Gon Ben-Ari
By Gon Ben-Ari
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News How Gaza War Puts Hebrew Language on Front Lines
One of the more surprising things about the war in Gaza is the fact that most Israelis still don’t call it a “war.” In Israeli media, the war is largely referred to as mivtza, which translates as “operation” but is rarely used to mean that in vernacular Hebrew. Outside of referring to military actions, the…
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Israel News Sex, War, Social Media and the Israeli Imagination
The war in Gaza, known in Israel as Operation Strong Cliff, may have wound down. But memories still linger of the parallel Facebook campaign called Girls Keeping the Cliff Strong. The Facebook campaign, which drew tens of thousands of clicks during the fighting, highlights the often troubling implications during war time of the relationship between…
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Culture Is the World Gonna End in 2014?
This may seem odd, but a surprisingly large chunk of the Western World believed we wouldn’t get to see 2013, purely because that’s what the Mayans thought. Most of these people never did anything else that Mayans did — never ate human flesh, for example, or at least never offered to pay for it. So…
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Culture When Jews and Blacks Got Along Better Than Ever — in Hip-Hop World
History tends to treat the largely cordial relationship between African-Americans and Jews as a thing that ended around 1991, in Crown Heights. But in 2013, hip-hop was one place where Jews and African Americans got along just fine. Some of the most talked about releases in hip-hop this year were recorded by Jewish artists: Drake,…
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Culture Why Bob Dylan’s Interactive Video Is a Sign Of Things To Come
Bob Dylan’s classic hit “Like A Rolling Stone” came out in 1965, but only got a music video in 2013. Israeli director Vania Heymann and interactive video company Interlude created an interactive video for the song (full disclosure: I had a small part in the production of the video). In the video, the viewer is…
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