In the wake of my post on the upcoming Jewish bloggers’ conference in Jerusalem and my criticism of those who seek to undermine it because of their bruised egos, I’ve been in touch with the organizers, who let me know how off-the-mark the critics have been in their claims that “the conference seems stacked in favor of Orthodox bloggers with right-wing political leanings.”
I reproduce the below with full permission of the sender:
…until the day before the announcement Dov Bear was supposed to be on the flight. He is hardly RW or establishment. But he had to back out at the last minute – he even blogged about it. Meryl Yourish was invited on the flight, but she too had to back out at the end. It would be very tough to call her religious. There were a few more last minute back-outs like that. We were in contact with the bloggers for weeks in advance. There’s nothing I can do about people backing out at the last minute, but the flight list was quite inclusive – except that there were no “anti religious” or “anti Israel” bloggers considered (as I surmised – ed). We wanted bloggers who were inclusive, not divisive to participate in active roles. I think that’s fair. Perhaps next year, when we do this in an expanded forum we will have a track for those kinds of discussions.
As for the panels, the first panel is for bloggers who have garnered large audiences to discuss how they did it and pass on those tips. The primary criteria was blog size and influence. We weren’t looking at politics, gender, or religiosity. Just numbers and that is what resulted. Again, Yourish, for instance, would have been on the list if she was able to make it (and told us she will join us next year). (And no one here even suspected CK was religious until he told us). I wasn’t going to put on token bloggers who didn’t have the numbers.
Did I miss anyone? Quite possibly. Perhaps they’ll get to speak in one of the available slots next year.
As for the 2nd panel, that is about writing positive about Israel from different perspectives, and I’d say we have a great and diverse roundup there. And I see nothing wrong about the panelists being positive. You don’t have to be “anti” to have a differing opinion. Just some nice people with popular blogs that have some very differing (and even opposing) political and religious outlooks and perspectives.
NBN has an agenda, and that is promoting Aliyah, and that is why they are laying out the money. It is quite within their rights to require that the bloggers I selected be ones that are not anti-religious, not anti-Aliyah, and not anti-Israel (and that doesn’t just mean anti-Settler)
And “despite” all those restrictions, we have LW and non-religious bloggers as active participants (and not just as guests) and as Benji showed, taking front-line roles. You can have valid differing opinions without being hate-filled and anti. But if you are full of hate, you can’t understand that.
As for our guests, we have bloggers from every extreme (including the anti) coming.
How’s that for a bit of research?
Update: David reveals the real deceit in this story:
IMHO, the ‘journalist’ who wrote the hatchet job piece acted unethically on several levels, not the least of which was not revealing 100% verifiable facts (to which I directed him) about the actual statistical make-up of the convention’s panelists that would have turned his story into a non-story.
