Israeli/Iranian Citizens Reach Out Over Facebook For Peace
from the come-on-people-now-smile-on-your-brother dept
Disparate aspects of the ongoing advance of technology throughout the world are coming together in a very interesting and heartwarming result. As groups continue the attempt to connect everyone in the world by the near-future, we've also seen how social media has been used recently to organize and deploy protests and citizen activism, particularly in the Middle East. But those two stories are converging into a fascinating display of communication between two rival nations in that troubled region.In case you've been sleeping under a rock these past few months, it turns out the governments of Iran and Israel have some minor quibbles with one another. As a result, there's been much saber-rattling and boot-stomping between the two governments and popular opinion tends to be it's a matter of when, not if, the bullets and bombs begin flying. If one is not nuanced enough to separate out these nation's governments from their people, one might assume the common people in each state are equally rivalrous. This separation is made all the more difficult by the way both nations close off communication with one another, such that an individual in Israel is completely unable to make a simple phone call to an Iranian area code (it's blocked at the government level).
But if you happen to think closing off all communication is silly and counter-productive (like me), you'll be delighted to know that the internet is here to save the day. CNN has the story of one Israeli citizen, Ronny Edry, a graphic designer, who thinks the prospect of pre-emptive war with Iran is absolutely insane, so he developed some simple but striking "posters" and put them up on Facebook.
"My idea was simple, I was trying to reach the other side. There are all these talks about war, Iran is coming to bomb us and we bomb them back, we are sitting and waiting. I wanted to say the simple words that this war is crazy," said Edry.The images featured pictures of various Israelies, such as Edry himself and his neighbors along with their children, and a message:
Now if you're cynical, or you watch too much cable news, you might be wondering what the big deal is. So an Israeli made some posters and put them on Facebook. So what?
The response, said Edry, was overwhelming. "In a few hours, I had hundreds of shares and thousands of likes and it was like something was happening.
"I think it's really amazing that someone from Iran poked me and said 'Hello, I'm from Iran, I saw your "poster" on Facebook,' " Edry said.
And that's when the posters created by Iranian citizens in return began flooding in. Posters with messages of peace and commonality. I found one particular post on Edry's Facebook page from an Iranian to be particularly heartening:
We share a common history, have been sharing both our great and ancient cultures, languages and poetry together. ... We are so similar, and politicians cannot cut a tie that has been tied thousands of years ago. I am proud to have you as my friends.
I'm not going to go all peace, love and flower power on you, but this is why the internet age is so important. It's also why cutting off communication between nations, or allowing even the first steps of internet censorship to take hold, must be stopped at all costs. It's not just about copyright, or flash mobs, or YouTube videos showing Spaceballs clips. The internet is ultimately about people sharing with one another, whether they're sharing thoughts, images like this, or whatever. It's about commonality. It's about creating a web of bonds through which communication and understanding can flow.
And now, I'm realizing, it's about giving every man and woman the power to do what their blowhard, acrimonious politicians won't do: talk to one another.
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Filed Under: connections, iran, israel, social media
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Torpor of Melancholy
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That sounds like exactly the thing that somebody who would bomb you would say!
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If you're making a poster to convince the guys next door you're not gonna kill them, you ought to write it in the language they're most likely to speak...
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Re: English.
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I watched a travel show from there the other day and the host only rarely seemed to need a translator.
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Citizens and Governments
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Israeli - Iranian citizen international solidarity
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Did anyone else immediately thing of this?
If we connect everyone, absolutely everyone, and get them talking, maybe we can pull this off on a broader scale.
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"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
-Jack Handey
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Why do you think we built the Internet?
We didn't build it for Facebook, or for Google, or for IBM, or for Oracle, or for any corporation, or any government, or any religion, or anyone.
We built it for everyone. We designed it to cross borders, elude censorship, and penetrate barriers.
We did that in the hope that maybe, just maybe, if we made it possible for EVERYONE to share knowledge and culture and communication that they'd stop killing each other.
It remains to be seen if we were right.
But keep this in mind when you think about the reasons behind the actions of those in power: they are motivated by fear, the fear of losing control, losing money, losing power. They're frightened of the future.
Which is exactly why we must build it.
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Israel Is Officially A Democracy
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Re: Israel Is Officially A Democracy
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cynicism won't save the world
here's an interesting article about the israel-loves-iran campaign: http://hateandrelativism.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/israel-loves-iran-when-love-and-bombs-collide/
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cynicism won't save the world
here's an interesting article about the israel-loves-iran campaign: http://hateandrelativism.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/israel-loves-iran-when-love-and-bombs-collide/
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Peace?!
Except of few lunatics (who will shout "peace" even if you shoot them), people would like to see this "research program" to end in flames. The discussion mostly revolves around "should we do it ourselves or convince US".
... and given that this crap is written in English, one can guess that it's not targeted towards Iranian - they speak Persian (as somebody pointed out already).
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WAR with Iran is a certainty.
WAR with Iran is a certainty.
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