Mondoweiss Revisited

Mondoweiss, a blog about politics in the Middle East, posts mostly commentary about news and events pertaining to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Michael Massing wrote, "With its unrelenting criticism of Israel, his site has angered even some of his fellow doves, but it has given voice to a strain of opinion that in the past had few chances of being heard." Weiss surely cuts into Israel with his postings everyday. His drive is clearly to give voice to the left side of the conflict.

According to Massing, Weiss went to Gaza and filed reports on his encounters there. Without reading that I wouldn't have known that Weiss does original reporting. Since I've been reading Mondoweiss there hasn't been any original reporting just commentary. However, this week Weiss was at the J Street Conferenece doing some original reporting.

He wrote, "Eldar described apartheid in the West Bank, and Hagai El-Ad, leader of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said that the Supreme Court of Israel has signalled that it is going to endorse separate roads for settlers and Palestinians as a legitimate function of the Jewish state."

Weiss is thus providing an insider's view of the conflict at the conference by blogging about what he sees as newsworthy. The idea that Israel is going to create separate roads for Palestinians and Jews was appalling and probably wouldn't have been kown about this soon without Weiss's reporting.

Weiss's criticisms of Israel are important because his viewpoint isn't found in larger media networks. Weiss can break news about this issue because he follows everything going on and its personal to him as Jewish American. Weiss's passion is felt in his posts about Israel as in today's above the fold post in "Israel, we have a democracy problem," Adam Horowitz, fellow blogger of the site, broke the news that there are more Palestinians than Jews between the river and the sea. This isn't something that would be seen as newsworthy but Mondoweiss makes it relevent to the reader.

I think Weiss does a great job on covering issues relating to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict through commentary but there needs to be more original reporting from key locations and events. I think his best work is done when he provides news rather than commentary.