Ezra's posterous - because i'm too lazy to think of something witty.

May 11, 2009

Yet another idiotic post about followers. Or post about idiotic followers.

Let me start this post off with the following declaration: I don't care about follower numbers. I care about people.

I am on twitter to have a good time. Not to talk about twitter. No more than I talk about my e71 when I am talking on it.

Similarly, I care very little about official follower lists, #followfriday, or anything else that has the word follow in it. That said, I am deeply flattered when people like @sethsimonds write a blog post and talk about me there. He has such an amazing sense of timing.

I follow people who interact with me, or whom I find extremely interesting. I follow people whom I live through vicariously (they usually have these thing called "jobs"). I follow people who make me think, laugh, or blush. But I don't feel any compulsion to share who I follow. If you see that I retweet someone, or I have extended conversations with someone, you know who I would suggest.

That said: if you like extremely random conversations, follow @ozsultan. The only reason why I have to tell you to follow him, is so you will see the grassroots efforts that we are working to share the morals of hummus with the entire world. If you don't like following a bi-weekly 1.5 hour conversation between myself and Mr. Sultan, you should not follow him.

I have made a conscious decision to stop tweeting any link to anything about twitter or following people. Unless, of course, it is self-serving.

(The one caveat to this rule is if I am drinking, I have been known to tweet the names of the startup that provided me with the alcohol. This could be @poketalk, @tracx, or @ginipic. This is called "Transparency".)

We all remember back when Ashton Kutcher "beat" CNN in the famous race to a million and when Oprah "joined" Twitter. Some may also remember when @Shidurey "beat" Ynetnews in a race to a thousand followers. I was bored by the inherent stupidity of the races. (But I love @Yosit like a brother, so I followed the race with unbridled excitement.)

A good friend of mine, Guy Malachi, a.k.a @guy just challenged a friend of his (@TzahiRo) to a duel. The terms are simple. Whoever reaches 1 million followers first receives the loser's paycheck. Don't get me wrong. Guy is a really really smart guy. Good looking too. He is the chief geek at Conduit which has hundreds of millions of impressions for their customized toolbars. A cool million is a simple number for him to utter.

I cannot condone this behavior, and I refuse to tweet about it.

This is not beneficial to world peace like the #jewishmuslimxgames. This simply is all about the ego of 2 friends.

My suggestion to the two competitors is to do something to deserve the listening ears of the million adoring fans. Launch a product that people will be unable to live without. That will make the race interesting. It will also guarantee that we won't have to wait until they are both living in an old age home before collecting the prize. (It will also mean that the prize money will be a lot more substantial.)

Earn my follow.

Alternately, they can become rockstars. I follow @ivrilider and @markhoppus.

Or, as I always say, if that doesn't work out, try being a @god. I heard that there is good money in it.

(BTW: if you have made it down to the bottom of this, then you have to see this tweet. Personally I find it hilarious: http://twitter.com/ezrabutler/statuses/1753439837 If you don't find it funny, you seriously lack a sense of humor.)

Comments [3]

April 29, 2009

This country steals my social life.

I love living in Israel. It has successfully killed any chance of me having a non work-related social life.

Take Yom Haatzamaut. I am invited to an extremely not tech BBQ. It is hosted in someone's backyard in Jerusalem. I am off the radar.

I start making small talk with the guy tending grill. Just to be social and nice. Turns out that he is finishing his doctorate in Computer Science in Haifa, and has launched an extremely cool service that allows people to design electronic circuit boards using C and not having to physically map out all the AND, XOR, and NAND gates by hand. (Full blog post to come, of course....)

We speak for over a half hour about the possibilities of the product and the market that he wants to enter.

All I wanted was a hamburger.

Seriously though, it is kinda awesome. Everywhere I turn, people are doing things.

They have ideas, and they get shit done. Good shit.

I am impressed.

Comments [0]

April 3, 2009

Cross-cultural semantics and realities

On Sunday, I heard an Israeli TV executive talk about the "campfire".

That one word triggered a reaction in my brain to solve a problem that has been gnawing at me for the last year.

I have asked many people, on and off camera, if there should be aspects to creating a social network or using social media that are particular to one country or one group of people. Inherently we know that the answer is yes, and the beauty of the large social platforms is the ability for each group to be able to carve out its particular niche.

