Muzzlewatch finalist for Jewish Israeli Blog Awards- not without controversy
Posted on May 10 2007 by Cecilie Surasky under JVP.Muzzlewatch is a finalist for 3 awards over at the Jewish and Israeli blog awards. Vote here for best new blog, here for best left-wing blog, and here for best anti-establishment blog. Better yet, just go to JIBA and check out all sorts of interesting Jewish blogs-right, left, center, personal and more. Each category has a nominees list that has a range of interesting choices.
Hat tip to Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam (who is nominated for best music post, vote here) who let me know about the debate over Muzzlewatch’s inclusion in the awards.
Over at The Baleboostah (gotta love the name-plus a Jewish woman blogger, finally!), a blogger named Aussie Dave offers a number criticisms of the JIB Awards, including this one:
David does have some valid points about this year’s JIBs, though. Especially the decision to allow anti-Israel blogs like Muzzlewatch to compete, in the spirit of “inclusiveness.” This needs to be changed if the JIBs are to achieve their purposes.
Interestingly, Akiva, who is apparently part of the team running JIBs this year and who identifies himself as a “right wing Zionist”, defends the inclusion of Muzzlewatch on principle:
Dave - We polled a number of Jbloggers for their category opinions in advance, as well as solicited community input (on the site).
If the JIBs are the zionist right wing Jewish blog awards, then I agree with you. If they are the Jewish & Israeli blog awards, then those with various viewpoints on the matter are welcome.
The rules spell it out reasonably well I think… “1. What Blogs May Be Included?
Jewish & Israel Blogs (and/or those frequently dealing with those topics) of course! Blogs qualify for nomination if they are operated by or have significant contributions from Jewish and/or Israeli bloggers or frequently deal with Jewish topics or Israel/Israeli topics. A blog does not have to have Jewish bloggers nor be pro-Israel to be included.
Anti-Semitic and/or blogs advocating the destruction of Israel are specifically excluded. For this purpose, being critical of or advocating a major change in Israeli government structure, operation, policies or political positions is not considered ‘advocating the destruction of Israel’.”
Is there some part of that you disagree with? I’m a right wing zionist who spends significant time in the Shomron, but I advocate some major changes in Israeli government structure and stand on things. So, would I be excluded?
You have to be awful careful about filtering, you never know who might get caught up.
As Richard says, “Good for him.”
As we’ve reported before, bloggers offer different reasons for the traditional dearth of progressive blogs among the awards finalists. Whatever reason makes sense to you, it’s clear that the current group of independent bloggers that has taken over the awards process is doing a tremendous job, and under difficult circumstances. Many suggest that more can and should be done to make it a fair playing field, and I think we all can agree.
As JIBA team members Akiva writes about the fair playing field issue:
This is a very valid point that we didn’t consider. There are now professional blogs, organization blogs, and blogs as an accessory of another major activity (web site, radio program, etc).
It’s going to be hard to figure out how to segregate them, but must be done in the future. As far as this year is concerned, I think we’re too far in to be making that kind of change.
(Examples in this years awards, not all of which did well, we have 1 blog that runs on the Jerusalem Post web site, 1 that runs on the Israel National News web site, 2 by people who have radio programs, 1 associated with a magazine, and 3 associated with organizations.)
Muzzlewatch is one of the blogs that benefits greatly from an organizational affiliation. By any standard, we have done well for a new blog. We’ve gotten feature media coverage across the US (and even overseas). We have over 400 subscribers between email and RSS feeds, plus another 500-700 or so unique visitors a day.We have over 1,800 real comments in less than 4 months.
I have no illusions about the priceless advantage of being associated with an organization with supporters and detractors (who comment on the list frequently) and a large mailing list. It’s simply not an advantage enjoyed by small independent bloggers. It’s also true that we put out a quality and interesting product, and that ultimately, our success or failure depends on maintaining that quality. No amount of organizational backing can make people come back time and again to a terrible blog.
Whatever can be done to even the playing field is a good thing.
Get Muzzlewatch delivered fresh daily
Print This Post
May 10th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Does having T-shirts with “anti-Zionist” on sale at your recent conference qualify one as “advocating the destruction of Israel”?
