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During work hours my web browser will often find itself in some political blog, occasionally I can’t help myself and I will spend time banging out some ranty comment in the post. Often the comment is moderated since I inconveniently didn’t confirm the blogger’s point of view.
Daniel Gordis wrote this, and I couldn’t help but reply. Since I spent time writing it, maybe it’s worth a post of my own? You’re welcome.
You may not like it, but I am extremely encouraged by where young people, in particular young American Jews are taking us. A new generation is taking a fresh look at Israel today, and it doesn’t like what it sees.
On one hand we learn about the American civil rights movement, about separation of church and state, about a progressive immigration policy, about multi-cultural multi-ethnic society, and about the rule of law. We learn to cherish and defend these principles especially as Jewish minority, especially after our experience in the Old World. And then we go to Hebrew school, where first we are lied to (“a people without a land, for a land without a people”), and later we are told to love Israel, an ethnocentric state where one set of laws does not apply to half of it’s population, where a secret police reigns supreme, where it views 1/5 of it’s population at best as a blight in the landscape and at worst as a fifth column or a “demographic time-bomb”.
We are lucky that this new Jewish generation is not outright schizophrenic, but overall has understood these contradictions in its education.
“Pro-Israel” advocates will try to re-brand and encourage the narrative of a pluralistic, secular, gay-friendly and technologically advanced Israel that is contrasted with its dark, backwards, violent, and poor neighbors. This is meant to appeal to democratic and progressive ears, but it is nothing more than veiled racism that simply rekindles our fear of the unfamiliar, of the brown, and of smelly poor people.
You say “the only association they have with Israel is the conflict with the Palestinians”. A good observation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict rightly eclipses every other aspect of Israel’s image. It cannot be overstated, any attempt to trivialize it is simply dishonest. Even the word “conflict” deceives, as it implies the clash of two equal parties, where the reality is of an occupying power and a (increasingly) dispossessed and disenfranchised population.
Judging by the comments on this post, it seems like your readership is mostly middle-aged and concerned about their children’s attitude towards Israel. I just hope your kids manage to remind you what it’s all about and help you snap out of the euphoria and delusion you have been in since ‘67. Your children’s expensive education does not teach them to agree with you, even though you are footing the bill.
I was reminded of my moderated comment when I saw this essay by Peter Beinart that was just posted on The New York Review of Books.
Haven’t blogged in a while. Sorry?
GUADEC 2010
I am going! And more importantly I am presenting. The title is Accessible by Universal Design: Why I love The iPhone. Did I provoke you yet? Hope so. In this talk I will show how smug designers with their high sense of aesthetic could be even better (and smugger). I am not racist, some of my best friends are designers.
Caribou
It will be in GNOME 3.0. I recently took over maintainership, which basically means cutting releases, making sure it’s translatable, accessible, packageable, and generally keeping up with the GNOME schedule. There seems to be a good amount of people interested in it, and there is even official funding for it in Spain, so we will be getting some good contributions in the near future.
iPhone Application
I have one in the app store. Before you accuse me of being a sellout and an Apple fanboy, let me just say that it was an interesting experience, and my motivation was mostly writing for something that everybody has (and it’s a real thrill). Took the better part of two weekends, Jenny and I are unveiling it in Megapolis in Baltimore this weekend, if you are in the area you should download it and give it a try. Future versions should have a lot more user-submitted content and work in other areas around the world. Maybe a Maemo and Android version too…
Work
It’s fun and interesting, hope to give an update on that once I actually have something to show.
For the last 2 weeks I imposed on myself not to spend any time on GNOME accessibility as I catch up on work that pays, and spend time with friends and family in Israel. Just landed in Seattle last night, so the restriction is officially removed.
The hackfest at the end of last month was a huge success, here is a partial list of summaries written by different attendees:
More is certain to come, Brad Taylor has some interviews to share, and Bryen has been capturing a lot of photos and videos.