The best example of this is the use of the "poke". In certain cultures, it is just a notice to a friend "wanted to just say hi, but had nothing to say". In other cultures, it is the beginning of the 21st century mating ritual. The group decides on a social norm, and treats deviance with non-inclusion.

The TV exec spoke about the fact that Reality TV has a larger percentage of the audience here than in any other country on Earth, largely because of the campfire culture. Everyone wants to be able to talk about the characters on Big Brother and Survivor Israel. Personally, I have never watched either, so I am unable to bring the names of the contestants that everyone talks about, loves and hates.

Growing up in America on a steady of Seinfeld and Friends, we referred to this phenomenon as "the water cooler".
But hearing the word "campfire" escaping the lips of the exec, I realized that it is a completely different phenomenon.

A little history of both terms.
In the United States of America, people have these arcane constructs called jobs. They sit in cubicles and fill out reports all day about irrelevant information. (Disclaimer: All my knowledge about working in a job comes from the movie "Office Space".) They form relationships and bonds with inhabitants of adjacent and nearby cubicles. They overhear juicy personal details that they didn't really want to know, and request for their neighbors to lower the radio. And every once in a while, when they must leave their cubicle for hydration, they saunter over to the water cooler, where they are able to procure either cold or hot water, the latter useful for the creation of either poor instant coffee or tea. If I were to work in an office, I would be a tea person.
Like women to the restroom, these cubicle-dwellers are unable to drink alone. They seek to form temporary connections and relationships with their coworkers, but not overtly personal ones. As homo sapiens know that relationships are formed upon commonalities, these office inhabitants attempt to find an non-professional lowest common denominator to incorporate the highest number of coworkers. In a culture of eating fast food and watching network television, that common denominator is the television. The barrier for entry is low, being only required to invest between 1/2 and 1 hour nightly to provide fodder for excited conversation the following day. Hence, anyone can join the conversation, even on the first day of a new job in a new city. Conversely, it makes switching of employment centers simpler, as the worker does not have to fear that he has shared too many personal details with fleeting confidantes.

In Israel, most children join one of the many youth movements. The parents choose the movement for their young children based on a complex algorithm comprising of some of the following factors: political and religious views. The children grow up in the movement, meeting once a week, and solidifying their social graph based on who is in the movement. Once in a movement, the child in de facto part of a large social network in which they can clarify relations to anyone in the country based on a few choice questions. As Israelis are, historically, outdoorsy, many of these weekly meetings would take place in a local wooded area, and the members of the group would sit around a campfire. As the children grow, they may get together with their friends outside of the framework of the movement, yet will still create campfires (on beaches, in forests, or wherever), and just sit and talk.

As there are only a few archetypes in Israeli culture, the reality tv programs aim to branch all the different cultural players in a single location. Therefore, when Israelis sit around the campfire, they are able to discuss what they think about culture as a whole and the others in society with the assistance of using the characters as proxies. The characters are able to, as well, become goodwill ambassadors for their stereotype.

I remember, a few years back, the Israeli youth made a mass exodus to the Galilee for the finale of the Israeli version of Pop Idol ("A Star is Born"). The teens in the bus station were talking about sleeping on the beach, making bonfires, and just having fun.

The act of making a bonfire is a group affair. You have to find flammable material than no one will yell at you for taking. But after all the work is done, and someone actually starts the fire, the conversation turns personal. Everyone sits around, talking. True friendships are forged around the campfire.

The water cooler and the campfire both may simple be central locations around which people gather around, eat/drink and talk, but when you look under the surface, you see that they are extremely different constructs.

In Israeli culture, the campfire has extended to the office, the cafe, and the dog walks, but the culture is still the same. The campfire culture is one of coming together, whereas the water cooler culture is one more of coexisting.

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February 3, 2009

How to Attract More Followers

It has come to my attention that many people have been writing lately about how to attract more followers. Therefore, I wanted to jump on the bandwagon and give it the ole' college try as well. Please note, that some of these tricks should only be performed by a professional, and not be attempted at home.

1. Start a religion.

People love new religions. Especially if it preaches exactly what they want to hear.
For example: In the Church of Ezra Butler (#churchofezrabutler) sushi is our sacred food, and wine (or some other form of alcohol) must be drunk daily religiously.

2. Play a musical instrument.

Groupies are amazing followers. Rock stars have been doing this trick for years, with great success.

And don't think that you have to play a guitar or something cool like that. Even a piper can maintain a large follower stream.

