Israel, Egypt, and blogging: Let this man go!

Okey dokey, here on follows something about politics, and worst of all, local (ish) politics. Some of you may promptly go to sleep. The rest who have half a braincell, please continue reading. Not that I'm sure that little old me is capable of "making a change" as they say in the classics, but there is an issue which is rather important, so I will talk about it a little bit. Or more accurately, I will talk about it a little bit, and I will then steal more information from other useful sources like Yael, the Sandmonkey and others.

In Egypt, which has a rather repressive police force, and other security forces, blogging may very well land you in prison. In case you are wondering why should care about this, little old me, and other nice people I know, also have blogs, but we just happen to live in Israel. Difference being, that in Israel you can have a blog, write any amount of nonsense on it (look at mine:) which may or may not agree with the state's general policies, and you will not land up in jail. About two weeks ago, 44 people in Egypt were arrested for peaceful protests, and sitins, including 15 bloggers. Now who's calling who an apartheid state hmmmm?

Another thing that is interesting about this whole affair, is that thanks to the large blogger campaign to free these people, what would probably never have been noticed beyond Egypt has become something a lot bigger, thanks to support from Egyptian bloggers, other Arab bloggers, and Israeli bloggers. News articles have resulted from this attention, and currently Egyptian embassies, and the US State Department are getting emailed by concerned people from around the world who would like to see these people freed. A wikipedia entry has been created here for Alaa, the most prominent of these bloggers. There have also been protests in Washington, as well as places in France, Germany and Italy. News of these detained bloggers has even hit websites such as the Guardian and Slashdot. The power of bloggers is something to see!

If you would also like to add your name to a petition to free these bloggers, you can click here.



If you want to know more about this, I would suggest going to the following blogs to read more:

Yael
the Sandmonkey
On the Face
Free Alaa