Monday, February 06, 2006

peace - with and without caricatures

i just received an email from a friend of mine in germany about the arab caricatures that were posted in the danish newspaper jyllands-posten back in the fall. apparently, the german-speaking web site www.hagalil.com, which is mostly about antisemitism, was completely destroyed by someone – supposedly from qatar – who didn’t like that hagalil had posted the caricatures. the fact that they had also posted arab caricatures about israel and america didn’t seem to faze the attackers (or maybe it infuriated them even more, who knows).

this is not enough. the same thing apparently happened to france-soir, a major french newspaper. i tried a number of different ways to find its internet presence today – nothing.

"we are the only french newspaper with an internet portal" said someone at the newspaper, according to the german tv station n-tv. but "we’re gone, indeed … this is not normal. i can’t imagine that this is a technical problem. probably, pirates have wiped our site."

i’m posting this here because i haven’t found any english language reference to this on the internet yet – but also because yesterday i came across something on a forum that reaminds me of it. it was a discussion of the big book (see yesterday’s post). i just couldn’t believe how many people took an earnest, respectful, sober and objective attempt to have a friendly talk about some aspects of the big book as complaining, distracting and unhelpful.

this scares me. this is what happens in dysfunctional families. someone comes along and tells us what we are allowed to talk about, write about, and ultimately think. this is abusive. this is what happens in wars.

please, please, please, let’s be tolerant of each other. let us hear each other out. let us laugh together, not kill each other.

peace. shalom. salem aleikum.

isabella mori
moritherapy
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

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