On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 10:51 PM, Harel Cain harel.cain@gmail.com wrote:
It's a matter of convincing people to disregard their own government's formal travel advisory (which as I said is very clear about Egypt at this time; would Americans for example travel to a country that the State Department strongly advises to avoid?). I know of two local wikipedians who are still planning to go. We tried organizing a bigger group at our local village pump but people are naturally rather hesitant to go to a place where they (justifiably?) feel they might be at risk, or just feel very uncomfortable or unwanted. Israel's biggest newspaper Yedioth Ahronot runs an article today about an organized tour to Egypt of Israelis of Egyptian origin, which got a very "cold shoulder" from Egyptian authorities.
I don't want to turn this into a political debate about the intricacies of the Israeli-Egyptian cold peace, though. I just wanted to put the Egyptian minister's expressions in context.
I still hope to make it to Alexandria.
Harel
Harel,
Thank you for the information. When was this latest warning posted? (sadly, my Hebrew is lacking). As you say, originally I thought there were plans for many people from Wikimedia Israel to come over, and of course that was one of the hopes for having it in Egypt -- that many people from the region could attend. It will be really sad if you are unable to :(
-- phoebe