[CPWG] Open Letter to ICANN from Jeff Neuman

[jeff at jjnsolutions.com]

All,

I wanted to bring this incredibly sensitive matter to the attention of 
the At Large.  It is a letter I wrote to the Board and CEO of ICANN.  I 
just wanted to forward this on and perhaps this is something that the 
At-Large wants to discuss.  If ICANN truly wants to live up to its 
Expected Standards of Behavior, they need to take firm swift action.

https://www.jjnsolutions.com/post/open-letter-to-icann#:~:text=Open%20Letter%20to,openness%20and%20transparency.

Open Letter to ICANN
I am posting this letter I just sent to ICANN's Chair and Vice Chair as 
well as to the CEO regarding the statements made by the founder of an 
organization that hosts an instance of the L-Root Server. I am not 
posting this to be critical of ICANN at all. ICANN has always done the 
right thing here and I am sure they will do what is right this time as 
well. I have faith in ICANN Org and their leaders. So if anyone posts 
anything about this open letter, please make sure to include that I do 
NOT fault ICANN for any of this.


Dear Tripti, Sally and Danko,

I wanted to thank you for your unequivocal statement at the ICANN78 
Public Forum that certain political commentary has no place at ICANN and 
at ICANN meetings. As a Jewish person that lost much of my extended 
family in the Holocaust in Germany (where the meeting was hosted), it 
was truly upsetting to see a well-intentioned color-board ruined with 
words which represent a movement that stands for the eradication of 
Israel and the extermination of all Jews in the world. While I certainly 
do not want to stifle any free speech, at the same time, people need to 
recognize that their words have meaning and can be hurtful to others.

It is on this same matter that I want to draw your attention to the 
comments by Talal Abu Ghazaleh, the founder and chairman of the 
Jordan-based organization, Talal Abu-Ghazzaleh Organization. In these 
awful comments 
(https://www.memri.org/tv/jordanian-businessman-talal-abu-ghazaleh-gaza-losses-thousands-russia-millions-in-wwii-jews-holocaust), 
Talal engages in explicit antisemitic speech where he states: ""The Jews 
do not have any ideology. All they care about is money and interests. I 
had a friend who was a German cabinet member. I once asked him: 'When 
Hitler, may God forgive him, carried out the Holocaust, why didn’t he 
finish the job and kill all the Jews?’ He said to me: 'It's the other 
way around, but don't tell anyone I said this. He left a group of them 
on purpose, so that people would know why we carried out the Holocaust. 
When you would be tormented by them, you would know the reason.'"

I also recall that TAG-Org hosts an instance of ICANN's L Root in Jordan 
(https://www.agip.com/news.aspx?id=6292). I believe ICANN must take 
immediate action to remove this instance from TAG-Org and find a new 
home for this instance. In addition, ICANN should make an unequivocal 
statement ASAP that it does not condone such hate speech and that it 
will not have any partnerships whose founders or leaders espouse such 
views.

I do not consider myself a political activist by any means, but I care 
about ICANN and its future. And that future cannot associate itself with 
organizations that support antisemitism. Other Organizations have 
already come out against TAG-Org and ICANN should as well. See 
https://www.managingip.com/article/2cdiik8ybhxoc337hchds/managing-ips-statement-regarding-talal-abu-ghazaleh 
and 
https://www.iam-media.com/article/statement-removal-of-talal-abu-ghazaleh-the-ip-hall-of-fame.

Please feel free to post this message to the Correspondence page. I am 
going to post this on my blog in the spirit of openness and 
transparency.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cpwg/attachments/20231106/71ea4140/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 5jldg440.png
Type: image/png
Size: 11989 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cpwg/attachments/20231106/71ea4140/5jldg440-0001.png>