Gaza: Coding in a conflict zone | Hacker News Reader

Gaza: Coding in a conflict zone

bbc.co.uk

102 pointsgoodcanadian88 comments

Having worked closely with GSG for the last few years and done 2 trips there to mentor and host workshops, I would encourage anybody who has the time and interest in sharing their knowledge to reach out to them and help them. As the saying goes that constraint breeds creativity, I have never meet a more energetic, enthusiastic bunch of people who just want to make themselves useful and build something that they can be proud of while helping themselves. As unfortunate as their situation is, it does not stop them or the GSG crew and I believe that one day in the future, this effort will have laid the foundations for a vibrant and impactful engineering community. If anyone has any questions, please ask away and I can answer.

Be more precise. What kinda help they need? I aint got money, are they still enthusiatic about taking non-monetary help? Or is the help in such case simply reduced to "well contact them and ask them if they need anything" (in this case I can tell you their answer even without bothering to email them: "nah, we only need money bruh")?

I assure you that I dont have nothing against Gaza and its inhabitants, what irritates me is that you encourage to help them, yet you use the language so vague that it sounds more like an advertisement of their "future vibrant community" (yea, without actual drinking water and severe overpopulation, but with computers, sure, sounds plausible), without any clearly pronounced areas where they need help, except of money of course.

I would assume the GP means "to mentor and host workshops".

In some cases offering money _is_ the best way to offer support. When goods are donated they're often not what's actually needed, or not in the proportions required. Planet Money covered this in an episode: https://www.npr.org/2015/11/27/457565052/food-banks-pickle-g... (transcript rather than episode link). This relates to food banks, but it also affects other organizations: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/aid-workers-at... .

If you can't offer that support then I suspect that spreading the word about these projects is the next best thing.

Edited to add additional links, tidy up language.

Mentors go there from all aspects. From engineering to marketing to design. I come from a technical background, and on the first instance I did a presentation but found that it was not as useful as I had hoped. But I noticed a lack of fundamental knowledge around concepts and tech that we use on a daily basis (e.g no monitoring and a lot of manual work being done). Second time I went, I held a 3 day continuous delivery workshop introducing them to concepts like CI, CD and testing. This enabled them to deploy a simple hellow world server through a pipeline with monitoring. The feedback was that the workshop was what they needed.

If you are interested to find out more, I would suggest that you reach out to them and ask them. They have a number of initiatives (e.g coding bootcamps) and its best to understand what they have coming up and where your skills could fit in. Money no doubt would help the GSG organisation but honestly, if you can, I would go there and help on the ground. They need technical mentors more than ever.

We've banned this account for nationalistic flamewar, or whatever kind of flamewar this is, as well as for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18128852.

I could see myself doing this a few years from now. Does a Gaza stamp in your passport limit someone's entry into other countries? (eg USA)

In Germany you can have a second pass just for that purpose. It costs more though.

Yeah, the cost of an additional passport.

What I meant was that it costs more then if you get a first one new.

What? The price of a default passport in Germany is always the same. 60€ for 32 pages.

I see this recommendation quite often and wonder if you get in trouble sooner or later, at least if you want to travel to the US. I would think the purpose of a passport is a single identification with a track record. Everything else is cheating. Not?

That's rather part of the point. Many of the countries that offer a second passport believe in freer travel than some destination countries might.

Sure it is but let's be honest here, a terrorist will find a way and most of those people who suffer under this mad apparatus of fear are normal people. You just need a way to bypass this madness for the sake of reality.

Americans, but not Canadians, can also have a second passport if they request it from the state department. Commonly used for people who need to travel to Israel and have Israeli stamps/visas in their passport, but also travel to arab boycott countries for business.

You do not get a stamp in your passport from either the Palestinian territories (including Gaza) or from Israel. You will get a piece of paper rather as your stamp which you need to keep with you and show upon exit. So no repercussions from entry.

What kind of help do they require? I'd like to help but actually travelling to Gaza and risk getting stuck there is a bit outside of my comfort zone.

Gaza Sky Geeks looks like an excellent programme.

