One issue I've learned during the pandemic is how powerless consumers are. Once I booked a vacation to the Seychelles and the airline arbitrarily changed the dates so I couldn't travel and said I couldn't cancel it either. There was zero recourse to get a refund.
Now I've had a booking I made request to cancel the booking...tell me my confirmed booking requires an arbitrary prepayment and that anyway they are full..."whoops" they listed it online but it's not there...with no recourse to do much about it.
Of course you can leave bad reviews or whatever. But in the end you're just totally powerless. Of course you can be wary of prepayments or read small print about cancellation policies. But that doesn't help when arbitrary changes are made.
Many businesses claim to be *more* flexible due to the pandemic. And I don't doubt that this is also true. Some places make it clear you can easily cancel. But others absolutely took advantage of this pandemic to just do whatever they wanted.
And there aren't laws or courts or much to protect you. You booked a flight? Well we charged you and changed the dates anyway. You booked a room for your family. Hey...too bad, a few days before you arrive we just cancel it and say we are full.
Traveling by myself isn't the issue. But when you try to plan for several people its frustrating to no know until the day of the travel that maybe things will just be randomly cancelled. And consumers deserve better protection.
One might say "well, you live in Jerusalem and you're planning a trip in X or Y"...but I don't think that's the only thing going on, I think in general with international travel thrown into chaos, consumers often lost out with arbitrary changes at the last moment.
Also leaving bad reviews doesn't necessarily help because companies or places may threaten to sue you. It's not so simple.
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Lod in Israel is the scene of clashes and riots and unfortunately these scenes will remind some of the West Bank and Jerusalem...because also unfortunately some politicians have long wanted to blur the line of Israel and the Palestinian Authority areas; it serves some interests
I would argue that there is a right wing lobby that sought to “annex” part of the West Bank...they say they want to export “sovereignty” but what they ALSO want to do is bring the chaos and clashes of the West Bank into Israel. Instead of stability they want a wider conflict
These are the same voices that oddly advocated for years to encourage destabilizing Jordan...their bizarre goal despite being far-right “pro-Israel” was to create a mass of conflict and blurred borders.
Most of those who shared the video of the people cheering at the Kotel with what appeared to be flames near Al-Aqsa mosque yesterday did so knowing it was a misleading image designed to incite and by doing so they may have contributed to violence.
Many people irresponsibly shared the images with quotes or claims that had nothing to do with the reality of a fire that was caused by mistake and an ending of Jerusalem Day that happened to coincide. They implied a connection.
Many of those who shared it didn’t bother to share any actual reporting by people on the ground, they wanted to spread hate and extremism, their sole goal was to find one of the most extreme images to share.
Thread: I'm interested in the tendency of some major media to use the term "blast" for planned terror bombing attacks. The use of the term appears to be a way to make it as innocuous as possible as in "blast near girls school kills 50"...which makes it sound like an accident
I believe this is on purpose and that it is often used to reduce coverage of mass murder in the global south and poorer countries. In essence, the same media that was perfectly capable of calling the US capitol riot an insurrection, calls the targeted murder of 50 a "blast"
The same media that seems capable of naming a lynching a lynching, not "man killed by rope", can't seem to use the term "bombing"...or "murder" or terms that indicate human involvement and perpetrators.