This page sets out the editorial standards that Asians in Israel commits to. It exists so readers, contributors and the businesses we cover know what we will and will not publish, and what to do if we get something wrong.
Editorial responsibility#
The site is edited under the byline Maya Sasson — a pseudonym used to preserve the editor’s privacy while keeping a single named, accountable point of contact for editorial decisions, corrections and submissions. The editor is the same person across every piece; the byline is not a rotating team identity. Background on the byline and how the editor works lives on the editor page.
Where outside contributors write a piece, they are credited by name (or by a pseudonym of their own choosing) in the article frontmatter and at the foot of the article. Contributions go through the editor before publication.
Sourcing standards#
We publish in four content categories — news, businesses (directory + reviews), events and jobs. Each has its own sourcing rule.
News posts must add an original local angle. Mechanical rewrites of other outlets’ stories are blocked at build time by the local_angle requirement in tools/check_frontmatter.py: every news post dated 2026-05-13 or later must declare one of interview, on-the-ground, primary-source, or community-input in its frontmatter. If we cannot honestly assert one of those four, we do not publish the post. The earliest reason this exists is simple — Israel already has plenty of outlets that summarise external stories; we earn the reader’s attention only by adding something Israel-specific that they cannot get elsewhere.
Directory and business reviews are written from first-hand experience or verified community input. Listings are either visited in person, ordered from, or phoned to confirm. Reviews disclose if the editor did not eat at the restaurant themselves and is reporting on community consensus instead.
Events are sourced from organisers directly, official channels, or community submissions. We verify dates and addresses against the source before publishing.
Jobs are sourced from the hiring organisation or a community member who has verified the listing is legitimate.
We hyperlink primary sources where possible — official government pages, embassy announcements, the relevant Hebrew or English press. Where a community-specific source exists (a Filipino caregivers’ Facebook group, a Korean students’ Telegram channel), we reference it as the proximate source rather than route through an English-language summary.
Corrections#
If a published piece is wrong, contact editor@asiansinisrael.com with the specific error and, where possible, a source for the correct information. We aim to acknowledge corrections within 48 hours. Material corrections are noted directly on the post — we do not silently rewrite a piece to make it look as though the error never happened.
Every directory entry and every cluster guide carries a last_reviewed date in its frontmatter; that date moves forward only when the editor has re-checked the underlying facts (still open, still at this address, prices and hours still current). When a business closes or changes hands materially, we update or remove the entry rather than leave a stale page indexed.
Conflicts of interest#
Asians in Israel does not run sponsored listings, paid placements, or advertorial content masquerading as editorial. The business directory is offered as a free community resource and is not sold. Where the site eventually monetises (community subscriptions, lead-referrals priced transparently, a paid newsletter), the commercial layer is kept structurally separate from editorial — paying customers do not influence whether they are reviewed or where they rank in a guide.
We disclose any non-trivial relationship between editor and subject when it exists: free meals for review purposes, family/business ties to a listed business, prior work history with an embassy or institution under coverage. The default is to mention the relationship in-line in the relevant piece.
We do not accept gifts, hosted trips, or comped services in exchange for coverage. Press tickets to public-facing events (festivals, concerts) are accepted and disclosed.
AI and translation#
Language drafting on this site is LLM-assisted — Hebrew translations, and the occasional Japanese/Korean/Chinese localisation, run through a model first and are then edited. Sourcing, fact selection, what we choose to cover and what we choose to leave alone, structural editing, and the final approval of every piece are human decisions made by the editor.
We do not publish auto-translated content into Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese as a default. Those locales are added only when the content is specifically of that community — a piece on Korean events for Korean readers, not an English-news rewrite shoved through a translator. Thai and Vietnamese locales were retracted on 2026-05-13 for exactly this reason.
Contacting the editor#
For corrections, complaints, story tips, business directory submissions, or anything else editorial: editor@asiansinisrael.com or via the contact page.
For the practical mechanics of how we build the directory, source guides, and decide who gets listed, see the methodology.