Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and Photos

I know this week has been all video, so here’s one more. Sarit Hadad’s version of Sh’ma Israel.

I was looking for Israel at YouTube and I came across a different kind of Israel (Bruddah IZ). A great human being. Worth a listen!
Have a Great Day

I see Kobi Oz (the singer) in his new morning shows and I don’t think he’s going to make it much longer. I don’t see Kobi as a morning person…

This is a great song and the video is okay too

Olmert sure can pick them.
Now we have a new scandal brewing with the Minister of Finanace Hirshzon getting investigated by Police on some “strange” deposits in his account and enevlopes of cash that seem to appear every time he is about to go on a trip abroad. Guess being a mediocre, absentee Minister of Finance is not bad enough for Hirshzon…

In the meantime you can be sure that the latest edition to Olmert’s parade of thiefs is cooking something up. A tiny little note in today’s newspaper told us of “Israel Beytenu” head, Avigdor Liberman, plan to help the “new needy”. He suggests a plan that will help expedite the process of getting an Israeli passport for wealthy russian investors (AKA Oligarchs) who need said document to travel. Now you know that Liberman is doing this from the kindness of his heart - right ? I wonder how much he charges for a passport from these nice millionaires? I wonder what type of international scandals and damage they can do to Israel as they run about their business…

Moshik! shows Olmert in front of the Winograd commission answering questions

As some of you may know the commission to investigate the events of “The Second Lebanon War” (the name of the war is now official) has now launched a website.
The Winograd Committee is going to announce its conclusions and the vultures are worried. There are plenty of speculations as to the effect these conclusions will have on Olmert’s government and whether or not will he actually be held responsible. Amir Peretz, the worst Minister Of Defense ever, will likely take no responsibility personally and is likely to effectively bring down the house with him rather then admit failure.

One does have to wonder though what Olmert was thinking when he placed someone like Peretz in such a sensitive position. There has to be a limit to business in government and when it comes to Defense, Olmert fudged it.
After his “I am not popular speech” a week ago (Really? We didn’t know…), he tried to bare all and speak to the people. Doing a “Bill Clinton from the heart” speech in Israel is fine if you’re dicking around with Cigars but not when it comes to a war that gets your population killed…

Today Channel 10 actually showed the election time campaign for Amir Peretz for example, where he talks about the social reform the Labour party will lead. Beautiful promises about fighting for the weaker classes, the old, the poor and the needy. After his reign that pretty much describes the Ministry of Defense. Maybe the poor and the needy came out better off then if he was in charge of their welfare…

I see this quite often on the street and when I got this one from Moshik! it was well, Karma!

This is a good one. The number of lethal accidents in Israel has risen although the number of accidents and number of injured has dropped. Shaul Mofaz the Minister of Transportation was recently criticized for his lack luster performance in driving much needed change in the horrific driving record of Israeli drivers. In a previous post the number of dead in accidents was discussed. When a new driver in Israel begins driving they get a Yellow sign to hang on the rear window that says “New Driver”. Moshik thinks it should be changed to “The New Dead”…

The TheMarker COM.vention is on - see the pictures here. The location was nice (first time at Airport City for me). The host was Yossi Vardi, a known personality in the Internet industry that made his break with ICQ early in the first bubble. Overall, I was unimpressed by the panels, they were shallow and had little real content. Vardi was all about self promotion and bad jokes (he really should upgrade to new material). I disliked the fact that when he ran the panel, he asked a question and then completely disregarded the answer. Really not worth the time..

I enjoyed the artist sessions downstairs in the convention center. Intimate gatherings where speakers could speak about their areas of expertise. I was there for Yair Goldfinger, one of the founders of ICQ and today the CTO of Dotomi. He was discussing Internet startups, the stages of developing and testing your idea, getting funding (investment), the importance of options for employees (especially in Israel), finding the right business model and other valuable insights.

The second day, yesterday, was for the Israeli market and I wasn’t there. From some chatter online and browsing the business sections the talk is that the Interactive agencies are not doing enough to parlay the potential of the Internet to the big traditional business in Israel. Maybe it’s because the so called Interactive Marketing gurus don’t feel they need to understand the Internet in order to sell it to their clients . Rani Rahav also had a few pearls of wisdom, but wait, for that guy we are going to have a whole other post…

One of the highlights of this event for me (and a pleasant surprise) was the soft launch of an Israeli Business Social Network – café The Marker. This site was built by Dex in PHP (Kudos guys!!) and that’s a first for any of the large Israeli sites.

Here’s hoping the people from TheMarker.com learn and maybe finally get with the times on the main site, that’s still not compatible with Firefox !!!!

The government in its infinite wisdom decided that the “disturbance” we had over the summer is in fact, a war. Just like the only drug you won’t find in the Post Office is Speed, the only thing you won’t find in the government is common sense. Another briliant move…