For European programmers who would like to help out with similar programmes, but perhaps not move to Gaza, be sure to check out Hack Your Future. It's currently located in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden (with I think more locations coming up), and it's teaching programming courses to refugees in those countries.

I'm sure all of them could use more volunteer teachers. Teaching a group of motivated individuals and giving them a real shot at properly being part of society is an incredibly satisfying experience.

In case you missed Manish Sinha’s “Mentoring in Gaza's first hackathon” in 2016, it is an insightful perspective that complements this article.

http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/

EDIT Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963

Thanks for the shout out. Happy to extend that AMA here in case I missed anything.

As a network engineer I would be really interested in learning some real world info about what ISPs are operating in Gaza, what their ASNs and IP space are, where their upstreams are (both network topologically, BGP adjacencies/other larger ASes, and at OSI layer 1).

If there is anyone reading this who is physically located in Gaza and using a local ISP, I could get a lot of info if you just google "what is my IP", go to one of the first few links, and reply with the results. You don't have to send your exact IP, to the /24 level of accuracy is enough.

I like Marwa Hassanein physiology. The worlds past generations have always fought over physical borders and resources. Our generation is learning to live, work and share with out these physical borders. I true believe time is our friend.

Note that the article quickly turns political, and often the follow up political discussion is not welcome here on HN.

It will take a lot of restraint for those kids to stay in development.

Of course it has to explain the circumstances and background for people who don’t know, and that necessarily will be a political discussion.

It's actually the least political article on anything in Gaza that I've seen for a long time now. The previous almost-unpolitical one was also about Gaza Sky Geeks.

That's an incredible article. It must have taken some amazing mental gymnastics to talk about the situation in Gaza and Palestine without laying any responsibility at the feet of Israel. Instead the Israeli stance is noted as being the same as Egypt, or the same as the EU.

Lets be clear, Israel's behaviour marks it out as an exception internationally. Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Israel's blockade contrvene's international law.

Gaza is ¬1M people and has received tens of BN$ of aid.

Israel has withdrawn all its forces from Gaza 10 years ago.

At what stage do Gazan start behaving like responsible adults rather than blaming the Great Satan?

Probably the moment the 'Great Satan' stops to control all flow of goods into and out of the Gaza. It's easy to say Israel has withdrawn when all they did was move a few kilometers further out.

What would you recommend Israel do when Hamas's charter literally says that they what to destroy Israel and the Jews? Hamas is Gaza's elected party and letting them import weapons is very bad for Israeli civilians.

Hamas is Israel's creation. Fatah were the dominant political force in Gaza over the decades and decades of oppression until Hamas were finally founded more recently as an attempt at firmer and less tolerant response to Israel.

Sure, but you didn't answer the question. Even if Hamas and even Gaza are totally Israel's fault, the fact that Hamas wants to destroy Israel makes some of Israel's actions pretty damn rational. What else can they do? "Shit, we pushed these Palestinians way too hard for way too long. Fair enough, they can bomb the shit out of our country now".

All that said, I'm not invested in the matter, and I'm a geopolitics noob, but I wonder what would happen if Israel would, unprovoked and unilaterally, drop all restrictions, recognize Palestina as a country and supply as much financial aid as is needed to rebuild the place. Just overnight. Wouldn't Hamas's support crumble instantly? Wouldn't the atmosphere be exactly like when they took down the Berlin wall?

I mean, would Palestinian combatants truly use the newly opened borders to immediately drive into Tel Aviv and shoot everybody? Tbh I don't see it.

Exactly. For all of Hamas' talk, it's not only reactive, it also results in a disproportionately small level of anti-Israel violence in practice due mostly to lack of resources (comparatively).

If Israel withdrew all restrictions unilaterally, would there be offensive actions by Hamas: almost certainly. But they'd likely be on a scale many orders of magnitude smaller than Israel's actions to date, and I doubt they'd be sustained.

Seriously? So following your logic the US should just let al qaeda access to weapons and let them vent off in NY.

"would there be offensive actions by [al qaeda]: almost certainly. But they'd likely be on a scale many orders of magnitude smaller than [US's actions in Afghanistan] to date, and I doubt they'd be sustained"

I hope I'll never live in a country that will allow their citizens to die in order to appease some murderous religious group.