Possible side effect is that you will never have to pay for women's lingerie again.

3. Commit a heinous crime (or a spree of regular crimes).

For some unknown reason, people are drawn to the "bad boys". They like the sense of thrill and adventure, and the thought of living vicariously through you in something that they would never dream of doing.

4. Party with a Black Card.

You would be amazed how the followers come out of the woodwork when the Moet is being bought by you. But do stupid things while partying, because the paparazzi will photograph you and then more people will want to be like you.

5. Date or be a model.

Beautiful people have a lot of followers. If you are not beautiful, you can be that guy or girl. Common usage is "Why is she dating that guy?" People will think that you are worth it in some other way.

6. Successfully bring a company to an IPO.

This is actually a combination of 1, 4, and 5. In many people's eyes, especially in the current market, you will actually be considered a god.

7. Star on a reality TV show.

It doesn't take talents or looks, necessarily. It just requires you to embarrass yourself in ways that will cause your mother to change her name, phone number, and move to Florida. But note: Very short shelf life.

8. Say that you are a plumber with a monosyllabic name.

I am shocked as well. Note: You don't actually have to be a plumber with a monosyllabic name.

9. Be a nice guy.

Nice guys actually attract beautiful women, who just want to be friends. You may be able to parlay this to 5, but I would not hold my breath.

Comments [4]

January 27, 2009

Dear Mikey

Dear Mikey,

Its been a while since we last chatted. It has been over 5 years. Five long years.

How is it going? I heard that you haven't coughed in years and that you are playing the drums in a new band.

There have been so many changes on the Internet since you were active. For instance, you know the way how you interacted with hundreds of people on a daily basis via IM and AOL? You would now love Facebook. The only problem for you on Facebook would be that you would be limited to only 5000 friends. Don't get me started on Twitter, because you predated it by a while. You would have about a million followers, and actually interact with each one on a daily basis.

I spoke with Rachael last night. She isn't Hirsch anymore, but you know that, because you played heavenly music at her wedding last week. We reminisced about all those weeks that we walked through Schenley Park to visit you in Oakland. I saw that Natalie also just had a baby girl (see! Facebook is quite helpful!) You know that our cousin Naava is one of my closest friends and confidantes.

Over the past year, I have thought of two of your lessons quite often, and have aimed to inculcate them into my own life.
Your catchphrase "Day by Glorious Day", while I honestly do not use it, I try to live it. Every day is a gift not to be squandered. I cherish every moment that you spent with me, talking, advising, and, of course, chastising. :)

But perhaps the lesson that I quote the most is your desire for normalcy. A day that you won't cough, that you wouldn't go to the hospital, that you would be able to make the same choices and have the same opportunities as everyone else.

Life isn't perfect. While we go through love and heartbreak, through times of success and times of need, this is normal.

Today is my saddest day of the year. You were not my sick cousin, you were my big brother while I was in high school and my first year of college.

I really miss you.

Love,

Ezra

Comments [5]

January 25, 2009

Generalizations and Reality

I like watching people. I really do.

I try to read their body language and ascertain how they really feel about one another.

Last Friday night, I was invited to a meal at a local hotel. As I was waiting for my hosts to arrive back, I passed my time by observing people enter the hotel from a bird's eye view.

I witnessed two distinct styles of "group-walking": 1) Assumed hierarchy and 2) Active Clique.

Let me explain:

Assumed Hierarchy:

A group of four or more people who do not walk together. They walk in a radius of less that 7 feet, but they will walk staggered enough that, maximum, only two people in the whole group will be walking next to each other. While the one walking two paces faster than everyone else will open the door for the others, do not fool yourselves to think that that they are subservient.

The assumed hierarchy is not because anyone is better than anyone else, rather, everyone is unique and fulfills a different job/station in the micro-society. The various members do not require each other to exist, but will still admit to belonging to this group. A perfect example of such a construct is a family. Teenage children do need their parents, but subconsciously will do whatever they can to separate themselves from the pack. Yet, if grilled about it, they will still answer that they belong to the family, because it is part of their identity.

Upon entering an area with various possibilities for social interaction, the assumed hierarchy will disperse and assimilate within various groups, with the knowledge that at the end of the individual interactions, they will all assemble at a standard location.

