My opinion is simple. Israel is not a good place to have such an international event as Wikimania. I wouldn't vote for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE and other countries that are hard for many people to get into. Having such a conversation isn't the point of Wikimania. The fact that a team is amazingly active shouldn't be a reason to make this annual, exciting and useful meeting so complicated and dangerous for so many people.
I can see why the Wikimedia Foundation may not be so interested in taking one side in any political/ethical debate outside its main mission. That's reasonable and understandable. But in my opinion the whole thing is about picking a place that is a 'good' host. Whether we can do something to solve the major issues of Wikimania 2011 or not, we should seriously think of adding a standard for Wikimania hosts: that they need to be generally easily reachable for the vast majority of the Wikimedia community. Poland was great. I loved it. I mean I really loved having meetings in such 'peaceful' countries without such debates. Why not? There are many of them. [Historically, the part below was written before the one that's above, something you may feel and notice! :)] > This is bullshit. There are always people who for instance never > take an air flight - should we also complain that they do not have > an opportunity to travel to Wikimania which is on a different > continent? That does not make any sense. Many people cannot, legally and socially, go to Israel and that's a fact not merely an opinion or a (legitimate and reasonable) choice. > Turkey is no problem, Turkish citizens can, may and do visit > Israel. Also, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Tunesia, and Mauretania are no > problem. Algeria I would need to check. I dunno about Turkey, but no, it's impossible for people from the other countries to visit Israel for social reasons and these reasons cannot be ignored. > it ultimately is a personal decision of whether or not a person > wants to go. Sure, it *is* your personal decision to make yourself at risk of serious consequences. Read below. > there is no way to get a visa on a separate paper, even if you get a > stamp from immigration separately that visa in all likelihood is > going to be there. That, simply, changes everything. > As explained on http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visas, there > are various ways to attain a visa entry to Israel even if you live > in a country with no Israeli embassies. The page doesn't say anything about Visas on a blank paper, but only the stamps. Also "Passport stamping" talks about "those countries may also search for Jordanian/Egyptian exit stamps from land borders with Israel". -- Osama Khalid English-to-Arabic translator and programmer. http://osamak.wordpress.com | http://tinyogg.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l