2013 in review
Thank you all and every reader who took the time to check out our blog.
As an ex Aussie I rather like the way Jetpack (Five Minutes for Israel is a WordPress blog) expresses my year in figures. I would have preferred to fill the Sydney Cricket Ground with its 48,000 capacity but such is life. The Opera House is at least iconic.
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. In 2013, there were 83 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 269 posts. The busiest day of the year was September 23rd with 498 views. The most popular post that day was A course in map reading II.
The reader votes are in
These were the top Five Minutes for Israel posts for 2013
- Support these companies February 2013
- TIME’s table April 2013
- i24 New Israel TV to the world July 2013
- Palestinian Photoshoppery March 2013
…and a special mention to A course in map reading II published November 2012 but with a great new lease of life in 2013.
The judges vote (on the posts I feel are worth rereading/sharing/bookmarking even if they didn’t have the most viewers)
- Population games Gaza is NOT the/one-of-the most densely populated places on Earth.
- Israel Haters in Ireland 2012/Pro-Israel Ireland Two sides of a green coin.
- Compass points You may never throw the left/right label around again.
- Trócaire teaches hate … is the Catholic charity a symptom or cause of Irish hostility?
- Growing pains Countering a BDS campaign with (Palestinian) statistics.
- Oscarwinningwabbit And the loser is! Envelope, please.
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang You think Israel is a good example of the right to carry arms? Think again.
- Turkey Shoot? Can/should Turkey be the world’s policeman in Syria?
- Palestinian Photoshoppery A picture tells a 1,000 lies.
- Don’t passover us What does Pessach (Passover) mean to me?
- Hasbara central Organise!
- Cousin Vinny Vincent Browne is a *****
- Nakba vs. Nakba Tu quoque or Coming to the court of opinion with dirty hands?
- All in the label Lebanon does double duty as Deir Yassin.
- Comes with the territory/Profilaxis Exhaustively fisks the BBC Palestinian Authority/Golan profiles.
- Facebook lowers the bar What they allow and what they ban.
- Moaning We would like to think that our campaigning lost Mona Seif the prize.
- Teaching Hypocrisy Teachers Union Ireland.
- End of the Line Charles Enderlin and the al Durrah libel.
- The new-old anti-pro antisemitism Fisking Joseph Massad.
- Gone to a better place A start-up stands down.
- Wakipedia/Abbas Jnr. loses in court Mahmud Abbas is corrupt. Did you need me to say that?
- Child’s Play UN Committee on child’s rights gets it wrong.
- Willkommen in Deutschland German Jewish travelogue.
- The late LATMA? Satire programme going under.
- Turkey Shoot? Turkey and Syria.
- Cartoon capers if you can’t draw – Photoshop!
- Tangled webs Obama and Syria.
- Winning by coming in 2nd Start wars, lose, claim victim status.
- The BBC forgets – the Druze Food, travel BBC sticks fork into Israel.
- Diplomatic Impunity Marion Fesneau Castaing:Anything is allowed against Israel.
- Defining terrorism If you can’t name it how can you fight it?
- Oslo 20 years after We were promised PEACE.
- The BDS Method(ist)/God’s People Convincing the Methodist Church not to support BDS.
- Bolonium Pushing the Arafat was murdered meme without evidence.
- Armenia/Israel Israeli reflections on an Armenia trip.
- Always right The BBC doesn’t make value judgements. Except when it does.
- So NEAR – so far Irish radio.
Looking back at 2013
Special thanks to Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh and Jacqueline Mulhern for their contributions during 2013. Ciarán’s contribution discussed the Farhud, Iraq’s pogrom against the Jews reminding us that Arab violence against their local Jewish populations preceded the departure of Arabs from Israel in 1948 and was not caused by it. Jacqueline focussed on Irish Jewish/Israel issues. Look under the Irish Eyes blog or Ireland tag for her contributions. There is much nastiness coming out of the Emerald Isle but we have friends there as well.
Also special thanks to Byron Solomon for his back-room work which has picked the Five Minutes for Israel website up and kept it going.
Five Minutes for Israel was never intended as one man’s blog so if you are interested in having graphics, video or something you have written published through the blog please contact us.
In 2013 the blog has departed considerably from the original concept. We began as an ‘Action Item’ site pinpointing, often at short notice, areas where we could make an immediate difference but are now much more into analysis, reporting and providing materials to help Israel advocates state their case. The pressure of keeping ahead of the news became too much but we are always happy for a heads up. While we haven’t kept completely abreast of the news, especially when we didn’t feel we had much that was original to say, I hope that we have often provided interesting and useful material that other sources have largely missed.
Looking forward to 2014
A new category/blog is in planning for 2014, tentatively titled BLOGography. In this we hope to contact and collaborate with other small Israel advocacy blogs. We plan interviews, joint and guest posts and a general sharing of tips and ideas on how to advance what I believe is an important weapon in the Public Diplomacy war.
How does a pro-Israel small blogs conference sound to you?
As always let us know if you are interested in participating in BLOGography.
5MFI can do better
Why did we receive so few website comments, last year? Is it a technical problem we are unaware of or is it something else?
Where did they come from?
| 122 countries | |
|---|---|
 |
Top of the list† United States (2,809) United Kingdom (939) Israel (887) Canada (340) Australia (275) Ireland (168) India (157) Germany (138) France (128) Very welcome Nigeria (50) Turkey (36) Saudi Arabia (35) Egypt (28) Jordan (24) Pakistan (20) Lebanon (19) Kenya (17) |
† There really wasn’t room to list 121 countries so don’t feel slighted if your place of residence isn’t listed. Out of an estimated 195 sovereign states (depends how you count) 62% is not bad, at all.
