Tuesday, August 19, 2014

This is Amazing! Sultan Knish: How to Write About Israel

This is so accurate. 

The journalists covering Israel are just an insufferable bunch. I've written about them before. This is an absolutely perfect depiction of The Rules.

I love it. I've read it twice already and I'm still nodding along as I read it and laughing.

Hard to pick a favourite graph also. But here are a few choice nuggets:

"It has two types of people; the Israelis who live in posh houses stocked with all the latest appliances and the Arabs who live in crumbling shacks that are always in danger of being bulldozed. The Israelis are fanatical, the Arabs are passionate. The Israelis are hate-filled, while the Arabs are embittered. The Israelis have everything while the Arabs have nothing."

"Weigh every story one way. Depersonalize Israelis, personalize Muslims. One is a statistic, the other a precious snowflake. A Muslim terrorist attack is always in retaliation for something, but an Israeli attack is rarely a retaliation for anything. When Israeli planes bomb a terrorist hideout, suggest that this latest action only feeds the "Cycle of Violence" and quote some official who urges Israel to return to peace negotiations-- whether or not there actually are any negotiations to return to."

"The Israelis can also be divided into two categories. There are the good Israelis, who wear glasses, own iPads and live in trendy neighborhoods. They are very concerned that the country is losing its soul by oppressing another people. They strum out-of-date American peace songs on guitars that they play badly, but which you will describe them as playing "soulfully", and they show up at rallies demanding that the government make peace with the Palestinians."

"Your good Israelis invariably volunteer or work for some NGO, a fact that you may or may not mention in your article, but you are not to discuss who funds their NGO, particularly if it's a foreign government. Write about them as if they are the hope of an otherwise brutish and unreasonable Israel too obsessed with killing and destroying to listen to the hopeful voices of its children."

Then, he notes (and my husband certainly resembles this remark and I am quite happy about it), there are "the other Israelis. The big swarthy men who have no interest in alternative art exhibits..."