About Me

“It’s Almost Supernatural” is a weblog started in July 2004 that provides commentary on the Middle East from a South African perspective with a specific focus on the South African media.

It’s Almost Supernatural is written in the spare time of two twenty something South Africans.

Steve is a Business Analyst at a software development company and Mike is a Financial Analyst at an Investment bank.

We publish something new almost every day.

Inspired by Honest Reporting, we realised that there was a need in South Africa for a service that helps counter the alarming anti-Israel stance taken by a large portion of the mainstream South African media. We do this by scanning the South African media for articles which step over the boundary from legitimate criticism of Israel and into the realm of unjustified and overt anti-Israel prejudice. In doing so we expose the anti-Israel biases and falsehoods published in the South African media.

It is our intention to alert South Africans about this bias - to arm them with resources that can be used to challenge the South African media. We also try to arm our readers with the knowledge that can help them to counter anti-Israel prejudices that they may encounter in their daily lives, be it on university campuses or at the office at work.

Thoughtfully considering all the facts and contrasting them against the anti-Israel rhetoric found every day in the media leaves one with an alarming conclusion...

it's almost supernatural

The service we offer is primarily one of aggregation – i.e. pulling information from various disparate sources into one space. We scan the media every day and pull all relevant information together into one space where a news consumer can find all Israel related news from a South African context without having to search through various different sites. We therefore serve as a type of South African guide through the Middle East conflict.

The main topics written on include:

• South African media bias


• Comparisons to Apartheid refuted


• South Africa relations with Israel


• Middle East peace prospects


• Reviews of Middle East related events and lectures in South Africa


• Middle East related book reviews

Advertising on It's Almost Supernatural

We make space on the blog to run web banner ads. To advertise contact us using the e-mail shown on the left.

By advertising on “It’s Almost Supernatural” the advertiser will be able to target influential and knowledgeable people with a keen interest in current affairs.

Our blog provides a unique way of targeting the internet savvy members of the South African Jewish community. The blog reading community is internet aware and more likely to make online purchases than consumers of traditional media are.

The audience of this blog is generally

• Jewish South Africans with either a political or Zionist interest


• Jewish and non Jewish South African expats who like to stay in touch with the situation “back home”


• Politically minded non-Jewish South Africans with an awareness of current affairs


• Israelis who follow what other countries are saying about Israel

Why advertise on a blog?
Advertisers are starting to discover the unique power of blogs. Blogs offer a personal touch in the mediascape; small sites have become our guides to a content-saturated world. As such, their recommendations are highly valued by readers – which naturally has made advertisers take notice. In recent months, big-name companies like Banana Republic and Coca Cola have for the first time run campaigns on blogs, in the belief that blog communities often consist of passionate and influential people all marketers want to reach. “The audience on blogs is the cream of the crop,” says Thom Capbell, head of media strategy for Intel. (Business 2.0 magazine, “Blogging for Dollars”, October 2006.)

Acclaim
The quality of our service has been recognised internationally. Bar Ilan university cites It’s Almost Supernatural as one of the leading sources of information on dispelling the ‘Israel is an Apartheid state’ libel.

Honest Reporting include us as an essential resource alongside other renowned blogs such as Melanie Phillips’ diary.

What is a Blog?
A weblog, or simply a blog, is a web application which contains periodic, reverse chronologically ordered posts on a common webpage. Blogs run from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations, and from one occasional author to having large communities of writers. The totality of weblogs or blog-related webs is usually called the blogosphere.

"Weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide [whom] you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there's also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc." John Barger, Dec 1997