7.22.2006

"The Most Blogged War?"

Well, I think Iraq has generated more, but this is posted by Lisa Goldman at On the Face, the forum where Lebanese and Israelis are communicating with one another:

It looks as though the Israel-Lebanon are-we-calling-it-a-war-yet of 2006 is the first conflict to be blogged from day one. Bloggers from both sides of the border - some of whom were already aware of one another before this tragedy began - have been providing live updates, commenting on one another's blogs and sometimes linking to posts by bloggers on the other side of the border. Will this turn out to be the first time that residents of "enemy" countries engaged in an ongoing conversation while missiles were falling?

Haaretz published an article about the online conversation between Lebanese and Israelis here (Hebrew). It links to the blog of Ami (scroll down for English), who is hosting an ongoing thread of talkbacks by Israelis and Lebanse, and to the Lebanese bloggers forum where the same phenomenon is taking place. There are currently 383 comments in response to this post on the Lebanese bloggers forum...

...One of the prevalent themes on many of these blogs is a sense of powerlessness and great sadness. Of wondering how our countries got dragged into this conflict.

There is plenty of the blame game, too, of course. And I guess that attitudes will continue to harden as this conflict continues - which it seems set to do. As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of Lebanese bloggers have become very angry at Israel, to the point of rejecting personal contact. But this is not the case for all - not by any means.