RMS, Hosts Must Support Boycott?

Mon Jun 13 11:43:45 IDT 2011

I have been reading quite a lot of messages about this topic. I feel (and
this is my feeling only) that it has been talked enough. Mr. Stallman
doesn't want to be here. He doesn't care about the other side of the story,
and he is so much about his own religion, that he forgets that each coin has
two sides.

I say - Halas (it was in Arabic, too!). Let him be. A boycott is as
effective as the boycottee cares. I don't care anymore. I won't go there,
because, to my eyes, such a strong opinionism without even an attempt to see
the other side, as Mr. Stallman shows both in his recent dealings with the
local politics and local conflict between two nations who have nothing to do
with him, and showed in the past regarding various concepts of how and what
to code (some of them were enough to make a movement, to start something,
but they are not necessarily the thing which is required to keep it going),
and how things "should" be, shows me how irrelevant he is.

Blocking your ears to alternate views is a bad thing. We should not
encourage such actions, neither of strangers, nor of ourselves. We have the
option to show our point of view, and that means, that if it were to me, the
lecture, if at all, would have taken place somewhere near Gaza, so he
experiences the rockets flying over our heads. Because there is
no contravention about these locations. But this is nothing more than an
imagination. Wasted time, just like this e-mail message. It doesn't matter.
He doesn't care, he doesn't want to look at the other side of the coin, and
by boycotting us, he exposes his own stubbornness.

Halas. Don't waste your time with him.

Etzion

2011/6/13 Tom Balazs <tom123online at gmail.com>

I would have been happy to say this thread had run it's course, but this
response from RMS and (his apparent "associate" / "organizer") Kobi Snitz is
too much.

Mr. Snitz advises both myself and RMS that in order to make sure the talk in
Israel meets the standards of the BDS-supporting organization which is
"hosting" RMS then the talks in Israel must be both sponsored by a BDS
supporting organization and held in a hall "owned/run" by a BDS supporting
organization. Snitz's words were, "in order to not violate the boycott the
sponsors and the place should be dissenting israeli groups and
institutions".

It seems that Mr. Snitz is a mathematician, anarchist, and leader in the BDS
(boycotts, divestment and sanctions) against Israel movement. If you'd like
to read more about Mr. Snitz you can use the links below. (Responses from
Kobi Snitz and from RMS are also below.)

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/shin-bet-puts-israeli-anarchists-in-crosshairs-1.333140
    -  "He was not the only anarchist the Jewish department dealt with that
week. Five days earlier, Kobi Snitz was attending a conference when he
received a call from an unidentified number. The caller told him, 'Shalom,
this is Rona from the Shin Bet. I'm sure you've heard about me.'"
     - "She said she wanted to invite me for a friendly conversation and for
us to exchange thoughts," said Snitz, 39, an anarchist activist and a
mathematician. He asked whether he was being called in for an interrogation
and when she said no, he said, no thanks. In 2009, Snitz served a 20-day
sentence over an attempt a few years earlier to prevent the demolition of a
house in Kharbatha, a village west of Ramallah. Two months ago, he was given
another five-day sentence over a protest against the Second Lebanon War in
2006."
http://www-users.math.umd.edu/~snitz/
http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=7985&page_data[id]=175&cookie_lang=en
http://www.radicalendar.org/calendar/all/all/display/85445/index.php?view=event&fulldate=2009-07-04
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/38551113/In-support-of-the-Palestinian-human-rights-community-call
http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=4993
http://pipl.com/directory/name/Snitz/Kobi
http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=6410&page_data[id]=175&cookie_lang=en&the_session_id=0e356a3b68ae0e5dd29aefaf7ef56e77&BLUEWEBSESSIONSID=21f827e2775005995748ebab68617a46
http://www.israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=6189&page_data[id]=162&cookie_lang=he&the_session_id=cfbd3321f483be8d97e01a3d1db248bf&BLUEWEBSESSIONSID=049669b2ba65f1c3fedf5a76c53d45aa
-----------------------

from    Kobi Snitz ksnitz at gmail.com
to    rms at gnu.org
date    Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 09:30
subject    Re: Finding a hall in Haifa
mailed-by    gmail.com
signed-by    gmail.com

hide details 09:30 (1 hour ago)

I am missing the earlier part of this correspondence but I can say that in
order to not violate the boycott the sponsors and the place should be
dissenting israeli groups and institutions. In tel aviv my first thought was
the women's coalition for peace. I talked to their head last night and she
said that they've never done anything about free software and she feels it
is strange for them to do it. The upcoming boycott law scares off many other
potential sponsors but I am looking.
kobi.
---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
Date: Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 01:37
Subject: Finding a hall in Haifa
To: Tom Balazs <tom123online at gmail.com>
Cc: Kobi Snitz <ksnitz at gmail.com>

It seems they want the event to be sponsored by an organization that
supports the boycott, but they don't mind if that organization rents a
hall.  I am not sure if they have requirements about what sort of
organization it can be rented from.  Kobi could tell you.

   2. The dates: Are the correct dates the evening of Thursday 21-Jul-2011,
and
   the afternoon of Friday 22-Jul-2011?

Yes.

--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
 Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/

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