THE OPINIONS IN THIS BLOG DO NOT REPRESENT THE OPINIONS OF THE JERUSALEM POST, THEY ARE PERSONAL REFLECTIONS.
Melanie Lidman is the Jerusalem affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. As the only Jerusalem metro reporter, her beat encompasses municipality affairs, police, crime, politics, religious issues, as well as happy news every once in a while. In this blog, she shares the stories behind the headlines and the experiences of a new reporter learning her beat.
Previously, Melanie was a features freelancer for the local weekly sections of the Jerusalem Post. She also worked at Outside Magazine in Santa Fe, New Mexico and spent a summer bicycling from Canada to Mexico. Melanie graduated from the University of Maryland with a triple major in Spanish, Journalism, and Ultimate Frisbee. Though Jerusalem has one of the highest concentrations of journalists of any city in the world, Melanie is one of the only journalists in the city that travels almost exclusively by bicycle. Her bike’s name is Savlanut (Patience).
See more of Melanie’s work at her website, Will Travel For Food.
Notes in the Cracks 
Hi
I don’t know if this is the prope format but…….Hi
Sorry to have to write to you re: this subject but after reading today’s papers re: the French decision to export Gypsies and then to prevent Moslems from wearing Burkas I immediately thought of the poem by Martin Niemoller starting with “I didn’t speak up when they came for the communists…… The situation in France bespeaks that of Nazi Germany prior to the second world war. Especially at this sacred time of the year for Jewish people it is important that we make our voices heard……unlike Martin Niemoller.
We should write to newspapers, our elected officials, the UN, and whoever else you can think of to SPEAK UP.
Arnie Heiger