Dear All,
As was previously updated, Israel will participate
this year in the WLM competition. We wish to update
you with our progress.
Our first objective was to try and obtain a list of
national monuments. This proved to be much more
difficult than originally anticipated. According to
Israeli antiquities law, any building or object
created or built before 1700 is a protected
archeological object. Buildings which were built
afterwards were not protected. After the demolishing
of the Herzaliya Gymnasium in 1962 [1], and following
public protests, the National Council for Preservation
of Heritage Sites was created. This body did not have
any legal capacity to protect landmarks, and worked at
advancing public awareness of national heritage sites.
Only in 2011 was legislation passed protecting such
landmarks. According to the legislation, the National
Council will create lists of protected sites which
will approved by the local municipalities in order to
come into force. This resulted in local politics being
involved, and most of the lists were never approved
due to local economic interests.
We approached the Council, and requested their
co-operation. We have held several meetings with the
Council, and eventually convinced them to join us in
the project. (One of the difficulties was that the
Council itself has an annual photography competition,
and the WLM would compete with it.) Upon receiving the
blessing of the general manager of the National
Council, we discovered that the Council itself does
not have the lists of monuments. With the assistance
of the Council, and after a week of searching, they
were able to locate some of the lists, which are
uploaded to the project page on Wikipedia [2].
This will be the first time that the list of
national monuments will be available online to the
Israeli public.
We have also contacted several sponsors, and
currently await their decision to sponsor the
competition.
We have contacted the largest local amateur
photography school, and asked it to sponsor some of
the events we are planning as part of the competition.
We will further update once these events are
finalized.
Regards,
Deror