(from Wikipedia: “Zionism is an international political movement that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel”.) After all, if one opposes even a “homeland” for the Jewish people in the land of Israel, one certainly advocates the dismantlement of the existing Jewish state. (right, that’s not “destruction”– but assuming the Israelis aren’t going to quietly submit to national suicide, what then?)
May 10th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Mike, the anti-Zionist T-shirts were being sold by another organization that paid for having a table at our conference. If we had been the San Francisco JCC, we would have walked around all the organizations’ tables and demanded that they take off anything and everything we disagreed with. We didn’t do that. If someone had been selling Zionist T-shirts there, we would have been fine with that as well.
May 11th, 2007 at 10:06 am
If the KKK paid for a table at your conference, would you have let them be there?
What about the Nation of Islam?
What if some independent bookseller wanted to sell the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
It’s a difficult issue, no doubt. But are you really saying that you would let anyone purchase a table at the conference?
May 11th, 2007 at 10:18 am
One could be anti-Zionist in opposing the privileged position of Jews in Israel while not favoring the abolition of Israel as a country. Oh, and Mike, Wikipedia is a highly problematic source for anything politically controversial.
May 11th, 2007 at 11:33 am
No Bill, that wouldn’t make one an “anti-zionist”. That would make one a member of the Meretz Party.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
As one of the blogs in the “best new blog” section with MuzzleWatch I have to agree with the idea that major org blogs can’t be considered the same as us little people. I have no issue with your inclusion in this award process and have written about that topic on MidEastYouth.com…but it wasn’t a fair fight.
I got to email my list of 20 or so blogger “friends” and you got to send an email to your entire organization. Enough kvetching…well done and good luck with getting more awards. It is good to hear different voices, even if sometimes I disagree with them.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
for full disclosure I voted for you in the finals of the new blogs…cause you are pretty good.
May 11th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Meretz continues to support the idea of a “Jewish state,” which means that it is Zionist and supports Jewish privilege, although it does waffle a bit at the edges.
May 13th, 2007 at 12:39 am
I used the Wikipedia definition simply to provide a referenced definition from a “non-Zionist” source. I could just as well use the definition in Mitchell Bard’s “On One Foot” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pub/OneFoot.pdf which states that “Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people which holds that Jews, like any other people, are entitled to a homeland” and then goes on to specify that this homeland is of course the land of Israel (rather than, say, Uganda or Sitka AK).
I have addressed in a previous post the large number of countries that offer preferential citizenship rights to members of the dominant ethnic group in those countries.
Joshua raises a very valid point– which essentially is the same problem that you have in standing together against Israel with jihadists waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags. You CLAIM to oppose terrorism, yet you stand with those who cheer it on. You CLAIM to be “neutral” on the question of Zionism (i.e. Israel as a Jewish state) yet you only invite speakers opposed to it and allow the sale of “anti-Zionist” T shirts (by the way, I’d be curious as to what organization you allowed to do that? al-Awda?). OK, so you probably wouldn’t sell transcripts of Ahmedinijad’s Holocaust denier conference. But where are JVP’s “red lines”?
May 13th, 2007 at 11:34 am
The real definition of Zionism: “Zionism is an international political movement that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel…which incoveniently happens to contain lots of Non-Jews who have lived there as long as Jews, but whcih the ZIonists have been ethnically cleansing in order to re-create a mythological ‘purified’ Jewish-dominated homeland that at best perhaps exists for 500 years out of the 5,000 year recorded history of the region.”
May 13th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Hass, go back and read demographic records before you start throwing around claims like “ethnic cleansing”.
Arab population of the West Bank
1948 462,100
1970 677,000
1980 964,000
1990 1,373,000
2000 1,836,000
Arab population of Israel:
1949 159,100
1993 992,400
2003 1,302,000
from http://www.israelipalestinianprocon.org/populationpalestine.html
Gee, those Israelis are so diabolically tricky that they manage to ethnically cleanse the Arab population without decreasing its number!
May 14th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I’m sure that next yr. JIB can create an organizational blog category to put Muzzlewatch & others into.
I’d love to win for Tikun Olam which is my nominated blog. But if it were a competition bet. my blog & Muzzlewatch & the latter won I wouldn’t have too much of a problem w. that.