Comment by heh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by heh | Hacker News Reader

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As you pointed out, Egypt has the border closed and Israel has a restricted open border. People don't seem to realize that the "siege" on Gaza isn't just an Israeli-Palestinian issue, and that Israel no longer controls the Gaza Strip. It's actually controlled by the Hamas, a theocratic terrorist organization. Imagine if the W.B.C took over Kansas, started shooting rockets at your civilians in Colorado for being pot smoking heathens, and then wanted open borders?

Ironically movements like the BDS actually cause Palestinians who work for Israeli companies to loose their jobs.[1] Liberal minded Israelis make up about half of the population and there are many efforts to bridge the gap through entrepreneurship [2][3]. The left in Israel did fairly well in the last election, and actually gained some seats. [4]

I think if you actually talk to the Israelis and the Palestinians in tech, not the politicians, you'll see that that most of them want to live in peace with their neighbors. Also, peace is good for (start up / tech) business.

[1]http://www.timesofisrael.com/victory-for-bds-as-sodastreams-... [2]http://www.inc.com/jill-krasny/palestinian-internship-progra... [3]http://www.elephant.org.il/events/event-in-haifa-for-creatin... [4]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/world/middleeast/israel-be...

> Ironically movements like the BDS actually cause Palestinians who work for Israeli companies to loose their jobs.

This argument was often made against anti-apartheid sanctions on South Africa. The answer was that it was for the oppressed population to decide.

1 - I doubt anybody asked the Hamas-oppressed population of Gaza. When they'll want to boycott their employers they'll just quit their jobs.

2 - The situation is very different from the south-African "apartheid". Gaza is a sovereign territory with an hostile religious fanatic government that forced Egypt and Israel to maintain highly secured borders. The Israeli law does not discriminate its citizens and there are Palestinian parliament members and judges.

3 - By employing both Israelis and Palestinians, companies actually contribute more to peace and equality than BDS ever will.

> The situation is very different from the south-African "apartheid". Gaza is a sovereign territory with an hostile religious fanatic government that forced Egypt and Israel to maintain highly secured borders. The Israeli law does not discriminate its citizens and there are Palestinian parliament members and judges.

One of the most comprehensive sources on the Israel apartheid comparison is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analo...

> By employing both Israelis and Palestinians, companies actually contribute more to peace and equality than BDS ever will.

A bunch of human rights organizations have evidence that the Palestinians are exploited as a cheap labor that is outside of Israeli labor protections:

https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/04/13/ripe-abuse/palestinian...

It would be cool if Israeli companies adopted somethign akin to the Sullivan principles which were adopted by ethical South African companies during the apartheid era:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_principles

Then you know they are not just using Palestinian labor for cost saving reasons, but the companies are showing support and are working towards breaking down the system of inequality that is currently in place there.

Writing as an Israeli.

There is no inequality inherent in the system. The fact that Palestinian nationals (who are not Israeli citizens) are mostly employed in cheap jobs is no different from Filipinos or Chinese being employed in cheap jobs abroad. Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jews, in everything from education to employment. They even get preferential acceptance to universities (lower acceptance requirements).

Claiming there is an apartheid in Israel is simply FUD.

I live in Australia where Filipinos and Chinese work in 'Cheap jobs' paying $19 an hour, the standard minimum wage. The government busted a chain of convenience stores for under paying people on student visas who worked more than their limit of 20 hours. The students were given immunity against deportation for admitting they worked more than their limit, so they can come out and complain, so that the government can force the convenience store chain to pay reparations to those student workers. If this was Israel, they'd blame they exceeded their limit, deported them and blamed them for working too much and accepting less than minimum wage, resulting in no compensation paid out.

So no, you don't get to say the rest of the world do the same as Israel. To do so is FUD. Israel is one of a kind. I understand why Israel had always had a defensive posture and thinking. Lots of shit happened in the past. But today? Israel is strong, and it is doing too much to keep the Gazans down. What other country blows up 20000 houses and slaughtered hundreds of civilians in response to 2 terrorist deaths?

Can you even imagine New Zealand firing, an increasing number of rockets, every day? Sending their special units to kidnap and slaughter innocent children?

Just last week, four people were murdered in a restaurant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2016_Tel_Aviv_shooting). Can you imagine this Happening in Melbourne? Can you imagine a thing like this, sponsored by the New Zealand government who immediately declares the murderers as heroes and buys houses for their families?

There have been numerous incidents like this in the last couple of years and like before, since no one can live under terror attacks, a war will start. Like before, you will only hear about the retaliation, you will only see photos of destruction on the Palestinian side. You won't see how Hamas executes is own people for "collaborating" with Israel (or just because they don't like them), how it forces them to serve as human shields for its deadly rockets. You will criticize Israel out of understandable, but very misplaced sympathy.

