Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Elder of ZiyonI had an interesting phone call yesterday with a director of the Northwest branch of Stand With Us, which is probably the best organization anywhere for teaching people about Israel's point of view. He really loved the posters, which was very nice to hear.
But he had never heard of this blog.
I like to think that I am well-known, but in fact, outside the Jblogosphere and a tiny slice of the Internet, this blog is still small potatoes. Certainly the 4000-5000 hits I've been receiving daily is nothing to sneeze at, but that is still really minuscule compared to the audience I need to reach. And the thought that even a well-known hasbara organization had never heard of me (the exact words were "Okay, first, who the heck are you? The posters are great!") is sobering, and a reason to think about how I can more effectively get the message out. The blog goes only so far.
Anyway, I just spent an hour doing something slightly unethical. I went to the Hillel site and figured out a way to harvest the email addresses of every officer at every Hillel on North America. I then spammed them all with a link to the posters, so they could use them during these Israel Hate Weeks. We'll see what the feedback is from that, and if some pro-Israel activists will then use my blog as a resource for their own programs and initiatives. After all, while it is not as well organized as I like (it is a blog, after all) I do have a lot of material at this site - enough to fill an encyclopedia.
Early indications are that the recipients of the email are clicking; I just got about 100 hits on that page in the past half hour, and so far it has received over 3300 hits and climbing fast.
Oh, I also got some rare hate mail today. I don't usually get them probably because I tend to write in a low-key, non-confrontational manner, but someone did take the time out to call me an "imbecile." He then gave the links to two sites that couldn't be more different, but were both anti-Israel (a Neturei Karta site and a hip-hop radio station.) I was amused.
Might as well make this an open thread....
