Blogs shmogs

We're having a discussion, in the comments to an earlier post, about how many anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian, or Zionist or pro-Israel blogs there might be.

I've looked up various expressions and looked at how many sites google says it has found. And then I've had a quick look at the list of sites offered.

Starting with pro-Palestinian blog. Click on the link, the yield is 5 sites. Three are the same "pro-Palestinian blog" and two are the same pro-Zionist blog belonging to one Oliver Kamm.

So let's try Palestinian blog. The find is 279. A quick glance down the first page shows that some of these are pro-Zionist and a couple simply refer to Palestinian blogs. In fact one site seems to be engaged in the same exercise that I am here engaged in. I should point out here that I'm in a hurry now because I want to go and see Leon Rosselson at the Cellar Upstairs tonight and I'm not sure how to get there.

So how about Palestine blog. We get 417. Now we're getting somewhere. A look down the first ten sites seems to indicate that these are pro-Palestinian blogs.

So now let's return to anti-Zionist blog. The result, we are told, is 224 sites, only 14 of which are shown. I think this means that the other "sites" are just the same sites with pages that mention anti-Zionist. No this is where we see what an inexact science we are studying. Or the fact that google as a tool is not up to the job at hand. The first two blogs to come up are both Jews sans frontieres. The rest mention Jews sans frontieres. So what has happened to Peace Palestine and anti-Zionist notes? And how about semitism? I don't know. Google, the new god, works in mysterious ways.

But let's now look for Israel blog. Sheesh, 16,100. But what does it tell us? The first is Aron's Israel Peace Blog which, as far as I can tell, comes very close to anti-Zionism. The rest of the first ten appear to be pro-Israel. Now I've had a bit of a look at other pages it seems that the overwhelming majority of the sites listed are indeed pro-Israel.

So, what do we know? No more than when we started. It does look to me that there are more pro-Zionist blogs than anti but I can't be sure. I mean there could be a blog called something like "One Democratic Secular State of Palestine from the River to the Sea" and it might never register as a pro-Palestinian blog. And yet it could register in a search for "Israel blogs".

This, of course, has been a search for blogs specialising in some way, on the question of Israel/Palestine. There are more generalist blogs that will adopt a certain position on the same question. As far as that goes, many blogger.com blogs have a "next blog" facility in the top right corner. This is a random blogger.com blog finder. When I have used it it seemed to me that there was a proliferation of pro-Bush sites in the run up to the US presidential elections. I'm not doing it now but I reckon there are many more right wing pro-war and pro-Israel blogs out there than anti. Also, the question that started the discussion off in the first place was why there is a disproportionate focus on Israel/Palestine from the left of the political spectrum than from the right. That's something I intend to look into, but not right now.