The Blog Down: A formidable tempest

JPost.com bloggers were in a frenzy over elections in the US and Israel, the Iranian threat, and hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy pictured off east coast of US 370 (photo credit: REUTERS/NASA)
Hurricane Sandy pictured off east coast of US 370
(photo credit: REUTERS/NASA)
With US presidential elections, Israeli elections, the Iranian threat, and hurricane Sandy all dominating headlines, there is a whirlwind (no pun intended) of news and information raining down on us (OK, I couldn't resist) – and JPost.com bloggers were in a frenzy this week to make sense of it all.
Gadi Adelman was on a roll, publishing two blogs, No change in the weather and Benghazi- October surprise.  In the latter post, Adelman offers JPost readers a behind-the-scenes look into last month's terrorist attack in Libya with an exclusive interview with former CIA operative and vice president of the Intelligence Summit Clare Lopez.
Here's a taste,GA: And that makes me wonder and this is conjecture on my part, but knowing what I do about the SEAL teams, how many of those guys were on submarines or ships right off the coast of Libya?
CL: They were there. I mean in different places, there were loads of assets and every one of them had practiced just exactly this scenario repeatedly. I don’t mean to say Benghazi, but I mean a rescue situation where an American mission is under attack.
GA: Now it turns out that around 5 p.m. Eastern Time, which would have been only about an hour and a half in to the attack, that President Obama met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta in the White House for over an hour…
CL: Yes, this is all in the press, right.
GA: So would you go so far as to say that it would be pretty clear that Obama watched in real time and did nothing while 4 Americans were murdered?
CL: Yeah, that’s very clear, yes.
Be sure not to miss the rest of the interview in this fascinating blog. Sam Westrop was also busy scouring the news and offering analysis, submitting no less than four articles (star blogger of the week!) which exposed separate incidents of duplicity, dishonesty, blatantly anti-Israel rhetoric, and some might even dare say stupidity, which unfortunately still prevails in the UK and throughout Europe.  In an excerpt from one of his articles he writes,For years, we have seen Members of the British Parliament snuggle up to groups whose bigotry and support for violence far outdo any far-Right and neo-Nazi organization in the UK…That is just the tip of the iceberg.  Be sure not to miss his posts, Peter Jenkins and the Bloodthirsty Jews, Justice for Terrorism?  Jane Ellison MP sides with the lunatics, Why so much carrot and where the hell is the stick?, UK 'victimising' Iran, says UKIP leader.David Wilder, another blogger to tackle anti-Jewish rhetoric, blogs on a more personal level, defending a scathing verbal attack against himself this week by blogger Alice Rothschild, who is, according to her post A meeting with the spokesman of the Jewish settlers in Hebron, "currently traveling on the Dorothy Cotton Institute delegation to Israel/Palestine."
Wilder responds to her attack on him in his post, Jewish self-hate, Alice’s ideas have nothing to do with politics, or rights and wrongs of the Israel-Arab conflict. It has nothing to do with human rights or freedoms. Her illness is clearly Jewish self hate; a conscious or unconscious loathing of her core essence, of her being.
Yisrael Medad, another star blogger, also published four articles this week offering analysis and critique over lesser known headlines from the destruction of olive trees to "the person behind Sarah Silverman's political sex antics." Read his posts: Arab 'price tag' actions, The lore of the law, Should I upset Moore more?, Close, Colin, but not near enough.To sum up I turn to two interesting blogs worth mentioning, one uplifting and the other disheartening - I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which: Andre Oboler's piece, The Hitler Shield: Mocking the dead at Facebook, offers criticism of the rising trend of hate speech on Facebook,The viral spread of hate is the ultimate danger of social media. This is why Facebook’s moral decay must stop. Pages are a useful feature, the Online Hate Prevention Institute’s Facebook page is a significant tool in our fight against hate, but the ability to use pages to anonymously promote hate must be removed. There is no right to anonymous free speech - not even in the United States.The other, Mitchell Bard's piece, Facts versus fiction regarding campuses in which he offers analysis of a recent report (which he co-writes) published by the AICE on the "real" climate on college campuses.  Is the overall climate pro-Israel or anti-Israel? The answer might surprise you. Read his post to find out.The writer is The Jerusalem Post’s blogs editor