, as things are rarely as black and white as they seem from afar. In the work of hers that I’ve read, which is not exhaustive by any means, I’ve gotten the impression that she is sort of zionist that the Palestinians can do business with.

    In any regard, you know what they say – You’ll attract many more bees with honey than with vinegar.

    Ramsey

  10. Ramsey: I just watched the video of her LEbanon report for Channel 10 & it was typical insipid TV journalism. What did it tell us: that Lebanon has rebuilt much of the damage fr. the last war; that it would be too dangerous for her to try to enter a Hezbollah neighborhood; that a coffeeshop owner believes there will be another war with Israel. This is so superficial as to be nothing more than window shopping journalism. I don’t know whether to blame this on the medium (TV news) or the reporter. At any rate, it contributed very little to Israeli knowledge of Lebanon.

    Furthermore, she chose to publicize her Lebanon reporting in two U.S. right-wing media outlets, Pajamas Media and the Wall Street Journal (she was also on CNN). It is no accident that this happened. As far as I am concerned Goldman is the Michael Totten of Israeli journalism: a glib English-speaker who travels to slightly taboo places only to do journalism that sheds almost no light on the subject she’s reporting on.

    If Abie Natan or Uri Avnery had gone to Lebanon they wouldn’t gone to interview Hassan Nasrallah or Fouad Siniora & you would’ve learned something from their reporting. None of this happened with Goldman. I realize that there were many built-in drawbacks to her visit to Lebanon that made such reporting difficult, if not impossible. But from the looks of it she never even tried to get those kinds of interviews or if she did I haven’t heard her say it.

  11. And if I were better at investing I’d be Warren Buffet and not the lousy picker of mutual funds that I am. It seems to me that Goldman’s approach is very much focused on the human interest angle of people in the region. To compare her to Avnery and Natan does not seem fair in evaluating her work. I don’t think she would claim to be trying to accomplish what they are trying to accomplish. Both she and Totten provide an interesting perspective into life in these areas and what real people think and do. Totten’s comments section were quit interesting during the summer war as there were quit a few Lebanese and Israelis writing in them. Are they glib? Perhaps, but my expectations are different/lower for them than say for someone writing in The New Yorker or The Economist. I am appreciative of their blogs just as I am appreciate reading Tikkun Olam.

  12. Neither Avnery nor Natan were geniuses in the vein of Warren Buffett. They just had strong values & ideas & lots of raw talent along with a lot of moxie. Goldman may have a few of those qualities, but doesn’t come close to those other Israelis overall. She’s a pale imitation. In fact, I’d venture to say that their strong political convictions wouldn’t interest her at all.

    Goldman’s approach is very much focused on the human interest angle of people in the region.

    Precisely. It’s what I’d call the Ladies Home Journal approach to journalism. There’s nothing wrong with human interest. The NY Times & Gideon Levy write enormously powerful stories about the IP conflict which contain strong human interest elements. But if ALL you focus on is the human interest & you don’t connect the human element to a larger idea then you’re left untethered & with no context in which to understand or judge anything, which is pretty much how she reported fr. Lebanon.

    I strongly disagree about Totten & you should read my Larry of Arabia post about him. Visiting Kurdistan merely to snap pictures of villas & tell readers how similar they look to a typical American suburbs or visiting a Kurdish supermarket only to tell us that seeing Red Bull reminded him of supermarkets back home is ridiculous & insular journalism which Totten speicalizes in. He travels 10,000 miles only to tell us more about himself & Americans & than about the people & society he’s visiting. Asking dumb questions of Lebanese only to have them ask him if he’s an American spy & then yelling Nixon-like “I am NOT a spy” is typical of Totten.

  13. Richard, your comparison to the Ladies Home Journal is sexist.

    The main point of my trip to Lebanon was not in order to do the report for channel 10, but rather in order to write a 6-page cover story for Time Out Tel Aviv. I would send you the link to the article , but since you insist your Hebrew is really excellent I suggest you just google my name plus Beirut in order to find the piece. I am sure you will manage just fine.

    The channel 10 piece received the most attention because TV is (unfortunately) more powerful medium than print (a); and because Al Manar dubbed the piece into Arabic and broadcast it one hour after it was broadcast in Israel (b). After Al Manar’s broadcast, Al Jazeera took up the “Zionist infiltrator” theme and then the story was all over the Arabic media.

