small talk 2.0

In January 2012 Tunisia and Egypt marked the first year since the beginning of the civil uprising. Libya is still longing for return to the normal life after civil war. Syrian regime is waging war against its own people, and the outcome is still unclear. Despite the fact that all these developments are still underway, one thing is obvious: Middle East is becoming a different place from what it was. And what is even more important: it becomes different place from how we used to think about it.   In Israel we were and still are quite concerned with these developments. After all, it's our neighborhood. So, where do we stand today regarding the impact of the Arab spring on us in Israel? I remember that in the first months after the events in Tahrir square, some experts were talking about the silence of Israeli officials in the face of the democratic revolutions taking place throughout the Middle East . Some of them even accused Israel of being insensitive to the democrat...

Yigal Palmor, spokesperson of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, uses Youtube to explain why Palestinian unilateral bid for statehood is wrong and leas nowhere.

Editorial Board Opinion of Washington Post. There is no better way to explain the September initiative of the Palestinian Authority. Once again, Israel is scapegoated ISRAELIS WORRY that the Arab Spring is turning from a popular movement against dictatorship into another assault on the Jewish state, and their worry is not unfounded. Last week in Cairo  a mob attacked the Israeli Embassy , forcing the evacuation of the ambassador and most of his staff; the previous week the  Israeli ambassador to Turkey was expelled . Later this month Palestinians are expected to introduce a resolution on statehood at the United Nations , and Israel could be further isolated if, as expected, a large majority of the General Assembly votes in favor of it. There’s little doubt that plenty of Arabs and Turks are angry at Israel. But it’s worth noting that, as often is the case in the Middle East, those passions are being steered by governments. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who asp...

Doctors can also play, sing and dance at the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. Very nice use of Youtube, how you'd call it, Health 2.0?

"France succumbed to Twitter" - this is today's headline in one of the most popular French newspaper "Le Parisien". Two million French are using Twitter as of today. This number is nothing compared to the true success of Facebook on the French soil. Half (!) of the population in France are using the biggest social network in the world. The success of social media in France is undoubted. In addition to the global networks, like Twitter and Facebook, there are other networks that  have rather French or European flavor and are also quite popular, to mention Daily Motion (a version of Youtube) for exchanging videos, or Viadeo (a version of LinkedIn) that is used for professional purposes. The boom of the social media is being felt especially strong in the last few month, due to an extraordinary event that happened in Mai: the arrest of the president of IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The French media was reporting about this event in an obsessive way, only reflecti...