You claiming his FUD claiming is FUD, is FUD.

It's all very simple, really. Israel is like the rest of the world and we're all just waiting for the world to realize the actual problem, which is:

--The crazy, murderous, religious fanatics who want rule the world (and kill all Jews, but I'm not sure anyone cares about this detail)--

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant#Statements_abou...)

(it's shocking we could not all just get along...)

>3 - By employing both Israelis and Palestinians, companies actually contribute more to peace and equality than BDS ever will.

Exploiting an occupied population does nothing to contribute to peace. It would be better for Israeli companies to leave Palestinians alone as a labor force and employ Israelis.

This answer doesn't make any sense: people decided to go work for israeli companies, but pressure of activists from US and Europe made them lose their jobs.

The point is that all the same arguments were brought up against the previous anti-apartheid movement (the one in South Africa) at the time, and today almost no one would argue that those sanctions (and boycotts and divestments) weren't justified. Least of all on the basis that they "hurt, not help" the oppressed population. So this objection to the same tactics now is unconvincing.

The difference is that Israel is not apartheid (obviously).

The Palestinians are a different country. In South Africa they are all one country so they have to work together.

In contrast with Palestinians it's a different country entirely, so when you prevent them from working, you have little effect on Israel at all, you just hurt the Palestinians.

Officially, the black areas of South Africa during apartheid were different countries too. It seems to be something we've forgotten because apartheid South Africa has few supporters these days and it was obvious they weren't really since they were completely dependent on white South Africa economically and politically.

> Officially, the black areas of South Africa during apartheid were different countries too.

Well, no. Some black areas in South Africa (and South West Africa under South Africa's occupation) were converted into notionally internally self-governing regions, but of the twenty (10 each in South and South West Africa), only 10 (4 in South Africa, 6 in South West Africa) were ever even nominally (that is, according to the South African government -- no other government recognized any of them) independent states, and, in any case, there were a lot of black areas in South (and South West) Africa that were not part of either these "homelands", whether the notionally independent ones are otherwise.

(Now, in 1970, all of the black people of South Africa, whether they lived in the "homelands" or not, were assigned citizenship in one of them and had their South African citizenship cancelled. But that doesn't mean that the "homelands" covered all the black areas.)

Please provide an example of a software engineer living in Gaza that was working for an Israeli company but lost their job because of pressure from US and European activists.

I would be pretty surprised if you can find even one example. Heck, I'd be surprised if you can even find an example of a software engineer living in Gaza that has ever worked for an Israeli company at all.

Or, perhaps, an example of someone living in Gaza attending an Israeli university (they can't).

Why restrict yourself to Gazan software engineers? There were hundreds of Palestinians working for SodaStream in the West Bank. When it moved within the Green Line they all lost their jobs. It's not entirely clear the move was to do with pressure for activists but it seems reasonable to hypothesise that it had something to do with it.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/27/471885452/w...

> Why restrict yourself to Gazan software engineers?

Cause that's what I thought we were talking about?

https://electronicintifada.net/content/sodastream-treats-us-...

> > Why restrict yourself to Gazan software engineers?

> Cause that's what I thought we were talking about?

Maybe. The narrative of the thread seemed to have moved to Palestinians working for Israeli companies in general. Sorry if I misunderstood.

> "electronicintifada.net"

There's a big clue in that name.

Parent comment that changed conversation to this topic clearly didn't limit the subject only to software engineers — neither did I.

> Or, perhaps, an example of someone living in Gaza attending an Israeli university (they can't).

Yes — Gaza citizens wanted independence, and they got it, with everything that goes along. I'm pretty sure that there are PA citizens learning in israeli universities though, especially Ariel.

> I'm pretty sure that there are PA citizens learning in israeli universities though, especially Ariel.

Ariel is probably the worst example you could have chosen. Palestinian residents of the West Bank are not allowed to enter the settlement of Ariel that Ariel University is in, so that seems unlikely. I'm pretty sure there are zero PA citizens enrolled at Ariel.

I would not be surprised if there are zero PA citizens enrolled at any Israeli universities, I'm not 'pretty sure' there are zero, but pretty sure there are very very few if any, and possibly zero or nearly so. (see for example http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2009/05/28/banning-palesti... http://gisha.org/press/1033 )

The suggestion that Gaza residents have obtained "everything that goes along with independence" is too ridiculous to say much more about.

whose answer?

The answer of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, which few (in the West at least) would now argue was wrong.

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