This has been slightly revised on December 7, 2002, June 26, 2003 and November 15, 2004. It has been more extensively revised on August 1, 2008 when I switched to WordPress. Another minor revision on January 11,2009. And another on May 18,2009. And a small one on June 14, 2009.
Aron’s Israel Peace Weblog is a place where I post short commentary on news items, articles and op-ed pieces about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Background
Since the beginning of the second Intifada, I have been having email-based discussions with friends and family. I would read an article and send it to them, or vice versa, and on occassion a flurry of back and forth emails would follow.
Later, as part of my peace activities, I gave lectures at various venues. After my talks, people approached me asking for resources they can refer to, as well as for materials I wrote.
The idea of sitting down and writing extended articles seemed a daunting task. My life is busy enough, without having to devote big chunks of time to writing.
The weblog format provides an ideal solution. It allows me to write short commentaries on articles I find of interest, to share these comments and articles with family, friends and acquaintenances, and provides a place to discuss all this. Best of all, it actually reduces the time I spend on doing this stuff, since I can just refer people to the weblog instead of writing yet another email.
Who Gets to Post
To minimimize the time I spend here, I decided that only I will post, with very rare exceptions for guest posters. I won’t open it up for discussion, as many weblogs do. I just don’t have the time to deal with that. If you have suggestions or comments, you can email me at peace@aronst.org
Correspondence
I greatly appreciate all the warm and supportive comments I receive. I rarely get hate mail. If I don’t respond to you personally, please don’t take offense. Have I mentioned that I am busy?
On other fronts, the blog is now on Twitter! If you send me a, ahem, message (I won’t use the other word) on Twitter I might more likely respond. I tend to get wordy (have you noticed?) and the 140 character limit is perfect for short, pithy responses that don’t waste too much time.
Attribution request
If you quote anything from this site, please make sure that you provide an appropriate attribution. Similarly, I will make every effort to properly credit articles I quote. I also prefer to make a direct link, but because of archiving policies, I sometimes have to make copies of the article. I would assume this usage clearly falls under “fair use.” However, if any writer/publisher strongly objects, I will remove the article I have copied.
Technology
For those who are interested, this weblog is based on open source software. It originally used the great stuff developed by the guys at Squishdot and Zope. After six years I decided to take the plunge and switch to WordPress. Squishdot was just ugly and far less adaptable. The conversion took a bit of work (no I did not do copy and paste) but hopefully the result was worth it.
Proper Link
When I first launched this site, I was running it off my family address. Once the site grew in size and popularity, I decided to get it a URL of its own (plus my family name is quite complicated). The problem now is, that people who have bookmarked the site from the original URL, often get broken link messages when they click on article hyperlinks.
The solution is quite simple. Change your bookmark to:
or
Many articles will then work properly, both the old and new.
However, I have not yet completed the migration of all the WordPress article names to the old squishdot numbers. Nor have I imported all my old text articles. So lots of links will break. I am slowly migrating stuff over, but I have a life, so the migration is very slow. If you want to see the article nonetheless, you have several options. If you know the article name, put it in quotes inside the search box. If that brings up the Articles page, instead of the article itself, then search for the article name on that page using your browser’s built in search. If that doesn’t work, email me the link, and I’ll be happy to fix it.
Once again, my thanks to all the people who write me with words of praise and encouragement.
RSS and Twitter
For those who care:
As noted above, there is also a feed on Twitter. For those wondering about my twitter image, it is a painting by Dudu Geva, zt”l, of his beloved duck.
A Little Personal Background
People often ask me about my connection to Israel. I lived in Israel for 19 years – from July,1983 to July,2002. Two of my children were born in the U.S. and two were born in Israel. I served in the Israel army reserves for 10 years, mostly during the first Intifada. I served in the infantry and was honorably discharged at the age of 45 at the rank of Corporal. I (and part of my family), no longer live in Israel. I currently reside in my birth town and favorite city – New York!
Tags: Feature