Teenage stabbings, Conflict of the 'Times,' Pesach, happy 90th

1 May, Sunday

In lieu of terror, we opt to kill ourselves

Despite the recent mortar shell attacks, terror has dropped significantly; you can feel the relief on every street cafe and movie theater - people are more at ease, less inclined to examine everyone and everything before entering an entertainment venue.

But leave it to us Israelis to find an alternate method of destruction: Teenage nightclub stabbings.

A 16-year-old’s life was taken during a Rishon Lezion nightclub brawl in what has become nothing short of an epidemic - occasionally armed and almost always drunk teenagers rumble at local hot spots, sometimes over a girl, sometimes over an offensive remark.

The results are disastrous, and, as expected, the authorities have yet to come up with an adequate solution (how about increased police presence at these clubs?).

The following is an excerpt from a Ynet article posted Sunday:

Lior Amar, 24, lies in his hospital bed, clueless as to how he ended up there.

It all started over a conversation with a young lady, he recollects.

“I went out to the parking lot. A girl that I had recognized stood there. I approached her and asked her whether she remembers me; she sat next to me,” he says. “Suddenly someone came over and furiously said to me: ‘Why are you hitting on her?’

Apparently the young lady’s friends had decided Lior posed a threat.

“One of them told me: ‘We’ll stab you,’ and before I realized what was happening, seven of them began stabbing me all over my body,” he said. “I fell to the floor and yelled to them: ‘I’m a Jew, I’m not an Arab, why are you stabbing me?’”

27 April, Wednesday

Walking down the middle of the road

New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent, who is wrapping up his tenure as the paper's ombudsman,  weighs in on the "paper of record's" coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why is this an important subject? First of all, the "Times" is the hometown paper of the American Jewish community, whether or not it lives in New York. Plus, it's footprint online and offline is so large it influences media coverage by all other global media. Whatever the "Times" does, people pay attention.

Okrent says - no surprise here - that the public response and criticism of the coverage - from all possible sides - is hotter and heavier than on any other subject. The Times is subject to withering criticism from pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sources daily.

Okrent's take is that the Times is trying to walk down the middle of the road in the conflict, and is, therefore, likely to get shot at from both sides. True enough. A few thoughts, though: he suggests that Timesmen and women here for the duration try living someplace other than "West Jerusalem" (his capital W). Does he know how much Times families here do their utmost to shop and even give birth in Palestinian communities, especially so that their children's U.S. passports wouldn't have the dreaded "Jerusalem," (that's right comma after the Jerusalem, no country given) designation?

Further, Okrent does not, in this instance at least, go into the Times' clunky (and media pack boilerplate) designation of all Palestinian shooters and bomb deliverers as "militants." That's moral abdication of the highest order, IMHO.

Finally, he turns the other cheek on not giving context and background to events of the day by saying there is no way to give enough background to satisfy all sides. Some context and background is necessary in all stories, otherwise we don't know why something was done. Does each story have to go back to the days of Samson and the Philistines? No. Do we need to know at least the proximate cause for a "realitatory" attack? Yessiree, Dan.

24 April, Sunday

Chag Sameach

Happy Pesach to one and all. We hope your seder was fun, fulfilling (both spiritually and physically), and freilach. To those of you outside Israel doing a second seder tonight: more power to you.

Chicomm Jew

This just in from Xinhua, the press service of the People's Republic of China: Chinese President Hu Jintao paid a visit to veteran Jewish journalist and writer Israel Epstein, who interviewed Chairman Mao Zedong in the 1930s when working for U.S. news organizations, to extend greetings on the eve of his 90th birthday.