Israel continues to block access to 35% of the arable land in Gaza, and to prevent access to 85% of it's waters. The Israeli blockade prevents access to food, fuel and medical supplies.

> At what stage do Gazan start behaving like responsible adults rather than blaming the Great Satan?

I stopped breaking your legs - at what stage do you start behaving like a responsible adult and run again rather than blaming me ?

Also, Israel's chokehold on Gaza has relaxed - but it is still a chokehold. And Egypt isn't helping either. How do you expect Gaza to function without an airport (destroyed by Israel), without a significant harbour and without even reasonably permeable land crossings ?

For some recent history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip

Israel withdrew its forces to the border, but still intervened often. It controls the population register, who and what gets in and out including essential medicines and people who need urgen medical care. As noted it restricts access to much of the farmland and fishing areas. It’s for these reasons that many consider Gaza to still be occupied territory.

So lets get this straight - the single variable that explains the situation of millions of people happens to be a subjective opinion of the moral failings of people you've never met. Nice!

> withdrawn all its forces from Gaza 10 years ago

That doesn't include airstrikes which are regular and ongoing:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-ai...

no contradiction there.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_balloon#Gaza_Strip_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant#Violence_agains...

(just a few samples)

Israel withdrawn but there is still an ongoing (sometimes quiet) war.

Sir, gently revoke thyself from this thread with your blatant antisemitism/antizionisn.

Why are you confusing antisemitism and antizionism?

The poster is criticising the actions of a state, that's not anti-semitism in any way. He didn't even say anything about jews or judaism.

Don't bother, he created a throwaway just to say stupid shit. There's no point in following his game, downvote, flag and ignore is the best course of action.

I don't know if the OP of this thread is part of the antizionism camp. I can only assert that he is an idiot (He looks at the map and cannot see the long border that is shared between Gaza and Egypt)

BUT antisemitism == antizionism as it simply design to strip Jews from their own homeland. Antizionism is not part of a global anti nationality movement that says "Let's abolish the 57 Islamic countries, the 21 Arab countries and this one Jewish state" its one and only goal is to deny from the Jews what many other have.

I don't think anyone who claims to be anti-zionist apart from the far-right of the spectrum calls for the destruction of Israel.

The "homeland" reason is stupid. Religion should have no say in politics, including the founding of states.

It is only relevant that it is what a major part of Gaza population claims.

Israeli people feel that anti-zionist effectively results in giving weapons and access to those who wish to use them, which means destruction and ethnic murder. Unwillingness the explain how this outcome is prevented seems to many as complete alignment with Hamas goals and effectively (indirectly) calling for the destruction of Israel.

Not to lean either way, but it would be nice if it was possible to criticize Israel without it being conflated with antisemitism. Criticizing Saudi Arabia, for example, doesn't typically cause people to assume I'm criticizing Islam.

You can criticize Israel as much as you want. But what people so often do is to apply different morals to Israel and other countries. And that's is pure antisemitism.

Israel gets the same level of expectations as any other 'western' democratic state as it ultimately wants to be part of if it isn't already the Western community.

What's with the ye olde language anyway?

Also it's not bad to criticize a state for dickish behaviour. That's not antizionism, that's calling a spade a spade.

"anti" = opposition.

Opposition can have various degrees.

The terms you used are often reserved for substantial prejudice and discrimination (see Allport's scale).

We've banned many accounts for antisemitic comments. If you want to see what that looks like, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18132624 is an example from this thread. (You'll need to set 'showdead' to 'yes' in your profile to see it, because I'm not going to unkill it just to make a point.)

That's not what padraic7a posted, you can't do personal attacks here, and since it looks like you created this account just to do flamewar, I've banned it too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It takes some real unique ability to look at Gaza's map and missing the fact that it has a very long border with ... Egypt. So even if Gaza is an "open air prison" there is more than one guard to it.

The border with Egypt is walled. The wall also extends underground to prevent smuggling.

The Gaza strip cannot be accessed by air or sea either.

Are you suggesting that the border with Egypt should allow smuggling? The point is that it is a border with Egypt, not Israel. Goods can (and do) enter from there.

