Tech Bootcamps in Palestine
visitpalestine.tech
visitpalestine.tech
Happy to answer any questions not addressed on the site.
Were they still stamping at Erez in 2016?
So you are saying it's not safe for a Jew to come. As wearing a kippah can lead to altercations.
“Avoid wearing outward signs of support for Palestinians (kaffiyah, slogan t-shirts, etc.) and/or Islam in Settler-controlled areas in the West Bank”
Takes 2 to tango right?
Edit: considered not responding more, but since this seems like a possible safety issue: having spent many years living in the region (and with family who still live there), if you're an openly practicing Jew you should not spend extended amounts of time in the West Bank or Gaza unless you're willing to risk your life for your cause. A day trip is probably fine.
I'll take that.
I think it was a bit of an uneccessary thing to point out when the website tries to be neutral about the issue and just tries to do something good. Don't get me wrong, if I am ever in the middle east, I'm not stepping out of Israel.
Can you elaborate on this?
And the situation is not help by French associations, like the CRIF, that label support of Palestine as antisemitism.
I might have problems or be expelled
Crossing the checkpoint was very easy. I just took an Israeli Egged bus to the settlement, visited the Cave of the Patriarchs, and walked to the checkpoint.
The Israeli guard didn't mind, just glanced at my passport and visa slip. A Palestinian hostel owner who happened to be on the street asked where I was staying. I told him I was going to stay with my friend Mo, who is a CouchSurfing host with hundreds of references, extremely hospitable, and truly legendary. You must visit him. That hostel owner said he knows Mo, and told me it's the right way!
I wasn't sure about how to take a bus and didn't want to pay for a taxi, so I walked for 45 minutes to Mo's place next to the university. During that time, people struck up conversations 3 times. That's more outgoing than the previous 3 days in Israel! People were happy to see a tourist there.
Water shortage is an issue. I was told that the Palestinian authorities can't improve the water supply because it's controlled by Israel. Palestinians pay double taxes, to both governments. Israeli shekels are used. It's peaceful, although the streets look like images from the news of bombed-out areas in Syria after 10 years of peace to rebuild and start businesses. What is more comfortable to you, riches with inequality or people living in equal poverty?
Israel, on the other hand, is rich and clean, with a good bus network (except on Fridays). People are more wary of strangers, though. I hadn't made an opinion of the political situation until my visit.
Re-entering Israel was easy, on a bus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Some military came on board and looked at the passports and visa slips, but didn't cross-check anything online.
On the way out at Ben Gurion airport, they didn't ask where I'd travelled on that trip. Instead, they noticed I'd been to Malaysia several years ago, and asked me many questions about that (Malaysia is a Muslim country). I had no problems with the Taiwan passport sticker [1]. They gave me another passport sticker [2] with a barcode beginning with "5", meaning I'm low-risk. They didn't check electronics. Most likely, you won't have a problem. If you're from a "Muslim country" then perhaps you can visit through the border with Jordan instead, just to avoid Israel. But Israel's quite nice to visit too (the sunset over the ocean from Haifa is beautiful).
[1] https://www.facebook.com/TaiwanPassportSticker/photos/a.1466...
[2] https://bemusedbackpacker.com/2017/01/16/what-to-expect-at-i...
What's your ethnicity, what passport are you traveling on, and what's your family's religion (not your own personal religious beliefs, but your background)? Based on your username, I'm willing to bet that your situation isn't particularly applicable to the concerns OP expressed.
Israeli security is no joke, and they perform a degree of profiling that is explicitly illegal in the US (and some European countries, though to a lesser degree). There's some recent pushback against this and a few recent victories in Israeli courts for Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs, but the degree of profiling that occurs legally within Israel is still way further than what most other countries practice.
People who are from the US and Europe - particularly if they're white and especially if they're Jewish - generally have a good impression of Israeli security because they're rarely subjected to the most intrusive parts. People who are Muslim - especially if they're dark-skinned or Arab-looking - tend to have much worse experiences.
I know this will get downvoted because it's not the experience that most HN readers will have, but it is the experience that slim expects that they'll have, as evidenced by the very question they asked.
I almost missed flights from and to Israel twice because of their security. In one case, I took the wrong train and arrived at the airport under an hour from my flight, so they did extra screening and I barely made it. In the other, as I was boarding my flight, they refused to let me on (saying I should have known to come to security early - I was three hours early) until I went through two rounds of brief interrogation and they brought my carry on bag through security again, and broke the main zipper, and refused to pay for it. In another instance, my flight was delayed on the tarmac until several passengers (who had been sitting quietly) were forceably removed.
All I can say is that the initial screening is done mostly by young women who are following very closely to some training they have and looking for how you react to questions. Most are secular and think religious Jews are only ultra-orthodox (because that's what they see day in and day out), so when I try to patiently explain that yes, I'm religious, no, I'm not orthodox, yes, I learned my Hebrew in Jerusalem at the municipal ulpan (intensive course for new immigrants), but no, I didn't take a package from anyone and packed my bags all by myself ... off to secondary screening.
It's frustrating, but you just can't take it personally. They're just playing the odds as they see them and going by the percentages.
Ben Gurion is a great airport once you get past security.
I've always been a bit bummed that as software engineers, there tend to be less overseas volunteering opportunities than other forms of engineering.
I'll be honest and admit that I just want to go to cool places and do work there. There's always lots of roles for civil and mechanical engineers, as well as doctors, but there's never much need for software engineers in the jungles of Cambodia or the beaches of the Solomon Islands.
However, if companies desire a specific set of skills related to, but not exactly computer science (programming), it makes a lot of sense to create school focused on that particular subject — especially if they're willing to sponsor it. Further, it adds value to society as a whole, as by creating the goods/services people want cheaper, standard of living goes up.
What about the offshore workers? They might benefit for a short time until an even cheaper location opens up, that’s all. Once the jobs are mobile, they will keep moving.
Far better to create indigenous industries.
I've worked with a few bootcamp grads in the past. Some have been absolutely woeful, and others have been some of the most skilled developers I've ever worked with. While the bootcamp itself might be a way to get cheaper workers in, I'd argue that if it's producing good developers then it's a necessary evil.
Also, experience will always be valued by good employers, and an injection of inexperience into the workforce often means rising salaries/rates for senior developers.
It’s not as simple as people on either extreme of the issue would have you believe.
Gaza on the other hand requires a ton of permits to get in
Gaza is a different ball game, it's always quiet, almost eerie at Erez, but it will still take over an hour to get out from being dropped off. Getting in is a little quicker.
lots of options here. Cheers!
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've asked you at least half a dozen times to stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. If you keep doing it, we're going to have to ban you. Please re-read the guidelines and take the spirit of this site to heart when commenting.
It's not that I don't think the question matters or that I don't care or don't want to reply properly—especially to such a horrible accusation as justifying genocide. It's that I literally—in the general case—can't. Even 5 of me couldn't.
So I'll just say that your comment broke this guideline, among others: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." The only thing that posts like "gotta be careful, might get bombed by the israeli's" and "what a slimy little weasel he is" do is rile people up and make this site worse. So you can't post like that here.
Edit: ahh I see it was casual spamming of your own site.