Israeli blogger asks: does the Gaza conflict make me look fat?

An Israeli blogger has stirred controversy after she penned a blog post on the Times of Israel’s website lamenting that the conflict in Gaza - which has killed close to 1,800 Palestinians - had caused her to gain weight.

In a post on Sunday entitled “Does this war make me look fat?” Rachel Weinstein, who lives in Beit Shemesh - an area seldom touched by the 28-day conflict - claimed that she had been stress-eating to “satiate the worry, the fear, and the reality that we are in.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW how ridiculous this sounds. But I also know that I share this obsession with others who like me, logically get that being glued to a computer isn’t going to help us win the war any faster,” she wrote.

Weinstein concluded her piece by writing that she was looking forward to the conflict’s conclusion.

“I look forward to the day when this war is over, when missiles are no longer aimed at us, when our enemies no longer force us to protect ourselves in ways we wouldn’t otherwise fathom…They tried to kill us, we won, LET’S EAT!”

‘Disgustingly self-absorbed’

However, many users of microblogging site Twitter saw red at Weinstein’s post, with one referring to her article as “disgustingly self-absorbed.”

“Spare a thought for the real victim in Israel,” another sarcastically wrote.

“If your main concern is that Gaza assault is making u fat, bc you stress-eat, you’re not ‘under siege’,” [sic] another user wrote.

Blog posts published on the Times of Israel contain a disclaimer that the Times “assumes no responsibility for them.”

But earlier this week, the publication removed a blog post entitled: “When Genocide is Permissible.”

After removing the post, the Times said it had discontinued the writer’s blog and issued the following statement: “This blog post, which was described by our Ops & Blogs editor as both damnable and ignorant, blatantly breached The Times of Israel’s editorial guidelines.”

The Times of Israel also encountered scorn last month when it reported that an owl had been injured by shrapnel from a Hamas missile.

Reportedly, the feathered fowl has since recovered.