A NEW WEBSITE
[Note by Tom Gross]
While this “Middle East mailing list” will remain a private list catering mainly to journalists, government officials, diplomats and academics, and will remain a list that can be joined by permission only, I am today launching a public website. In most cases, email dispatches will be sent to recipients of this private list about 24-36 hours before they go on the web site.
HOME AND DISPATCH PAGES
You may wish to consider bookmarking or adding to your “favorites”:
(1) The home page: www.tomgrossmedia.com
(2) And the Middle East dispatch index page: www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches
PHOTO GALLERY AND ARAB CARTOONS
In addition to the written dispatches, there are some new photographic and cartoon pages, you may want to look at:
www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm
www.tomgrossmedia.com/ExodusFromGaza.html
… and there is a topical reminder of the continuing shadow that Yasser Arafat casts over efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace exactly one year after his death:
www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArafatEducation.htm
www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArafatAllies.htm
PAST ARTICLES OF RELEVANCE
I have also put up a selection of my previously published articles, ones which I feel are still relevant today. These are on the home page and also at: www.tomgrossmedia.com/FurtherSelectedArticles.html.
If you have time, you may also want to browse through former dispatches, such as Write your own Thomas Friedman column! (May 2004) or the powerful three Auschwitz, 60 years on dispatches from January 2005.
A GUIDE THROUGH THE LABYRINTH
One of the reasons I have decided to put future dispatches on line, along with past ones, is because I can no longer cope with the sheer numbers of people writing requesting to join this list. Another is that during recent months a growing number of students and scholars of the Middle East and of communications, in America, Europe and Israel, have asked me for a back-catalog of dispatches to use as a resource in their research. So have a number of authors specializing in the same fields.
While the dispatches will continue to be intended to serve first and foremost as a day-to-day commentary on the way in which the media covers the Middle East and related issues, I hope they will also provide a valuable database both now and in future for those working in the media, public relations, government and diplomacy. In addition, I trust that they will be of permanent value to future scholars and academic researchers, all the more so since the material, though focused on Israel and the Palestinians, has broad international significance too.
Above all, I believe, the dispatches offer a guide through the labyrinth. By performing the primary job of analyzing, sorting, sifting and highlighting significant material, they will hopefully clear a path for commentators and researchers, who would otherwise be in danger of being overwhelmed by the enormous amount of material with which they are faced.
(To read more, see www.tomgrossmedia.com/MideastDispatchExplanation.html)
SPAM, VIAGRA, AND HOLOCAUST DENIAL
Another reason I am putting dispatches on line is that some existing subscribers are continually being bounced by their spamguards, and having to resend particular dispatches to individuals can be incredibly time-consuming.
Spamguards create a particular problem with my emails because of the nature of their content. If, for example, I send out a mass mailing like the one I did last week with the title Tehran Times today: The phenomenal lie of the “Holocaust,” or the one last April titled Viagra ruled Kosher for Passover; and Gorillas keeping Kosher too, many computer-generated automatic spamfilters assume that I am a Holocaust denier or a pusher of Viagra and put me on spam lists from which it is extremely difficult to come off.
THANK YOU
I would like to thank Ben Green in Jerusalem, Cristina Lemeni in Timisoara (in Romania) and Shai Tsur in Tel Aviv, for the considerable help they have given me in designing, creating and inputting data into this website, and I would like in particular to thank my father, John Gross, for his very valuable advice.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank very much the many people who have helped me in all kinds of ways since I began this email list several years ago.
Thank you, too, to all those readers who have written over the years with various comments and feedback. (I am sure you will understand I receive many hundreds of emails each day and only have time to answer a fraction of them.)
LINGERING PROBLEMS
There is a problem with printing some of the articles from the website on some browsers. There is also a problem with some of the search results on the website. These will be corrected soon.
-- Tom Gross