If they want boycott Israelis extremists or Palestinian extremists they
should support Wikimania in Haifa.
Wikimania is about free knowledge and free knowledge will make more free
Palestinians and Israelis as well as all of us.
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2011 01:42:26 -0400
From: dror1975(a)icqmail.com
Subject: Re: [Wikimania-l] Boycott Wikimania 2011
To: wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <8CDBE46B7379139-14D0-1DCC4(a)Webmail-d112.sysops.aol.com>
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Just to give you some background on the issue - There is currently an
aggressive campaign by certain pro-Palestinian groups to boycott Israel. The
campaigners are well organized and they will probably continue to send
messages to this mailing list. The campaign is political, however it is not
supported by any government, nor is it supported by the Palestinian
Authority or any of the moderate Palestinian organizations. After about four
years of growing cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians (despite the
remaining disagreements, which are hard to resolve), there are people and
organizations who try to pour fuel on the extinguishing fire. Unfortunately,
they do not respect this forum and its participants.
I would also like to note that when Alexandria was rightfully chosen to
host Wikimania (and its team did a wonderful work), there were Israelis
among the bid team and the sponsors. The question of the Arab-Israeli
conflict was never raised and it was deemed totally irrelevant. When
Wikimania was held in Taiwan, I personally called the Taiwanese
representations in Tel Aviv and Amman to check if they can issue a visa to
an Egyptian citizen who wanted to participate and had difficulties as there
was no Taiwanese representation in Egypt.
I hope this is the last message in this subject.
Dror K