Re: Debconf in Israel
Nasir El-Amin <nasir_elamin@protonmail.com> writes:
> Israeli is a nationality not the faith of Judaism. I’m criticizing
> citizens (which practice a variety of faiths) of a genocidal apartheid
> state that’s killed tens of thousands of Muslims.
The same argument can be made about US treatment of Native Americans, and
while the ongoing conflicts are not as severe as they are in Israel, they
are still ongoing. As a US citizen I find those actions abhorrent, and I
understand why individuals may not want to visit or support the US because
of them, but I still think there is some limit to the personal
responsibility that I have as a US citizen for the actions of my
government, when I vote against those actions at every opportunity that I
have.
It is very difficult to just leave the country you were born in, of which
you are a citizen, and where all of your friends and family reside. There
is a limit to how much one can personally do to prevent one's government
from taking actions one finds abhorrent.
At some level we *have* to separate people from the government they live
under. Often they have voted against that government at every opportunity
they've had for their entire life.
I'm not saying that these sorts of political questions should never have
any effect on choice of venue for conferences, but I think you're taking
this argument much too far, to a place where essentially every choice of
venue could be disputed. It is extremely hard to find a government in the
world that is not involved to some degree or another in an ongoing
violation of human rights. That, sadly, is the world we live in.
I completely support you in your personal (and collective) decision to
decide to boycott certain conference venues. There are countries to which
I personally refuse to travel as well for various reasons. I also believe
that a sufficiently substantial boycott should be taken into account when
deciding venues, if for practical reasons if nothing else. But *please*
explicitly distinguish between the actions of governments and the actions
of citizens of that government and assume good faith and good will of
Debian community members unless you have concrete reasons to believe
otherwise.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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