Showing posts with label Ha'aretz. Show all posts

Monday, June 5, 2017

Clickbait News and Israeli Humor -Tsvi Sadan ISRAEL TODAY

Clickbait News and Israeli Humor

Monday, June 05, 2017 | Tsvi Sadan ISRAEL TODAY

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Clickbait refers to news portal content designed to lure readers into clicking sensationalist headlines or pictures.

The clicks themselves generate revenue, hence, the clickbait news has little to do with news and much to do with generating income. The clickbait is the digital version of yellow journalism that profits from sensational and fake news. The difference, however, is that previously yellow journalism was in a category of its own. Today, clickbait is used by practically all news portals.

Israel is no exception. Clickbait now appears almost daily on our main news portals such as Ynet, Mako and NRG.

Here are a few headline examples from Israeli digital newspapers and news portals which will help identify clickbait headlines and pictures. The daily Ha'aretz: "[Chef] Meir Adoni drowns Caesarea in oil"; Mako news portal: "Glass coffin was found under a house with a chilling finding in it"; Walla news portal: "Porn star fan of Bibi Netanyahu"; NRG news portal: "Ouch: What happened to young girls on water slide?"

But a growing number of Israelis have learned to spot clickbait, and have turned the phenomenon into a sort of humor contest.

The latest example comes from Ynet with the headline: "Faceless fish was discovered along the shores of Australia." The item itself reports on a deep-sea fish discovered by an Australian expedition. The fish itself was discovered back in 1873, and the supposed faceless creature has a face, albeit not of the common kind. "It has neither distinct eyes nor nose, and its mouth, well," says Ynet, "it's on the lower part." This piece of news is practically worthless apart from the clicks it generates.

This piece of "news" attracted some well deserved comments. Here are some of them: "Is this a kosher fish?"; "How could this fish have a stinky head."; "It looks like one of the Meretz party [extreme left] voters."; "Why did you kill it, morons?"; "This is probably a piece of wreckage from the Malaysian airplane [that went missing]."

Some of the comments on such clickbait "news" items are so funny that people are now looking for them, and in so doing are playing right into the hands of those designing them. Nevertheless, clickbait has become a good source of humor for bored employees and students.

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Friday, December 5, 2014

US May Sanction Israel for Building on Bible Lands - CBN News

US May Sanction Israel for Building on Bible Lands

CBNNews.com

Friday, December 05, 2014

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- The United States is considering the possibility of taking "harsher measures" against Israel for building in Jerusalem and biblical Judea and Samaria, a report in the leftwing Ha'aretz daily said this week.

The report said (unnamed) senior Israeli officials said (unnamed) White House officials "held a classified discussion a few weeks ago about the possibility of taking active measures against the settlements."

Until now the United States has made do with condemnation of Israeli building in areas that are disputed between Israel and the Palestinians - areas the Palestinians want for a future state and the Bible promised to the Jewish people as an eternal inheritance.

The report appeared the same day the U.S. Congress reaffirmed Israel as a "strategic partner."

The House of Representatives unanimously approved the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014 on Thursday, which expands defense and security, energy, research and development, business, water management, and academic cooperation. The Senate approved the bill earlier.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, neither The White House spokesperson nor the National Security Council would comment on the report.

The rightwing Arutz-7 website said commentators on Israel's right dismissed the report as "election propaganda."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for early elections this week. It's no secret that Netanyahu and President Barack Obama don't get along. Some have wondered if the United States would try to influence Israeli elections.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Obama Admin Blames Israel for Lack of Peace

Wednesday, July 09, 2014 | Ryan Jones ISRAEL TODAY

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America

Israel’s left-wing newspaper Ha’aretz, which advocates acquiescing to most Arab demands in return for peace, has this week been hosting its first “Israel Conference on Peace,” coincidently scheduled for the same week Palestinian terrorists are pounding the Jewish state with missiles.

Somewhat sidestepping present realities, Tuesday’s keynote speaker largely blamed Israel for the lack of peace in the region.

Phillip Gordon is a special assistant to US President Barack Obama and coordinates policy regarding the Middle East. In his assessment, which is shared by the Arab world, it is Israel’s “occupation” of the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria that is creating the regional instability.

“Israel confronts an undeniable reality: It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability,” Gordon insisted.

The American continued: “How will Israel remain democratic and Jewish if it attempts to govern the millions of Palestinian Arabs who live in the West Bank? How will it have peace if it’s unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security and dignity?”

In other words, Gordon believes that if only Israel would meet Palestinian demands, as hisHa’aretz hosts often recommend, peace and coexistence would reign in the Holy Land.

Like many of the Ha’aretz writers, Gordon conveniently ignored the fact that prior to 1967, Israel did not control Judea and Samaria, but still faced at least as many terror threats as it does today, in addition to several full-scale military invasions by its neighbors.

Nor did Gordan address the fact that prior to the US-brokered “Oslo” peace process that imposed Yasser Arafat’s PLO on both Israel and the local Palestinian population, there was far less tension between Arabs and Jews, even in the so-called “occupied” territories.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Report: Netanyahu Ordered IDF to Prepare for Iran Strike - Israel Today

Report: Netanyahu Ordered IDF to Prepare for Iran Strike

Wednesday, March 19, 2014 | Israel Today Staff

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Iran

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly maintained massive military funding for a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities despite ongoing negotiations between Western powers and the Islamic Republic.

Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Knesset members taking part in committee hearings in January and February were informed that the 2014 national budget still includes 10 billion shekels ($2.89 billions USD) for preparations for a long-range strike on Iran.

A number of Knesset members who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity said army officials were asked if the large expenditure was justified in light of negotiations taking place between Iran and the West to resolve the nuclear issue. The IDF representatives simply answered that these were their orders.

While the head of the UN nuclear agency said earlier this month that Iran had done about half of what it promised in an interim nuclear deal with the West, US Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress that Tehran still has some difficult decisions ahead of it in order to convince the world that it has abandoned the quest for atomic weapons.

Renewed talks in Vienna this week cast doubt on whether or not Kerry’s conditions would be met. During the gathering, Iranian officials firmly rejected demands that they scrap or radically alter the Arak heavy water reactor, which Western officials argue could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a report lamenting that new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has not turned out to be the great reformer that Western leaders hoped and proclaimed his as. Ban noted that human rights abuses remain as rampant in Iran today as during the tenure of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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Monday, June 5, 2017