Monopoly World Edition
JERUSALEM ON THE MONOPOLY BOARD
You can, if you wish, have your say over Jerusalem.
Monopoly boards traditionally show properties within a single city
The manufacturers of Monopoly (which, they claim, is the best-selling board game in the world) are holding an online poll to decide which cities should be in their forthcoming "World Edition" of the game.
You can see the leader board and vote here.
As of 18 February, "Jerusalem, Israel" was fifth on the leader board, sandwiched between "Riga, Latvia" and "Paris, France".
This is no accident. The campaign group One Jerusalem is determinedly encouraging people to make Jerusalem number one, by the time voting closes at the end of the month.
See the One Jerusalem campaign page here.
Yehiel Leiter is the director general of One Jerusalem, a group that, in its mission statement, declares a single objective: "Maintaining a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel."
The Monopoly campaign, says Leiter, "puts Jerusalem on the table. It has people not avoid Jerusalem because it's contested".
One Jerusalem has other campaigns: it is encouraging people to pressurise the orthodox Sephardi Shas party into leaving the governing coalition, and so turn the government which talks of negotiating a potentially Jerusalem-dividing agreement with the Palestinians into a minority administration.
The group also says it has handed out 128,000 golden ribbons on the streets of Jerusalem (the colour is because of the song, "Jerusalem of Gold").
MUDI OR MAHMOUD
Mudi had a golden ribbon fluttering from the wing mirror of his taxi, until recently.
But Mudi is unusual, in that he is an Israeli Arab.
"The truth is," he told me, as I sat alongside him in his taxi, "Jewish people, especially religious people, won't stop any taxi driven by an Arab."
But when they see a golden ribbon, says Mudi, "they know no Arab guy would have it on his car".
Jerusalem from the air
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Mudi has another advantage: he says he does not "look" like an Arab, and he speaks Hebrew fluently. Passengers mistake him for a Jew.
"And very, very few people are not prejudiced," in what they say to him. At least, that is the case in Jerusalem.
"In Tel Aviv," he says, "it is exactly the opposite. They don't care I'm an Arab".
When his Jerusalem passengers disembark, Mudi says he tells them that his name is, in fact, Mahmoud.
He says, though, that he has not felt "comfortable" with the ribbon. Indeed, the other day, when he was washing his taxi, he ripped it off, and so far has not replaced it.
Still, many of his Arab colleagues continue to tie a ribbon around their rear-view or wing mirrors, in order not to put off potential customers.
Some, says Mudi, even wear a yarmulke (Jewish skullcap).
DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION
A postscript on the fate of "Jerusalem, Israel" and the new edition of Monopoly.
As has been noted before in this diary, the international consensus is that the status of Jerusalem has yet to be decided.
The United Nations partition vote of 1947 held that the city should be a "corpus separatum", under international supervision. That vote has not been superseded in the UN.
When approached, Hasbro, the American manufacturers of Monopoly, promised that they would not second-guess the UN, should Jerusalem be included.
In an email to the BBC, they stated: "Due to space limitations no selected city's board space will have any descriptive text aside from said city's common name."
Yet to be resolved is how much Jerusalem will cost. The Old Kent Road (Mediterranean Avenue) or Mayfair (Boardwalk)?
Visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7250326.stm for the full article and http://www.monopolyworldvote.com/en_GB/world/leaders to see the up to date city rankings.
Monopoly voting: a new concept with surprising results
Voting for cities to be included in the new 75th anniversary Monopoly World edition seems like a novel idea, but it may bring up a lot of hard feelings between countries. At first I assumed this would just end up as a big popularity contest, but this article describes how the “One Jerusalem campaign” is taking advantage of the voting.
I visited the ”One Jerusalem” campaign website and am surprised at how serious people are at getting Jerusalem into either the space of Park Place or the jackpot, Boardwalk. Comments on the site argue Jerusalem deserves a high place on the board because of the political/religious turmoil it has suffered. With easy to understand instructions available in multiple languages, the site encourages people to vote for Jerusalem every day up through February 28th, the closing day for voting. It seems like Monopoly is uniting a country which has gone through a lot. It “puts Jerusalem on the table. It has people not avoid Jerusalem because it's contested," says the director of “One Jerusalem.”
I also checked out the Monopoly website to see the rankings of other cities. The last time I checked it was 1. Istanbul, 2. Montreal, 3. Cape Town, 4. Riga, Latvia, 5. London, 6. Jerusalem… Frankly, I’m surprised by how low some of the super-power countries are on the list: Japan, China, and the U.S. etc. Who knew Serbia and Israel would make the cut at all, but after Kosovo’s split and the Gaza strip conflict, having them on the board would make sense because they are a big part of this decade. Another shocker is Latvia, #4 on the list now. I wonder if a campaign similar to the one for Jerusalem is going on there. If so, what’s their reasoning?
I don’t really agree with how Hasbro is allowing people to vote once a day. It really should be one vote per person, or no voting at all. Although, I would add that the voting is a creative way to get more people engaged and interested in the product so that in the long run more games will sell than if Hasbro just chose 20 cities itself. If it was done that way, the cities would be totally different. In some ways this is an experiment in freedom of speech for the entire world, minus people who do not have access or don’t know about it.
I guess I have mixed feelings about this new concept, but it will be interesting to see how the rankings end up after the next week and a half and if Jerusalem will make it to the top, or not.