I think we need to be very specific when we talk about advice to
Wikimedians in Arab countries re going to Haifa. Encouraging
Wikimedians who live in countries where it would be illegal to visit
Israel to break the laws of the country they live in and attend such a
public event strikes me as inappropriate and unethical (lobbying to
change a law is something I see as very different encouraging others
to break a law).
Encouraging a boycott amongst Wikimedians who legally could go to
Israel is a very different thing. We all have real life POVs, but we
are supposed to leave them at the door when we logon to Wikimedia.
Of course if this involves offsite blogs and facebook then it drifts
into that contentious area of offwiki activities that impact
Wikipedia. For me that's fairly easy - when I'm WereSpielChequers I'm
a wikimedian, I don't use that identity outside of Wikimedia and some
of my closest friends don't know about this hobby of mine. But for
others I can see things getting more blurred, especially if they edit
in their own name. For wikimedians from cultures and countries where
Israel's continued occupation of the lands it captured in 1967 is
considered illegal and unethical, and the consequent boycott of Israel
is a cultural norm, the decision to host Wikimania in Haifa must be
making it very difficult to keep their on and off wiki positions from
getting blurred.
WereSpielChequers
On 6 July 2011 04:51, Kim Bruning <kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 12:44:22PM -0400,
dror1975(a)icqmail.com wrote:
It is important to note that we encountered this year unprecedented
attempts to discourage people, particularly Arab people, from coming
to the event. I don't blame anyone, and I respect the freedom of
speech of everybody, but it is very hard to promote an event among
Arabic-speaking people, when there are FaceBook groups and blogs, some
of them initiated by Wikipedians, calling upon Arab people not to
attend, and even spreading false information.
This is something I would like to counter, if possible.
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