Thursday, January 3, 2013

Left Wing Israelis Give Their Votes to Palestinians in Facebook Campaign

In an act of protest one can only find in the world of social media, left-wing activists opened a Facebook page where Israelis are urged to “hand over” their voting rights to Palestinians, Ami kaufman writes in +972 Magazine.

On December 26, 2012, a new Facebook page was created, called “Real Democracy.” The basic idea behind it is that Israelis “give up” their vote in the upcoming elections to any of the millions of Palestinians under Israeli rule who have no right to vote. It’s all done on Facebook. The Israeli posts a status saying he/she’s willing to do it, the Palestinian tells him/her who to vote for.
The group behind the page consists of Israeli, Palestinian and international activists. Some of them took part in a similar campaign called “Give your vote”  in the 2010 elections in England. In that campaign, thousands of Englishmen gave their votes to people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana “who are directly affected by UK policies.” According to one activist from the group, the idea is to show the “lack of democracy” not only on the local level in Israel/Palestine, but also on the international level, particularly the UN, which “allows the United States to enable the occupation.”
Here are some examples of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation from the Facebook page from the last few days: