What is Israelenews?
I just stumbled on a site called israelenews.com, which bills itself as “Israel’s daily news e-mag.”
The site contains a number of blog posts, as well as articles from a number of well-known and not-so-well-known people. And while these include some worthy authors (including Israellycool contributor Elder of Ziyon and fellow pro-Israel blogger Sultan Knish) , it currently has on the front page articles by the likes of anti-Israel blogger/pest Richard Silverstein, and the blatantly anti-Semitic Israel Shamir.
Just as disturbing is the presence on the front page of an article about an Israeli porn site. The words “WARNING!!! ADULT CONTENT” appear in the excerpt, but seemingly only for effect, given the presence of an uncensored, pornographic picture right next to them. Yeah, thanks for the warning. Needless to say, I did not click through for the full article.
What I’m confused about is the purpose of this site. Is it a site to promote a variety of views on Israel and intellectual discussion? Or is it a glorified porn site? Furthermore, do the authors know their articles are being published on this site? And if so, are they aware of the anti-Israel/Jewish views and other filth being disseminated there?
Update: Here is the full list of authors. Looking at some of these names, I am sure they would not approve of having their work published there.
About the Author
An Australian immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave has been blogging since early 2003.Filed Under: General
Yes I find a lot of what’s published on the site very ugly, I haven’t asked them to stop running my pieces which they take from my blog, because it seems better to at least have some kind of antidote to the ugliness there and runs them into Google News too.
I suspect the site has no political agenda except to cheaply create a large amount of Israel related articles to gain traffic and sell ads. I could of course be completely wrong.
It’s an incredibly crappy UK based site hosted by http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/ that feeds off generated content taken from blog and news feeds (wisdom shared by robtex.com).
Don’t bother to contact fasthosts – they are one of these companies that cannot even afford a part-time contract with an Indonesian call-center.
From a quick look, it doesn’t seem like a real web site — Now I know I said something about a photo not being real a couple of days ago and then stood corrected, but this time I’m pretty sure.
The forum section is entirely empty for a site which claim to adorn itself with so many high-profile contributors. And the layout of each article is quite different, meaning the content is being stolen from many different sources.
The assorted writers so obviously and widely disagree one with another though, that it’s pretty apparent no one’s being mischaracterized, but just lumped in with people who have something, anything, to say about Israel. It is kind of funny to see them all on “the same page” though!
“Furthermore, do the authors know their articles are being published on this site?”
I’m pretty sure Meir Kahane doesn’t know he’s writing for this website (from the list of authors). I didn’t notice any other obviously dead authors.