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'War is bad for the waistline': Times of Israel blog stirs outrage
Author complains Gaza conflict is making her fat a week after paper described genocide as 'permissible'
In a blog post for the Times of Israel entitled "Does this war make me look fat?" author Rachel Weinstein describes how "war is bad for the waistline".
The American-Israeli author says she has gained weight during the conflict, which has killed almost 1,800 Palestinians, because the "war is stressful".
Weinstein, who lives in Beit Shemesh, an area largely unaffected by the current fighting, says she has been eating more during the conflict in order to "satiate the worry, the fear, and the reality that we are in".
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She admits that her argument "sounds ridiculous" but says it is one affecting many of her friends in Israel. She also claimed that she was "unabashedly jealous" of people who could not eat during times of stress and were able to lose weight.
"I look forward to the day when this war is over, when missiles are no longer aimed at us", she writes, when she can look back and say "They tried to kill us, we won, LET'S EAT!"
The blog has caused outrage across social media, with users calling the article "insensitive", "shameful" and "disgusting".
While 1,800 Palestinians have died, one Israeli frets that the war is making her fat because she's comfort eating.http://t.co/cDBP8Sk0ji— Michael Theodoulou (@MichaelTheodoul) August 4, 2014
A US American colonist in Palestine wrote an essay about how hard it is not to binge eat while her country bombs Gaza http://t.co/GZcJYdYNe1— folksy torture (@onekade) August 4, 2014
Disgustingly self-absorbed commentary from Israeli writer: Does this war make me look fat? http://t.co/wvTs6dJWTy via @timesofisrael— Órfhlaith Ní C (@OrfhlaithNiC) August 4, 2014
It is the second time in less than a week that the Times of Israel has faced criticism of one of its blogs. Last week, a post with the headline "When genocide is permissible" caused outrage on social media.
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"What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?" Israeli blogger Yochanan Gordon wrote on the paper's website.
A tip: If you ever write anything on any topic, and the headline is "When Genocide is Permissable," STOP WRITING https://t.co/ykOkcMezwb— Stephen Silver (@StephenSilver) August 1, 2014
The Times of Israel quickly removed the blog post, describing it as "unacceptable" and saying editors were "angry and appalled" at the author.
