Archive for March 4th, 2009

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

A simple search for “Israel” on Google Maps will give you more than just roadways and town names: photographed piles of Gazan rubble will pop out of the map, taking precedent over images of Israel’s popular landmarks and landscapes.

Google can’t control which images appear because the content is entirely user-generated — also called “open-source” — meaning that Web surfers can add or delete content as they please. And on many such open-source sites right now, including Wikipedia and Flickr, Israel’s image is far from favorable.

But David Saranga, the media consul for the Consulate General of Israel in New York, plans to fight back. After launching a pro-Israel campaign through Twitter.com during the Gaza war and by bringing Maxim magazine into Israel last year, he says he is recruiting the best in the business to revamp Israel’s online image. 

In just a few weeks, he will bring six American new media experts to photograph Israel, with funds from the Consulate and Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Rather than selecting people based on their photography expertise, Saranga said that he is choosing his team members based on their proficiency editing blogs and open-source media. Continue reading…

A 9-year-old boy whose parents operate the Chabad of the Five Towns died in his sleep Friday night, leaving his family and community in a state of trauma. Continue reading…

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip ended more than a month ago, but for two college campuses in the snow-flushed mountains of central New York, the aftershocks from the war with Hamas continue to reverberate.

In the latest tremors, the most recent edition of the Ithaca College alumni magazine ICView, featured ’08 grad Emily McNeill’s eyewitness account of Israeli settler violence in Palestinian land. It sparked a campus-wide battle among students, faculty and alumni. 

Meanwhile, two miles north at Cornell, the formerly peaceful Muslim and pro-Israel organizations broke what had been an increasingly friendly dialogue with a series of antagonistic rallies and protests.

“Ithaca is a very liberal town — it’s sort of in its own little bubble,” said Shai Akabas, president of the Cornell Israel Public Affairs Committee. “There are more people who lean to the far left side of the political spectrum, and some of those people tend to take more stances against Israel. That may to some extent spur the far-left student population to take action.”

Last month, a group of Cornell students decked the campus Arts Quad with signs condemning Israel’s war on Gaza and 1,300 black flags to represent the dead from both sides, The Cornell Daily Sun reported. Cornell’s Islamic Alliance for Justice did not organize the Feb. 9 protest, though some members participated in the display, its president, Tara Malik, told The Sun. But by that same afternoon, many of those same signs had been vandalized and stolen. Continue reading…

I guess she didn’t do a complete 180…

3/3/09: Hillary Clinton's Guestbook note at Yad Vashem. -US Department of State Official Blog

Yad Vashem is a testament to the power of truth in the face of denial, the resilience of the human spirit in the face of despair, the triumph of the Jewish people over murder and destruction and a reminder to all people that the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten. God bless Israel and its future.

—Hillary Rodham Clinton 
March 3, 2009