The Israeli media dealt with lebanese bloggers quite a lot in the last few days. It seems that blogging became what i thought it would – a mean for people to understand one another and to communicate. It is hard for the media to comprehend that, since they are still working as an Agent of Truth, where there is only one story to be told, and that is the collective Story.

I went today to another interview, after being interviewed yesterday for Channel 3 Evening News, this time it was Channel 2 Morning News. (For people who are unfamiliar with Israel, channel 2 has the highest ratings, then Channel 10, and afterwards Channel 1, which is owned by the Government). My mission was to talk about conversations in blogs between Lebanese and Israelies; I Arrived to the make up room to meet Parliament member Zehava Galon, from my former party, Meretz. Zehava and I spoke about several things, including the fighting (the Israeli media does not like the word ‘war’, so it’s still fighting) and a few Statute suggestions that are currently drafted which i believe should be opposed.

Around 08:30 i got on stage with former Military spokesman Nachman Shai, he was the spokesman in the time of the Gulf war, and served as one of the more calming people ever. Today Yehiel Cooperstein is doing the calming, though he is not the military spokesperson but chief of home front command. Mr. Shai asked quite a lot about blogs and wanted to hear what we have to say, and what do i think of the Lebanese bloggers.

The thing that disturbed me is that most of the coverage in the media is not about the conversations, but about the bloggers themselves; they are used as news sources and ways to comment on the situation, instead of being analysed for a mean for communication. For example, Haaretz published 3 articles (hebrew) about Lebanese blogs. The first was about a Blogger who is afraid of dying writing in Lebanese Bloggers and adding Ami Ben Bassat’s comments. The other article was written yesterday, And deals more about the Israeli Blogoshpere, quoting the A-List Israeli bloggers such as Ido Kenan and Yuval Dror while on a side note commenting my statement of “Do israel a favor and start commenting” as ultra-nationalism, while not reading my other statements there in parallel, saying that “As an Israeli, i do agree that my nation is morally corrupt. We’ve been corrupt since we’ve held two nations under military occupation for the last 40 years. “ oh well. The third Item in Haaretz Printed today, was about Lebanese bloggers, linking to three bloggers writing from Lebanon. But ignoring the discourse.

On the other hand, Ilana Tamir from Nana did a wonderful job covering the Lebanese blogs in depth and does speak a little about personal relations, but still, people look for action.

The media’s goal is to cover disputes, fights, allegations – they can’t deal with discourses, they can’t deal with people exchanging ideas, it doesn’t shoot well on camera and it can’t go on the first page of the newspaper. Good news is not that popular, for the obvious reasons.

The problem I’m facing ever since i started blogging in english, is the amount of material out there. I mean, i can’t read as much as they type, unlike hebrew, where quality exceeds quantity and there are around 50 a-list bloggers and 50 cool blogs, which means i read around 50 posts per day; In english i find too much blogs to keep track of, and too many people to know in order to get around. Before the war started, i followed only 5 – 10 arab blogs, and tried not to comment in any of them in order to stay under water and not interfere. I couldn’t know whether those people will let an Israeli comment on their blog. Nowadays, i just feel i have to comment, to both criticise my country and to protect it.