Fire-breathing, gefilte-fish-juggling Rosh Hashana video

JerusalemOnline News is featuring a slick new video for Rosh Hashana, just awaitin' Internet "viralization:"

A very clever, offbeat look at holiday preparations with Israeli juggler Chen Zohar.

(Cross-posted at Israelity)

Israel's new media relations chief enters the fray (Exclusive Audio)

David Horovitz, The Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief has a great interview with Miri Eisen, the new media relations point man - 'er, woman, in the Prime Minister's Office.

In an ascerbic, wickedly accurate opening, David deftly deconstructs what Israel has to offer the maw of world media coverage of events here:

I keep thinking that it must be here somewhere - at the end of a distant corridor, or hidden in some overlooked wing: The Communications Department of the Prime Minister's Office.

In one room, facing banks of television screens, the PM's expert news monitors are doubtless taping and taking notes on live broadcasts from the Arab world and beyond. In another, the rapid-response information unit is bound to be collating the material Israel wants conveyed to the world in urgent response to current events, commissioning the necessary film clips and interviews. In a third, the strategic team, a carefully chosen mix of academics and ex-intelligence wizards and media veterans, is obviously formulating the wider, longer-term messages Israel seeks to impress upon the rest of the global village, gearing up for its routine daily liaison session with the communications departments of the Foreign Ministry and the IDF, and for its crucial weekly meeting with the prime minister.

But alas, as Col. (res.) Miri Eisin, the transparently decent, earnest new English-speaking face of the Prime Minister's Office, knows all too well, there are no news monitors here, no instant-response team, no strategic planning unit. On the so-called "second battlefield," the media arena where official Israel tries to impact the world's perception of what is happening on the real front line, Eisin is Ehud Olmert's lone English-language soldier.

"We're a small staff," she acknowledges with heart-breaking understatement...

Read it all.

I recorded Eisen at a moving address she gave at a 2004 memorial service for North American immigrants who died in battle or in terrorism against Israel, held by the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel. She talks about her parents brave decision to make "aliyah" (immigration to Israel), and her decision put down roots here, and proudly raise a family in the face of terror and tyranny.

Well worth listening to.

JerusalemOnline news update: 00:00, Sept. 18th (Video - Channel 2 TV)

• Deal developing over IDF soldier's release
• PM Olmert returns fire over war criticism
• Midnight confessions for Rosh Hashanah
• A special video for all the Jewish moms - click to watch
  
  
  
  Click on image for latest Israel
  Channel Two TV news update.
  

'Naqshon’s Leap' band bridges faiths and musical genres

A Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Sikh walk into a studio. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke? It’s more like the beginning of a musical revolution.

Naqshon’s Leap — a band of multi-faith members with two things in common — a love of jazz and a belief in one God.

Read the rest at American Jewish Life magazine.

Praying for time (Photo)

(Photo: Dave Bender)

Mothers of cancer-stricken children in intercessionary prayer at cenotaph of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1746) in Tiberias.

JerusalemOnline news update: 00:00, Sept. 17th (Video - Channel 2 TV)

Israeli, PA sources at odds over Shalit release reports

Soldier's father avoids question: did he get a letter from his son?
Former defense minister slams Olmert, Peretz about War 'mishandling'

Click on image for latest Israel
Channel Two TV news update

Striking original photography for - and against Israel (Original photo)

Endless Summer (Photo: Dave Bender)

TrekEarth (along with its sister sites, TrekLens, and TrekNature) is a very active, well moderated photographic site for amateur-level to pros wanting to feature their original photography.

Israel is well represented, and updates several times a day. I have posted photos there, as well.

So are the Palestinian territories, as well as our neighboring countries. Although most of the imagery is simply peer-reviewed and enjoyed, many if not most of those about PA area shots are accompanied by agitprop, in a sort of "soft-propaganda" exploitation, unfortunately (no surprise, right?).

So, I recommend clicking over and getting am eyeful of great (...and, umm, almost great) photography - and also learning something of why the basic assumptions against Israel abroad, vis a vis, say, the West Bank and Jerusalem security barrier are so prevalent (read the comments below the pic).

(Cross-posted at Israelity)

Syria warns: Watch out for those wascally Zionists

Ahh, geez... they're onto us. Wait! I know! Let's just tell 'em we're just tourists with the International Solidarity Movement (Zionism? We don' need your stinkin' Zionism, Senor'...).

Huwaida Arraf, an ISM founder was recorded at two national conferences on two occasions admitting the ISM works with terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and Hamas. She even wrote to the Washington Post admitting as much. Paul LaRudee was deported after it was determined he changed his name to defraud Israeli border authorities to meet and work with groups that even he says might be affiliated with Hamas, he just “doesn’t ask these things.”

American ISM members pose with Palestinian gunmen in West Bank.

And meanwhile, to the north...

"Arab strategist divulges Israeli plan of new immigrations"

Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - 06:55 PM

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Chairman of the Arab Center for Strategic Studies Nasser Mohammed said Wednesday that the Zionist International Organization, conspiring with Western governments and the Israeli entity, are managing a new plot aims at attracting a million Jewish emigrant to Palestine in a step to expand its imposed colonial existence in the region by the human factor and the frightening power.

"The Israeli entity's extreme aggression, killing and expanding settlements goes a long with its seeking for imposing normalization and economic cooperation on the Arab countries in order to push them toward a New Middle East determined by the USA, Israel and the Zionist movement as a substitution for the Arab integration," he said.

He clarified that the New Middle East plot aims to fragmentize the Arab regional entities on one hand, and re-distribute the land, humans, wealth and powers according to the new map of the Middle East.

Arab Center held in Damascus a workshop on policies and programs required for directing possible future scenes in of the Arab-Israeli Conflict in 2015.

Bush assassination film riles US (Video clip)

London's Daily Mail is touting a film clip from the soon to be released UK Channel 4 TV film, "Death of a President," showing the moment when US President George Bush is slain by two assassins bullets at a Chicago event.

From the article:

The £2 million movie, called Death of a President, has sparked controversy in America, with its British film-makers having to be guarded by private security men at this week's Toronto International Film Festival after threats were made on their lives.

The movie unfolds as a retrospective documentary that interviews fictional former Secret Service and FBI investigators and members of the Bush administration after the President's death.

They discuss the run up to a speech Bush was to give in Chicago 2007 and how 12,000 demonstrators took to the streets waving placards which read 'War Is Terrorism' and 'Stop Bush'.

The film use archival footage of Bush actually arriving in Chicago, combining it with actors playing his various aides. After Bush makes a speech we see him in a holding room taking a breather before exiting the hotel's conference centre.

Armageddon: The flow chart

So there I wuz', taking a break from blogging for a few days after 9/11, and... BANG! I come across the Armageddon flow chart.