Getting The News
If you think the Daily Alert news summary published by the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations leans too far to the right and you'd like to see another view of current events, take a look at the News Nosh, a bright new publication of Americans for Peace Now.
You can read both on line or subscribe and have them sent to you daily.
The Daily Alert is prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which is run by Dore Gold, a hawkish former Likud official and U.N. ambassador in Benjamin Netanyahu's first term.
Both offer synopses of the top stories and links to read the full articles on line. News Nosh tends to offer a much wider variety of stories but nearly all from Israeli media, while the Daily Alert includes more international media and is very unlikely to offer anything unflattering to the Israeli government.
The News Nosh may be geographically more limited but it covers a wider range of viewpoints than the Daily Alert, which is often likely to suppress news that doesn't fit into its hasbarah mission.
A few years back a report on illegal settlement activity, commissioned by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was making headlines in all the Israeli media, but if you depended on the Daily Alert for your news, it never happened. In the three weeks following the Sasson Report's release, not a single item about it appeared in the Daily Alert.
There is always a lively and sophisticated debate going on in Israel about current developments – today it is the Shalit deal with Hamas and rising settler violence – and American Jews should have access to all sides of these debates.
That is critical if Jews here are to make informed decisions as they pursue their pro-Israel activism. Few people have the time to surf the Web and read all the newspapers and all their e-mail and to pick up all the nuances. They need sources that can present them with a good sample of the day's coverage to evaluate on their own
Both the Daily Alert and the News Nosh are worth reading; make your own judgment. You can't beat the price.