{"id":6731,"date":"2012-03-19T06:40:42","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T06:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=6731"},"modified":"2012-03-19T06:41:32","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T06:41:32","slug":"the-facebook-pages-of-public-diplomacy-the-billboards-of-unbelief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=6731","title":{"rendered":"The Facebook pages of public diplomacy & the Billboards of unbelief"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — Facebook diplomacy between Israeli and Iranian individuals, atheist proselytizing in the US, popular media uses in a “monitory” world ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have long been intrigued by some of the unofficial ways in which we communicate with one another — some of you may recall an earlier post of mine on a spate of religious arguments carried out on “duelling buses<\/a>“, while another more recent post noted some of the stencilled graffiti and at times quite sophisticated artwork featured on the walls around Tahrir Square<\/a> during the demonstrations there…<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In much the same spirit, I’d like to offer here for your consideration four thumbnails of images recently posted on Facebook by individual citizens in Israel and Iran, in response to a posting (above) by two Israeli graphic artists, Ronnie Edri<\/strong> and Michal Tamir<\/strong>, which seems to have triggered quite a response in both countries. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The two Israeli posters appear to have posted images of individuals, perhaps themselves. The Iranian posters, interestingly, used images of Abdol-Hossein Sardari<\/strong>, the “Iranian Schindler” (upper image), with a caption that reads in part:<\/p>\n

Abdol Hossain Sardari, a junior Iranian diplomat, found himself almost by accident in charge of Iran’s mission in Paris in 1940 and went on to help up to 2,000 Iranian Jews flee France…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and an image of the tomb of Esther <\/strong>and Mordecai <\/strong> — the tomb in Hamadan, Iran, of the same Jewish heroine recently celebrated at Purim, and pointedly referenced by Netanyahu <\/strong>in his gift of a Megillah<\/a> to Obama <\/strong>— and a popular site of pilgrimage for Iran’s present day Jewish population<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apparently there has been quite an exchange of these graphics<\/a>, although some have been on the more caustic side, expressing what I can only call .. strangelove<\/em>…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

2.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My other graphic examples are of a pair of billboards recently put up by American Atheists<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As we might expect, these were to be displayed (respectively) in or near Jewish (above) and Muslim (below) communities — the Jewish-oriented billboard in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York, and the Islamic-oriented billboard in Paterson, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

According to the MSNBC report<\/a> where I first ran across these billboards a couple of weeks ago, a Williamsburg rabbi said the sign in his district was “a disgrace. .. The name of God is very holy to us and to the whole world” — while the American Atheists’ president David Silverman reported he had not received “any blowback” from the Muslim Community in Patterson.<\/p>\n

One imagines that some in each community would have had hurt feelings, while some in each community clearly had the good sense to show tolerance.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These images tie in, I believe, with John Keane<\/strong>‘s notion of “monitory democracy<\/a>” [link is to .pdf] that our blog-friend David Ronfeldt<\/strong> discussed in his post<\/a> today… with our discussions here [1<\/a>, 2<\/a>] of the wicked complexity of many of the problems that face us… and also perhaps of the Slaughter <\/strong>doctrine [1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>]of the responsibility to protect<\/em>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — Facebook diplomacy between Israeli and Iranian individuals, atheist proselytizing in the US, popular media uses in a “monitory” world ] . I have long been intrigued by some of the unofficial ways in which we communicate with one another — some of you may recall an earlier post of mine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[361,384,727,526,134,346,21,471,307,102,644,93,635,472,687,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-art","category-atheists","category-charles-cameron","category-computers","category-connectivity","category-creativity","category-cultural-intelligence","category-david-ronfeldt","category-diplomacy","category-graphical-thinking","category-iran","category-israel","category-public-diplomacy","category-specs","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6731"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6771,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731\/revisions\/6771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}