Bill board bloggers in Jerusalem

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Don't let vandals stop our Real Peace Talks campaign - spread the word so we can put our billboards back up with even more support!


Over 80,000 of us signed the campaign for Real Middle East Peace Talks, and the diplomatic buzz is growing. We put up billboards in Jerusalem created by Avaaz members there. The response was great, including national media coverage – then a couple of extremists vandalised the billboards.

This is good news -- it shows we're making a real impact. Let's put the billboards back up with even more signatures, and put them in Tel Aviv as well as Jerusalem! Can you help spread the word before next week, to grow the campaign to more than 100,000 voices for peace? Just email your friends now and ask them to add their name at:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/real_middle_east_talks

That'll show the vandals: every time they deface our message we'll put it back up with more support. Most Israelis and Palestinians say they want proper negotiations: we refuse to be silenced by a small minority. You can see the billboards via the link above. At this moment of upheaval in Middle East politics, these mock travel adverts are challenging and disarming the Israeli public -- here's some of what the Jerusalem Post said:

While enticing Israelis to travel by featuring attractive women and scenery are nothing new, these billboards were created to stop Israelis in their tracks. These ads feature "enemy states" such as Saudi Arabia and Syria in a whole new way, with only the fine print noting that the price is for one room and a double bed - dependent on the Saudi peace plan.

"Israelis visiting Damascus, Dubai, even Jericho is inconceivable today – unless they're in uniform," said Hilder. "We wanted to help Israelis look and think again about the Arab Peace Initiative."

We've had a great response to the ads, though Israel's politicians are still dancing around the idea of real peace talks based on 1967 borders. So don't let the extremists silence us - spread the word, get us to 100,000 and we'll put up even more billboards!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/real_middle_east_talks

With hope,

Paul, Galit, Ricken, Ben, Graziela, Iain and all at Avaaz

Ps: our Stop the Clash video (part of this campaign) got an amazing response from people all round the world and won a non-profit video competition ( http://www.nten.org/blog/2007/04/25/things-we-like). See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWyJJQbFago

Some of the billboards media coverage -

Jerusalem Post article: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1177514488411&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Ice News (a big Israeli news site, in Hebrew): http://www.ice.co.il/article.asp?catId=1&pgId=105568