We also has a some media attention, I believe. Should have written this all down when it was fresh in my mind. Willie and I were interviewed for Blind Bargains podcast.
Next Year
This might be a bit presumptuous of me. But I think we should have a GNOME presence on an annual basis. The combination of booth, talks and hackfest went really well. What we need for this is dedicated sponsorship (ie. funds that are for the event specifically, and not for general GNOME a11y).
We talked to some really big employers, like social security, who are interested in FOSS and want to see it in wider use in their agencies. Accessibility for them is key.
We handed out a couple hundred OpenSUSE CDs. A big problem with having a GNOME presence in a non FOSS conference is explaining to people what it is and how they should give it a try. We talk their ears off regarding the merits of GNOME and FOSS, and yet we are not backing it up with a service, or even a download URL. So Novell really saved our butts, besides the CDs, Brad was constantly giving out business cards.
Next year, maybe Red Hat, Novell, Canonical or some other GNOME distributor would like to officially endorse are booth, fund the event, and drum up business at this conference. I really think it has untapped potential for enterprise desktop in particular.
The conference is finally over, said goodbye to most people. Sitting in the quiet lobby with Joanie, I really want to continue playing with that Caribou mockup I worked on yesterday, but I guess I need to blog while the hackfest experience is still fresh.
I heard from more than one conference attendee that we created a bit of a buzz, which is great. Might be due to our tweetage, talks, booth or tripping on us when we congregate on the lobby’s bar floor with laptops.
In the past companies like IBM and Sun showcased GNOME a11y, which may have appealed for large customers, but it was nice to have a .org booth this year that really brought FOSS’s grass-roots message to individuals, trainers, agencies and institutes.
My talk was really well received, I only wish it was slated for another hour besides 8 AM. Finally uploaded the slides. Not sure how well it renders on Firefox, apologies in advance. Also they aren’t the kind of slides that are very readable without the presentation.
Yesterday we had a wrap-up meeting, here are some notes Will took, didn’t bother to edit:
Eitan and Mike got Accerciser working with AT-SPI2
Eitan hacked a nice animation for Caribou with Clutter.
Ben enjoyed seeing the other booths to learn more about the space he is working in.
Ben was able to connect with Flavio to share ideas and develop a new collaboration with each other.
Ben was able to meet the SS12 students and follow up with them to get patches for Caribou.
Ke and Li met with Willie and Joanie to learn Orca internals, allowing them to help more.
Ke was able to learn more about various technologies related to accessibility.
Joanie and Alejandro looked at Orca together.
Joanie got good important face time with the Mozilla guys.
Li was happy to finally meet the rest of the team and also go over the bigger picture.
Steve Lee was happy to meet with the SS12 students and get more student input into GNOME.
Mike worked on AT-SPI2. Was glad to have the GNOME3 meeting because it helps us scope out what is needed. Mike also talked with Joanie about the Orca regression tests.
API found this to be a very positive experience to meet people face to face. Got to see that people (all conference attendees) see that open source a11y is important.
Willie thinks the GNOME 3 part is really important, he now thinks we could be successful in achieving GNOME 3 a11y. We also agreed on things we would not do, like the CSPI bindings and GOK. It was good to sit and brain dump Orca stuff with Joanie Li and Ke. On the show floor there were good conversations with people from different parts of the community, a lot of business cards! Talked to profs so they include GNOME in their classes, more HFOSS and PP stuff.
Bryen thought it was a good experience to see what we and others talk about wrt open source. Bryen was happy to meet everyone here and to connect with everyone and thanks us all for all of our hard work. Bryen has a connection with the UK Ability Magazine to write an a11y talk.
Willie and Eitan were interviewed for a podcast – blindbargains.net.
Mike and Brad were interviewed for another podcast.
Flavio was happy to finally meet us face to face! Flavio was pleased to see the effect GNOME a11y had on real end users who were coming by our booth. Helps immensely with self esteem. Flavio and Ben developed a new collaboration (yeah!).
Eitan wants us to blog more. 🙂