Message: 1
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2011 01:42:26 -0400
From: dror1975@icqmail.com
Subject: Re: [Wikimania-l] Boycott Wikimania 2011
To: wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <8CDBE46B7379139-14D0-1DCC4@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