Offbeat Israel: Why Is the Jerusalem Post Producing the ‘Boringist’ Video?
Israel practiced for war on Tuesday As part of a week of nationwide drills that have taken simulations of wartime civil defense operations to every town and city in the country, bomb sirens sounded at 11 a.m.
Civilians, including school and kindergarten children, made their way in to bomb shelters or reinforced rooms, in a simulation of what they would do in the case of a real alert. The population had printed guidelines on what to do, available in Hebrew, Amharic, Arabic, Russian, English, Arabic and Yiddish, among other languages.
Scenarios included in the week of drills include a multiple missile attack on Haifa, a chemical warfare strike on Eilat, and an internal intifada led by Israeli Arabs. Hospitals are practicing for receiving patients injured in chemical attacks.
After today’s sirens, civil defense forces are dealing with sirens that did not sound loudly enough.
This rather serious operation has provided a few laughs. The best two come courtesy of two of the country’s newspapers. Of course, speculation has been rife as to whether, motivating such a large-scale operation, the military knows something we don’t. Ma’ariv ran a headline saying “The Air Force is Training for War with Iran,” which led to an Air Force officer being widely quoted saying: “Of course we are training for war; that is what armies do.”
The second comes from the Jerusalem Post. Multimedia attached to news articles is all the rage, and the Post has just made a unique contribution to this practice by posting a video that apparently describes itself as “the world’s boringest video.”
This video, which is posted alongside an article on the Post website and accessible directly through YouTube, will silence any critics of Israel’s oldest English newspaper out there. When, just after two minutes, a Post employee makes the prediction that “It’s going to be the world’s boringest video,” she proves that, whatever they say, the power of judgment of the Jerusalem Post’s staff is second-to-none.
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