Active Clique:

The radius of the active clique will be remarkably smaller. They will not walk staggered, rather will rally upon a single point, with every member vying to be close to that point. Incredibly, if one member steps away from the pack for a second, you can see the the rest of the pack gravitate (ever so slightly) after that member, and then the member will assimilate back into the pack.

The pack views itself as equals, with every member being important. It does not see any reason to interact with any other group, rather, interacting as a group with chosen individuals (e.g. family members of one of the members of the pack).

The obvious question is, how can we translate these findings to online interactions?

If we were to graph acquaintanceship charts, what would we see?

Would we see mutual follows, with not a lot of interactions between the parties, or would we see mutual follows with a concentrated conversation among a very small cluster of individuals?

Tonight, I hung out with @ahoova (Ahuva Berger), @shiraabel (Shira Abel), @nivcalderon (Niv Calderon), @dvirreznik (Dvir Reznik), and @yaelbeeri (Yael Beeri) at Ahuva's house. I speak with all of these people on a daily basis, whether on twitter, on chat or by phone.

While a relatively large percentage of my interactions will be part of this group, that number still pales in comparison with my overall interactions. So while I maintain a "clique", I still break away enough to maintain a hierarchical relationship with other members of the online community.
Moreover, when I am at an event with people from outside this "clique", I will check in with the clique, but then we will all spread out, and talk to to different people.

The difference here is that we have a much larger data pool when analyzing all my interactions. When I am watching people, at a specific moment, I am able to figure out who they are with right now. Are they part of a "family" or are they part of a "clique"?

But we all live between the two worlds. We do interact with a small group of people on a regular basis, but the percentage of those interactions becomes normalized over the whole of our interactions.

After we graduate high school (or drop out, like I did), we leave a true clique environment, where we are surrounded by the same individuals for a major (and not only relative) percentage of any day. It takes more complex algorithms, many of which are yet to be written, to ascertain the true social structure of any single individual.

Many of our friends, especially of the social media sort, remain ambient until a stimulus comes to move them. Sure, I may not be one of the "obviously" important sorts, but when push comes to shove, I can get the word out.

The gist of this post is the following:
We must be extremely careful when examining any single social occurrence and extrapolating any usable data from it. Yes, from tonight, you can see that I am friends with Ahuva, Dvir, Yael, Shira and Niv. But you can't possibly know anything else.

The one other thing that you can learn from my outing tonight is that Ahuva can make an amazing soup (but that you should let it cool off a tad before letting a drop drip on your hand), and that Yael can make a kickass gluten free chocolate cake.

Comments [1]

January 21, 2009

Social Media Killed the Radio Star.

I have become fascinated with radios and newspapers over the past few days.

The impetus that spurned the fascination was my own illogical action: Two nights ago, I was driving home, realized that I was driving on empty, and was about to pull into a nearby gas station when Lupe Fiasco - Superstar came on the radio. Instead of turning into the gas station, I chose to continue driving until the song was over, and find a different gas station. The illogicality of the choice is that I have the song on my computer, and I can listen to it whenever I want.

Additionally, I recently unearthed a CD a close friend gave me for my birthday last year, and have been listening to a certain song on it on repeat while driving. It helps me concentrate. Yet, when the song came on the car radio, I turned it up louder and enjoyed it just a little bit more. I had just heard the song two minutes before! Yet, the emotional reaction to hearing the song on the radio was tremendously different than being able to choose control it on a CD.

Perhaps, I felt a twinge of vindication that someone else (whether a Disc Jockey or a request line) had agreed with my taste in music, and that transformed my normal solitary listening experience to a communal one.

In a similar vein, I like reading random things in Wikipedia and books. Sometimes they may be relevant to current events and trends, at other times, I just find them interesting.

Last week, while researching somethings for a post, I read the Wikipedia entry on "War", and encountered a theory that I had heard about before: the concept of the "Youth Bulge". A few days later, I saw on someone's feed that there was an op-ed or analysis in a leading US newspaper that linked that concept to the Palestinian people, specifically in Gaza. Again, there was a validation of my internal thought processes.

But this caused me to remember growing up with the New York Times, and seeing how whole sections are written about non-time sensitive topics, rather simply because someone found them interesting. The job of the writer/columnist/editor is to bring to light knowledge that may have been known in smaller groups of people to the masses.