> Are you suggesting that the border with Egypt should allow smuggling?

No, I am not. I am describing that wall.

> Goods can (and do) enter from there.

No, they don't. Only people are allowed through the Gaza/Egypt border (controlled by the EU).

Fine, so the EU is seiging Gaza with Egypt.

Though I think your data is not up to date the important fact remains the same: Israel does not control that border. Talking about the embrago and selectivly only mentioning Israel is a curious thing and to me it seems biased against that non-EU non-muslim state.

Please pay more attention to what I posted: I never mentioned Israel, and I am not biased against them.

The Gaza/Egypt border only allows people, not goods. Goods need to go through Israel/Gaza borders.

If you disagree with this, go talk to the administrators of those borders or modify the treaties that govern them.

If goods could freely pass back and forth there wouldn't be so many tunnels.

"Goods need to go through Israel/Gaza borders"- unless Egypt and EU will want to let goods go through the Egypt/Gaza border.

I'm not arguing that goods are currently flowing from Egypt. I'm saying that they could if Egypt and the EU would want them to. So the original comment you responded to was correct in wondering why Egypt is not being mentioned.

Go read about Camp David accords, Egypt-Israel peace treaty and the whole mess of UN resolutions involving Israel and after you do that, let me know if it just depends on Egypt.

Indeed. And not by Israel[0] ; I think the reason Israel gets most of the criticism here is that Israel is a western, democratic party, but by no means is it the only one to blame in this story.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Egypt_border#Buff...

But it's a false equivalence, because Gaza is part of the country of Israel not Egypt. This perspective would make sense if you had a two state solution but in the current perspective it makes absolutely no sense. It's like we put some region of France under lockdown and people were like "but that region borders Germany! The real villains are the Germans!" whilst France was refusing to grant the region either political independence or allow it to become part of Germany. It's that silly to mention Egypt.

That's just a bad analogy.

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

Gaza was part of Turkey (Ottoman) and was a part of Britain and was a part of Egypt and was a part of Israel and it is an independent region since 2005.

It's more like Belgium in your France Germany analogy. France has no control over the Belgium-German border.

Why is this being down-voted? it is a correct and relevant statement.

> Israel's blockade contrvene's international law.

I'm not an expert in international law, but blaming a country for protecting it's citizens from being bombed into oblivion is just nuts. The only thing this "blockade" is intended to do is to stop Hamas from building rockets. Everything that cannot be used to build rockets goes in and out through any crossing every day of the week.

That's factually incorrect. There are things that go in/out of Gaza but in very limited supply. The blockade (why is it in quotes?) was created more than 10 years ago for political reasons as a way to pressure the people of Gaza to turn against Hamas. Ever since, it achieved the exact opposite. To remind you, ~2 million people have been living under this siege since then.

Don't fool your self - putting 2 million people under siege is not self protection.

PS - the US definition for terrorism is "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.". Just saying.

No one is bombing Israel into oblivion. It's not true just because you keep saying it. Palestinians need to defend themselves otherwise Israel will genocide them. How is that wrong?

You're either very ignorant or very malicious. Israel is not performing any kind of genocide.

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

The sum total of 50 years of the Israeli Palestinian conflict since 1967 has resulted in about the same number of casualties on both sides combined as the Mexican drug cartel violence last year alone, if either party is attempting genocide they are executing it very poorly.

Really jogs the noggin' as to why this particular country receives the preferential treatment it does on the international stage in spite of actions that would have any other country sanctioned or bombed to smithereens. I can't quite figure it out! It's also pretty interesting how this comment was able to draw out so many purely organic defensive comments, more quickly than even a thread critical of China would.

Look where it is - middle east. It is by far the most US-friendly country in whole region, even if something would go wrong with all muslim western-aligned governments, US can rest assured that Israel will remain an ally. They don't have that many other options I think.

When politics, power and money enter the game, in region so rich in oil (meaning trillions of $$), some humanitarian concerns are thrown quickly out of the window because 'priorities'.

I find it hilarious in the worst way possible - Israel, by definition jewish country (although not 100%), is running probably biggest concentration camp in the world these days. History doing some 5-dimensional circles and laughing on all of us. Palestinians are not helping much to improve their own situation, but after 60+ years behind the fence, who can blame them.

