Links from my del.icio.us account for May 27th through May 29th:
- The Magnes Zionist: Haaretz Rumored to Have Fired Amira Hass and Meron Rapoport – Rumors that two of the best Israeli journalists covering the OTs are fired (TBC)
- MotherJones Blog: American Jewish Committee Won’t Touch Hagee on Holocaust; Silence from AIPAC, ADL – Supposed anti-Semitism watchdogs ignore Holocaust remarks of Christian Zionist ally
- Comfort food and complaints at a Cairo food stand – Los Angeles Times – On Cairenes barely scrapping by – but it's spelled "fuul" not "faoul"!
- AFP: Under-fire Egypt minister ‘dreams’ of normal ties with Israel – Deeply corrupt Farouq Hosni suddenly pretends to love Israel to get UNESCO job
- FT.com / World – Al-Jazeera English tackles staff disquiet – New MD comes in for reshuffle, project for newspaper touted
- ISRAEL: Seeing a threat in U.S. academic – Watch the Finkelstein video in this LAT blog — he's on top form
I was just in Israel. One of my Israeli friends who works at Haaretz says there is a new editor who is hell bent on firing everyone. She claims it’s fairly standard practice at the paper.
Thanks Abu Tabakh — I guess Haaretz is not immune to the job cuts facing the newspaper industry elsewhere. I hope these two were not affected because their reporting was pretty unique.
I certainly hope Amira Hass’ job would be the last on the chopping block if they issue was money.
Re comfort food: A couple of questions.
1. “He eats like a man driving a getaway car.” What the hell does this mean? That he eats with one hand? Just watched Starsky and Hutch, so I have some pictures in my head of this guy peeling around the corner sideways while he stuffs a fuul sandwich into his face and Fleishman, curbside, shouts his questions at him.
2. “Cairo is angry and troubled, like a big, dusty riled beast.” Taken one by one these words “big”, “dusty”, “riled” and “beast” are applicable to Cairo, I’m just not sure that this sentence works — and it gets worse if you read it in context. Ok, so that’s not a question. How about this: If Cairo’s a beast, where’s the head? The asshole… well, we know where he is.
3. “…a corner blackened by his flame.” Perhaps my favorite word-glomp in the piece (I guess technically it may be a clause but “word-glomp” comes closer I think to the truth of the matter). Don’t know what it is about this w-g that makes it my favorite, except, well, think about blackening stuff with your flame. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to blacken stuff with your flame? I’d settle for flame enough to light a cigarette these days, let alone being able to blacken a whole corner, but hey.
4. “…he can afford only donkey meat sausages for dinner…” Tell me someone wasn’t pulling the khawaga’s leg here. I do not know a single Egyptian who wouldn’t rather eat fuul three times a day than knowingly consume a donkey. Remember the brouhaha when they found the donkey heads in the dumpster and suspected that someone was selling the meat?
Whatever. I don’t really have a point here. I’m hoping that it was meant to be over the top and funny. Maybe I’m just jealous that someone out there is getting paid to write purple poo like that.
Any confirmation on the ‘Haaretz Putsch’ report yet? Just did a Google news search on Hass and turned up no articles by her, only other reports of the rumor.