    I really think that you should help us to correct the reporting coming out of the Middle East. Why don’t you buy a ticket to Lebanon or Iraq and do some real, high-quality citizen journalism for your blog?

  14. …Your comparison to the Ladies Home Journal is sexist.

    OK, how about breathless, superficial journalism that seeks heat rather than light & often attains neither. Is that less sexist?

    As for reading yr story in Time Out Tel Aviv, I’ve read & seen enough of yr print & broadcast journalism so as not to need a further dose of it, thank you. And if you think I don’t know Hebrew I wish you’d make such a claim, ridiculous though it might be, instead of the silly snark about my supposed “insistence that my Hebrew is excellent.”

    I really think that you should help us to correct the reporting coming out of the Middle East.

    I can’t decide if this is more snark or you really believe that reporting coming out of the Middle East needs “correcting.” I’m curious which it is.

    I have 3 children under the age of 6 and provide the majority of their child care. I don’t do much globetrotting any more. Not to mention the fact that Lebanon is a tad more expensive to get to for me than for you & I have no Channel 10 picking up the expenses. If I was going to do so, I’d go to Gaza if I felt I could be safe enough & Israeli Arab villages, rather than Iraq or Lebanon. Why don’t YOU go to Gaza? Yes, you’d possilby have to violate a few laws and get yrself into trouble with the IDF. But you’d be the only Israeli journalist to visit the place in eons & have a potentially great scoop. Oh but that’s right, Pajamas Media, Gal Beckerman, the Wall Street Journal and even Channel 10 wouldn’t care very much about the suffering of Gaza. Prob. you wouldn’t either.

    But I’ll do you one better…make yr next trip to Iran before Israel bombs the place to smithereens. Now that could be some celebrity journalism. You’re surely grab some headlines in the WSJ & PJM once again. Do a report on all the trendy bars in Teheran and interview taxi drivers about their views of Ahmadinejad.

    If you were a serious journalist you’d tell the Iranians you want to visit as an Israeli & see what they said. Even if they refused, at least you could say you tried.

    BTW, I don’t buy much of what Daily Star or Al Jazeera said about you. That’s narischkeit as is the Israeli police investigation of you. What bugs me was that you had a golden opportunity to do substantial journalism and the best you could do was feature an interview with a cab driver & a cafe owner telling us what we already knew along with telling us breathlessly that a Hezbollah Beirut neighborhood is “truly another world” (whatever that means).

  15. You spend the whole time bitching about your posts not being included, yet when Lisa tells you I once asked her to include my posts, I am somehow G-d’s gift?

    Your posts hardly see the time of day, Silverstein, because they are full of lies, misinformation, and are quite frankly not very well written.

    Don’t give up your day job (assuming you have one of those)

  16. And just for the record, I once contacted Lisa during the Lebanon war about including any of my posts on GV. I did so because I was live blogging the war, and was actually quoted by the mainstream media and appeared on television and radio. My mail to her was actually half tongue in cheek, so I was a bit surprised by her representation above.

  17. I complained about being excluded from GV because Lisa violated the site’s rules in excluding me & even now has not responded to that fact. Or don’t you believe that editors should have to follow their own site’s rules & can make it up as they go along solely based on personal whim, caprice & prejudice?

    Your posts hardly see the time of day, Silverstein, because they are full of lies, misinformation, and are quite frankly not very well written.

    Talk about lies & misinformation. I’ve been interviewed & mentioned in a NY Times front page article. That ever happen to you? I’ve got a chapter in an essay collection coming out through Verso Books this fall. Anyone ever ask you to write a book or even a chapter of a book? No? What a surprise. It must be because a book editor see’s my writing style a bit differently than you do. And btw, on what basis do you critique my writing style? Do you have any expertise in the subject? Ever take a writing course? Ever edit a book, magazine or newspaper? Ah, just as I thought. Typical self-appointed know it all critic. The kind the right produces so many of.

    You got on TV and radio. Whoa, way to go Dave! I’ve done both already in my career as well. Big deal.

    So sorry to see your Alexa ranking is down to 544,000, Dave. Don’t look know but we progressive Jewish bloggers are gaining on you. In fact, we’re on the way up & have passed you & you’re on the way down I’m sorry to say. Maybe it’s you who no one wants to read.

    And if you’re talking about my alleged lies about your right-wing, anti-Palestinian views, I’m still waiting for that libel lawsuit, Dave. I’ve got pretty good legal representation and we’ve defended ourselves pretty well against Rachel Neuwirth so far.

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