This comes at the heels of an interesting interaction that I had with a random individual while sitting at the organic cafe that I enjoy so much. From a previous meeting, he remembered that I do something with the interwebs and blogs, and he asked me how he could anonymously publish an expose about inherent Anti-Semitism in a piece by a well-known South African artist. The exhibit is roughly 12 years old. I asked him why anyone should care. But we all know that articles like this are printed all the time. It temporarily raises hype about something that no one necessarily cared about for a long time. Because someone cares about it now.

If I would use a social media term to define what the radio and newspapers are, the word would have to be "feed".

Similar to the low cost of entry of a twitter follow, one can easily scan both radio stations and newspapers for interesting or relevant knowledge. (I am choosing not to talk about traditional channel surfing on Television in the same way, because it is set up in specific blocks, whether 1/2 hour or hour. This is problematic, because unless you invest a sizable amount of time, you can't get a complete piece of information.)

A feed is more than simply information, it provides a communal comfort around it, that this is what other people are talking about, listening to, or reading. The information becomes more that just knowledge, it becomes a tool for intelligently interacting with other people in your society.

iTunes party shuffle cannot do the same thing as the radio or as blip.fm. A library can never do what a newspaper or Mahalo.com does. It may all be the same information. But context is just as important as content, if not more. And people thrive on the human context.

As with all comparisons, I believe that after ascertaining a viable model in a different sphere, the next step is seeing how to better utilize the models of the radio and the newspaper in social media.

What do you think?

Comments [0]

January 19, 2009

I hate memes.

Memes are stupid. Well, not all memes. Like we all naturally do things that are mimetic. Wearing a scarf in a certain way, or sunglasses on the top of our heads.

But I got tagged by @kyleplacy in a new meme to say 7 things about me. I could just link to 7 tweets that say things about me, but I won't. I am choosing things that I don't talk about, or that you can't see from what I write.

1. I don't drink any sort of flavored pop/soda. Meaning, no Coke, Sprite, or anything of the sort. In the same vein, I don't drink coffee. I went to the emergency room on Christmas Day during my senior year of college, and my doctor told me to get off caffeine. After a year of switching to Sprite, I decided that I didn't need the calories, so I began drinking seltzer/carbonated water/"soda" instead.

2. I am the son of a preacher man. Well, a rabbi. In addition to everything else that I have studied, I studied Talmud from 5th grade, and can remember the first time that I read Rashi (the French-Jewish medieval commentator on the Bible and Talmud) on Genesis with my mother in 2nd grade. The letters are a different typeface than regular Hebrew, so it was kind of a big deal for me. Education has always been important to me.

3. One of my favorite books ever is "Suicide" by Emile David Durkheim. I read it for the first time in college. More than being simply a seminal work in the field of sociology, it taught me a lot about human nature, social cohesion, and religion. And I still translate what I read there into my work today.

4. I once slept on a bus bench in the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. (Ok, that is more or less accurate, I waited 2 hours for the first bus in the morning, and laid down on the bus bench and fell asleep while listening to music on my iPod.) That taught me to ask "what is the worst that can happen?"

5. I "forget" to do small things. That could be cleaning up my perennially messy apartment, remembering to call someone, or that I was supposed to go out with some friends. But it is not because I have a bad memory, its because I constantly take on too much on my plate. [The corollary to this is that I think big. I know that anything is possible, and we are only constrained by our imagination.]

6. I am both extremely outgoing and love partying but enjoy living and being alone. Probably part of my whole Gemini dualistic makeup.

7. My favorite period of artists is the Dutch Golden Age (17th century). It was the first time that art really reflected normal living and life, and not the wealthy or religious motifs. Art became cheap and small enough for anyone to own artwork of their own.

Ok. Here is the chance for me to "learn about" 7 more people who I don't know a lot about.

I am tagging:

@Bellanyc1 @CharlieKalech @egspoony @SolveetCoagula @YarinHochman @AyeletB @YaelBeeri

I am hoping on learning some really interesting tidbits about a couple of these people.

Comments [3]

January 15, 2009

What are the questions you should be asking?

I have always been fascinated with education. From both sides: how do we educate and also how do we learn.

There is a much larger post in the making, hopefully being written in conjunction with Alex de Carvalho (@alexdc), but that will have to wait until I have a little more time.

In the Passover Haggadah (the book containing the text for the ritual of the Passover Seder) we encounter the four sons.
We aren't in the right season, granted, but it is relevant.

There four archetypal sons are:
The Wise son.
The Wicked son.
The Naive son.
And the son who doesn't know how to ask.

