How to Follow Events in Israel/Palestine (Live Stream)

Israel Channel 1 HD

Sure, you can download the iPhone app Red Alert. Yes, you can follow whomever you want on Facebook and Twitter. But do you want to take it up a notch?
How about live TV from multiple Israeli and Arab-language news channels, all in one place? Don't have a DishTV satellite package that provides the Israel Channel or Arabic language channels?
All you need is an internet connection, and then install an amazing open source media control center package called xbmc.

Proper installation is a multi-part process. It doesn't matter if you are installing to Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, or jailbroken iOS. This video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1114239593&feature=iv&src_vid=owX09Xxli3g&v=YcZpUV0vtxE

IDF Arabic spokesman on al-Jazeera

walks you through the necessary first few steps. It doesn’t explain how to get specifically Israel or Arabic-language channels, but it will allow you to install the repositories and add-ons that will get you there. Once you have done everything in
this video, and have installed the appropriate international add-ons (for Israel you want Israelive; for Arabic there are numerous add-ons; all can be installed by going to Programs -> World Repos), you are ready to specifically add Israelive or any of the Arab channels to your mix.


Essentially, to get Israelive, you can follow the Hebrew instructions on this page, beginning with 2.2.1 (this will allow Hebrew fonts) and then skipping to 3.4 (this will install Israelive):


http://www.hometheater.co.il/article04465.XBMC-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9A-%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%99-2014.html


The channels come and go with each update of the add-on service. Right now I am getting Channel 1 in HD and channel 10 in SD, for some reason no Channel 2 (Update July 24: now Channel 2 is available). Also, I’ve been able to look in on al-Quds, the channel of Hamas, but without sound. Israelive also gives you all the Israeli radio stations. From other addons you can get live streams of hundreds of world channels (CNN International, SkyNews, BBC World, to name a few) by poking around a bit after everything is installed. With the proper add-on, you can watch whole seasons of Israeli TV shows.

Actually, xbmc is a far more powerful platform designed to provide you with much more than live TV streams from around the world. It also serves as a media server for a home theater. That's the principal way I use it on a dedicated PC connected to my home theater. But you can use it in this limited way on any computer.

As we say in Kabbalah: ha-mevin yavin.

The Luxury of Iron Dome

Most of the Israeli tweeps I follow on Twitter are leftists. I follow them because I tend to agree with them. The occupation is morally indefensible and nationally suicidal, Bibi and his comrades are compass-less vile warmongers, yada, yada, yada. The whole 9 yards. This Operation Protective Edge is as stupid and morally indefensible as Cast Lead and Defensive Shield before it.
But...
What in God's name is a government and army supposed to do when 100 missiles a day are fired willy-nilly into your territory? Every single former interlocutor with Hamas reports that Hamas had ample time amidst unambiguous signals of restraint from the dithering Israeli security cabinet to try to ramp down this confrontation, and the universal and consistent message from Hamas, from the Islamic Jihad, and from the Popular Resistance Committees of Gaza was a defiant "NO!"

So I read someone like Noam Sheizaf, who so often I find myself in agreement, writing a piece under the completely accurate headline "Why I object to this military campaign, even as missiles fall on my city". But I have to ask Mr. Sheizaf, and all the others who hold the same opinion - yes, this bloodshed is the direct result of the blind & idiotic 47-year long occupation, but if there were no Iron Dome missile defense, and that M75 rocket that was intercepted over the Azrieli Towers had reached its target, would you still be able to pen such a piece? 

You see, Mr. Sheizaf, the missile hasn't actually fallen on your city. You have the luxury that your counterparts in Gaza don't - an army and a civilian government which protects you when you are under attack. It's true that this is the same government that has spurned peace overtures, that exacerbates the conflict, that defies international law. But today, having placed you in such grave danger, it is saving your life. 

Can't say the same for Hamas.

Operation Protective Edge vs. Operation Ramadan

I meant this to go up last night, and saved it only as a draft. In the meantime, both of my "indicators" came true today:

And so it begins, the next stage. In the wake of an attempted "pause" that fizzled out, rocketeers from Gaza - some certainly Hamas this round - fired nearly 70 rockets into Israel in the last 24 hours, and tonight the Israel Air Force and Navy launched a rain of fire on Gaza in an operation dubbed in English "Protective Edge" and in Hebrew צוק איתן, so the English is not exactly literal. Whatever its name, the coining of an operational name is meant to communicate to the Israeli citizenry that the Government of Israel has finally made up its mind. After 4 days of hemming and hawing (which brought the long-simmering feud between Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to the breaking point) the folks at the Kiryah were instructed to produce another tough-sounding 2-word combina and let 'er rip.
For every onlooker who believes this tit-for-tat was orchestrated by an Israel chomping at the bit to torpedo the recently announced Palestinian unity government, there is a similar contingent who are convinced that Hamas was itching for a grand confrontation with the Zionist occupiers during the sacred month of Ramadan.
Both conspiracy theories sound wise and plausible; far more likely neither is true. Instead, the simple explanation seems best. The discredited US "peace processors" who argued  that the absence of even the hint of a diplomatic process would lead to certain disaster turn out to be exactly correct. In this conflict, take away the diplomats and all you have left are angry, humiliated people with long-festering grudges. 
Predictably, the Twitter-verse is immediately taking sides. In one corner are the #GazaUnderAttack people. who are blind to the horror of lobbing rockets willy-nilly onto a civilian population. In the other corner are the #IsraelUnderFire folks who are blind to the horror of lobbing not-nearly-as-precise-as-imagined munitions onto a civilian population.
If experience is a guide, the Islamic Jihad rocketeers will pull out their longer Fajr models, the ones that can put metropolitan Tel Aviv on edge. Two things to be looking for in the next 24 hours: 1) will anything be heard from Hezbollah in the north? and 2) how widespread will the next round of military mobilization (formally announced at a "mere" 1,500 so far) in Israel be? Watch for these two indicators - they will tell you if this pile-on will be more like 2009's Cast Lead (i.e., ground invasion) or 2012's Pillar of Defense (i.e., air alone). So far, less than 12 hours in, it looks like this confrontation will be more like the latter than the former.