Actually, the United States in the last decade has a very strict visa policy, I'm not so sure if some of the people Osama is referring to could so easily get in - this remains to be seen.
Travel from Egypt or Jordan into Israel is cheap - how does that compare with flying to Taiwan?
As I have already written perhaps a dozen times on three different mailing lists, we have good connections to Israeli authorities and will do our utmost to ease the entry of whoever wishes to attend. Governments can make exceptions under special circumstances (for example, Druze people from the Golan heights routinely cross the Israeli-Syrian border). Reaching out to the Middle East is very high on our priorities.
We cannot do anything, however, against such things as travel to Israel being socially unacceptable or punishable in one's home country, or against people calling for the boycott of the conference, except for expressing our regret at these phenomena.
Really, please refer to my previous answers on wikimania-l and on this list. I feel that there's nothing much more to add, this is becoming repetitive.
Osama, if you are serious about this, please help us form the connections and the working relations with institutions and individuals in Arab countries who are sincerely interested in attending Wikimania 2011. That help would be invaluable.
Harel Cain Wikimania 2011 team
On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 1:20 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 August 2010 11:10, Osama Khalid osamak@gnu.org wrote:
Poland, Germany, Egypt, United States, Argentina and even Taiwan were easy for the vast majority of the Wikimedia community to come into and I don't think anyone had serious issue like the one we, Muslims and Arabs, are have here. Just to be clear, here are the projects the will have issues in being there;
So are you suggesting we cancel it? This is staggeringly unlikely to happen. Or are you suggesting something else?
- d.
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