(The yearly ritual in my family is to quietly chuckle about which one of the four brothers is which son.)

But what makes each son who they are is not their actions. It is what they ask and how they ask it.

Lately, I have been describing social media with the following scenario:

Imagine 50 artists who don't know each other in a white room together.

Each one has questions that they think important that they are going to begin asking each other artist. What is your style, where did you study, etc.
It will take a long time to "iterate" through all 50 in order to find the individuals that the artist really wants to talk to.
This is also because the questions are flawed. You think that those are the most important questions.

Now imagine if each artist would take one of their creations and stand next to it.
Immediately, it would be simple to ascertain with a single glance, "Is this someone who i want to talk to? Do we have anything in common?"

In life, we don't always know what to ask, what is important, what is pressing. Twitter, blogs and facebook are on everyone's lips now, but say that you never heard of them - Would you know what to ask?

The ambient stream of information educates us subconsciously. It tells us what is important, who someone is, how they think and a million more bits of data that we automatically filter.

I use Wikipedia the same way. I know that I want to learn about something, and then due to tags and links, I learn what other people found relevant. It teaches me what questions I should be asking.

Even if we don't click, we learn what to ask.

Just a thought.

Comments [2]

January 14, 2009

I am pro-Palestinian

For around 8 months, I have been sharing many details of my life, my thoughts, my quirks and my aspirations. I feel quite guilty that I have been extremely silent over the past few weeks what has been going through my mind and what I have been working on, and the reasons behind what I am currently spending time on.

I am pro-Palestinian. I grew up with the dream of Yitzhak Rabin, of a two-state solution, that would allow both Israelis and Palestinians lead normal lives. Lives where children can dream beyond the current conflict. Lives where people can sit in a cafe and chat for hours about nothing and everything, without fear of a random act of terror. Lives where people live, have jobs, and raise children to love, not hate; to respect difference, not fear it.

I live in the paradox of the modern Israeli.

We have learned to want peace at almost any cost. We have uprooted Israeli families from their long established homes, destroying communities. Just in order to give more land and self government to the Palestinians in Gaza. So they can live normal lives.

In spite of that, Southern Israel has been living under a constant barrage of rockets from Hamas, a terrorist organization that has usurped the democratic process for an extremely non-democratic venture. They feel that we should not exist as a country, as a people, and will do whatever they can do strike fear into our citizen's hearts at every moment of the day.

These rockets cause damage, hurt and even kill. But more than all that, they prevent people from living normal lives. They cause people to live in fear. That maybe their child's nursery will be struck with a "stray" rocket. That if they are in a public intersection, a projectile may simply fall from heaven. That the house that they have created all their memories in will be destroyed in an instant.

And in here lies the paradox. Israel does not want war. We love life.

I was approached by a good friend to help on a grassroots project to help spread the word about the Israeli side of the current conflict using Social Media tools. In this capacity, I have been reading scores of articles over the last few weeks. I have, as well, been privy to the progress reports that the Israeli Army has published on a daily basis, including detailed information regarding the ongoing humanitarian efforts from the Israeli side for the Palestinians in Gaza.

I am disgusted by Hamas. I am disgusted by their use of Palestinians as human shields, and their storing firepower in and firing rockets from mosques, schools, hospitals, and private homes. Israel uses extremely precise missiles, and even warns citizens about impending actions, but is being painted as a murderous nation, with words flitting around the media such as "genocide" or "holocaust". Considering that Israel treats wounded Palestinians, I find that portrait appalling.

This is not a post to discuss the humanitarian efforts of the Israelis or the utter disregard for human life of Hamas, but rather to be honest. I have chosen not to fill my twitter stream with every single report when something happens, because I respect that people don't want to be confronted with this 100 times a day. I am simply trying to include you in my internal conversation. I battle with myself every day juggling my natural aversion to war and the constant threat on my countrymen.

I want this battle to end. But until it does, I will stand behind my country in whatever they do, because I know that this is not a battle for land or control, it is a battle for a better future for all of us. A battle for normalcy. Normal lives for both Palestinians and Israelis.

If you choose to comment on this post (and I hope that you will), I can only request that you please respect me as a person and refrain from ad hominem attacks. I am highly capable of intelligent and reasonable conversation, and reserve the right to delete any comment that is full of vitriol and hate.

Comments [32]