Welcome!

Thanks for joining me on my maiden voyage in the blogosphere. To torture the metaphor even further, I'll be sailing in treacherous waters, replete with harsh conditions (geo-politically speaking) and unfriendly, adversarial ships (in the form of authors and bloggers who might not share my point of view).

The aim of this blog is both to monitor daily, news-making occurences relating to Israel and to try to get a grasp on longer-term trends with larger global consequences. While the blog is, as its name shows, a hobby at this point, my hope is that it will develop into something meaningful and eye-opening.

Some practitioners of the art of the blog tend to use it so that they can rant and rave about a particular injustice. That's not my goal; though there's a chance I could rant from time to time, I will try to write concise posts that are substantiated and link to other equally substantiated blogs or news sources.

Finally, this blog won't solely focus on Israel and the Middle East, despite the punny name. I'll also be writing about national politics and culture -- high and low -- and I'll take liberties with viral videos. But I won't abuse that right.