Visiting Israel is against the law in several Islamic countries, this is covered in http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visas#Visas_for_Middle_Eastern_Count...
And was discussed earlier this year at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2011/Bids/Haifa#Arab_countries
WSC
On 6 July 2011 12:33, Kim Bruning kim@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 01:11:09PM +0100, WereSpielChequers wrote:
Absolutely if someone does come from a country that has laws against their attending then we should do our best to keep them safe.
I don't think it's really against the law anywhere, and we haven't heard reports about there being any issues (I did ask explicitly).
The problem is that BDS (and others?) are explicitly acting against wikimania. I'd love to hear more reports on this. I think having a wikimania in haifa is actually going to be beneficial to all parties. :-)
For starters I think we need to figure out why palestinians aren't attending. If it's really a small sample, it might simply be because none happen to have time.
Could folks ask around on their home wikis ?
sincerely, Kim Bruning
-- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l