Dror
Just to give you some background on the issue - Another take
Political, economic and cultural boycotts of unsavoury regimes have worked
against South Africa and others, like Libya at present. We have seen many
musicians, academics, politicians and laymen drawing a line in the sand
vi-a-vis Israel. In South Africa, Johannesburg University has just cut all
ties with Ben Gurion university. All our trade unions have cut ties and
various other celebrities for eg Bishop Tutu and even our very courageous
Judge Golstone was willing to speak up against injustice. He is now persona
non grata in the local Jewish (read Zionist) community for speaking the
truth. However the net tightens and in a few years when the Israelis are
forced to compromise you can look back and say either you were part of the
solution, or complicit. Both Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan labelled
Nelson Mandela a terrorist. Who's the respected humanitarian now? In short,
dont talk nice while stealing a peoples land and culture.
However the issue is much bigger than Wikimania. I respect what they do in
terms of free info etc and do acknowledge that Haifa is a centre for
knowledge and high tech stuff, but Wikimania should have thought more
carefully, because oppression of a race is unacceptable and therefor
wikimedia in Haifa is open game for critics.
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Joan Goma <jrgoma(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
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
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