1) I could be wrong, but i don’t think pulse has any qualms about admitting that it has a political bent. there are definitely a set of conceptual as well as regional issues that are emphasized on pulse, and I think, with good reason. There are enough publications out there that, under the guise of ‘balanced reportage,’ may present a wider variety of issues but upon closer inspection, one finds that breadth does not = nuance. Everything seems to be determined by the same ideological suppositions, but no one wants to claim them. I guess what i’m trying to say is that I approach publications that claim to have no political bent with more suspicion than i do those who make that bent obvious from the get go.

2) Now, given that we concede that Pulse has a political bent, if you do the work of actually reading the content of the posts, I think you’ll find that although there is a focus on a set of regional issues, the contributors as well as those featured in articles, actually position themselves quite differently – often even in opposition to other writers’ views on the same issue. And this opposition is maintained even as there may be broad agreement/overlap on some of the fundamental premises of their argument. To provide an example, let us concede that your observation is correct – many people at pulse write about Israel-Palestine. Let us then further concede that you are correct again in noting that most of pulse’s writers take a critical stance against the Israeli state. If you decide to dismiss pulse on the basis of these two concessions, you will miss out on the particularity of each writers thoughts – particularity produced through their own thoughts, and well as in the choices they make regarding whom to invoke as interlocutors to how they position themselves in relation to those interlocutors. You see, if you reduce each article on Israel- Palestine by the lowest common denominator – namely, that it is about Israel- Palestine, then one is left to believe that for you norman finklestein = naom chomsky = ali abinimah = uri avnery. I’m sure you see the lunacy of any such equation.

3) the same premise that underlies your other critiques, also underlies your claim that if we put this list of top 20 folks in a room, they would have nothing new or different to share with each other. this is simply not the case. take slavoj zizek for example, a man who appeared on pulse’s top 20 global thinkers list a few months ago. zizek is fervent adherent of marx and hegel, but if you believe that he doesn’t take each of his intellectual ‘father’s to task, both challenging and extending their logic where he deems necessary, then you have not understood, or perhaps more tellingly, read zizek at all.

4) this is the last comment, but it needs to be said because quite frankly, your characterization of pulse’s challenge to Israel’s legitimacy as “pathological obsession,” is beyond insulting. In fact, it’s insulting to the very history of dissent itself; a history which reveals that the very quality that you construe as a psychological neurosis of sorts, and which I understand to be the ‘quality’ and not affliction of “relentless conviction,” actually lies at the heart of and makes possible political resistance.

Statistically, it’s also interesting: Out of 20 people or pairs cited, seven are mentioned for their courageous coverage/views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and four are directly involved with it (the al-Jazeera team, Hass/Levy, Electronic Intifada and Ramzy Baroud). That, of course, doesn’t come close to approximating the weighting of global news. One can only conclude that the author is under the impression that large swathes of the planet have no social justice issues that need to be reported at all. Or, perhaps, it shows an pathological obsession with Israel.