There is the other side of the coin, the conflict is and always was a relatively "meaningless" conflict as far as the scope goes from any point you look at including casualties however the level of attention it receives is also disproportionate just as much if not more as the so called preferential treatment you claim it has.

The mental gymnastics here are required for the other side too, e.g. elections were last held in Gaza in 2006 or so; it's not remotely a democracy or republic, control is maintained by violence, see e.g. [0].

Every side of this conflict is a villain, and depending how far back you want to go, that may include the British, who created war and instability where they pulled out, in Palestine and in India/Pakistan (smart, but not very nice..)

I think the bottom line is, one may argue about how much of the responsibility lies with any participant, but it is undeniable that all have blame; and the article tries to discuss "coding in a conflict zone" rather than the conflict, and does it rather well IMHO.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip#Post-2006_elections...

Gaza doesn't have true autonomy, though. The people of Gaza can't actually vote in the elections that matter to them, i.e. those of Israel. Israel controls the airspace, the ports, and much of the land while claiming they've "disengaged."

There's no basis for a free government when the people can't exercise any kind of sovereignty.

I fail to understand your reasoning: the people of Gaza voted Hamas in, much increasing the intensity of the conflict; Hamas then essentially canceled elections - guaranteeing that no one will try to reduce the conflict.

And somehow, that is of no consequence because they cannot vote in the Israeli elections?

And yet, somehow, before Hamas, and still in the places where Fatah rules (and elections were not canceled) the situation is infinitely better.

I fail to understand your reasoning. There is no free movement or freedom at all in Gaza thanks to Israeli siege and daily bombardments. There can be no sovereignty under these conditions. The antecedent of a previous election doesn't just suddenly cancel out the precedent or current situation.

That ignores the conflict is between the one of the world's greatest military powers versus a civilian population, slowly being forced to self-dispossess with zero freedom of movement, makes the situation worse than bantustans. One side is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, and those conventions clearly make occupation and colonization of occupied land illegal. And this was the plan from the very beginning in the words of their own founders: Jabotinsky's The Iron Wall (1923). Why wouldn't you take them at their word? And how hasn't that colonial ideology, in retrospect, predicted exactly where Israel-Palestine is at today?

Jabotinaky is from one faction, not the ruling one for the first 30 years or so of Israel’s history. Many disagreed with him even back then.

After the Oslo accords, for a while, the Palestinian population had prosperity and there was a mutually agreed path forward. There were dissenting voices on both sides. Those in Israel assisinated PM Rabin. Those in the Gazan side elected Hamas democratically (and then lost the ability to vote ... happens when you vote for a non Democratic Party and they win). It is easy to lay all blame at Israel for being a military power. But the Palestinian side deserves a lot of the blame.

Also, don’t poke a military power if you don’t want to be bombed. “Civillian population” doesn’t build attack tunnels, rocket factories, train commandos, etc. I don’t blame them for trying, but that comes with consequences like getting bombed. Hamas is not wearing uniforms but they are guerilla / army. Not civillian.

There was over a 10 year gap between Rabin’s assasination and the election of Hamas and the withrawal from Gaza.

Ironically the largest concessions and the ratification of the Oslo accords were done by Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term in the mid 90׳s and the withdrawal from Gaza was initiated by Ariel Sharon both were ״right wing״ governments.

To me this signifies that under the right conditions even the most hawkish government in Israel can seek peace but at this point I’m not sure which conditions can be met for any one in the Palestinian Authority yet alone Hamas to be willing and able to negotiate in true faith.

And Hamas turned it into fascist state for its own population. I suppose opponents of blockade prefer a fascist state with access to weapons import.

> Instead the Israeli stance is noted as being the same as Egypt

Because it is.

The UN disagrees.

> The UN disagrees.

The UN is a political animal controlled by political interests.

Common sense can be used here. Gaza shares more border with Egypt than with Israel.

Egypt doesn't control Gaza airspace or ports. Israel does.

No, but they do control their border with Gaza, which is as locked down as those ports you mention.

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