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Comment by chasil | Hacker News Reader

I graduated from an electrical engineering program at a big ten (U.S.) school in the mid '90s, and I am closing in on retirement. I spent today enrapt in an Oracle upgrade from 10g to 11g. Yes, our IT is COBOL-centric, and we are vastly behind the times. Much of today was spent (re)compiling C. The consensus is that I will have to think hard tomorrow about how to fix these problems.

While I was in school, I studied with many Palestinians in my college of engineering. I wonder often what happened to them.

At the same time, within Israel, Intel is the largest civilian employer. The Pentium M is an Israeli rework of the Pentium Pro legacy, and Israel is key to Intel's gains over the past two decades.

I wish that everyone that I knew from the Middle East was fully involved in the advances of Intel.

Perhaps my lost schoolmates' absence was precisely what Intel lacked, but such cultural divides are not easily bridged.

This is a great pity.

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I've worked with a few teams based in Israel during my at Intel, namely in networking and transceiver technology space. I try to make a point of getting to know the people I work with through 1:1s, and you'll be pleased to know there is a good mix of Palestinans and Israelis working together. Everyone there was proud to have a very diverse team.

This is a great post. Thank you to share your personal experience. Do you think they were first generation Palestinians? Or multi-generation (parents or earlier immigrated)? I know that Michigan state (Detroit, etc.) has one of the largest Arab communities in the United States.

I went to school with some first generation Palestinians just 5-ish years ago.

One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave. He has never been back to Palestine since then because another detainment or missed visa problem, etc. would derail his career.

> One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave

Terrible.

Even in the current ceasefire terms, there's an explicit provision to have Israel agree to let the injured leave for treatment to neighbouring countries and be allowed to come back to the Strip.

Despite arguments to contrary, I can see why some claim it is an open-air prison.

A UN delegate first referred to the Gaza strip as an open air prison in 1956, while still under Egyptian control.

That aspect of Gaza was in place long before Israel had anything to do with the strip.

Some part of this doesn't make sense. He couldn't leave from Gaza or Egypt? Why would he have needed Israel's permission?

I must admit I'm not an expert in how it works. And as friends we never really talked about the details of such things. But you can read about the procedures here: https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/legal-opinions/legal_mem...

Based on that, he must have obtained a special permit to leave Palestine and fly to the US for higher education, but this had to be approved by Israel or he could not leave Palestine or transit through Ben Gurion Airport (remember the Palestinian's international airport was bombed into rubble a decade ago or so). One year they denied him for some Kafkaesque reason, I presume. By the time he sorted it out he had to arrange with the school to take a leave and start again the next quarter

So... Why not blame Egypt? You can answer if you know, but the question is really meant as a shrug towards bias and a plea for education in geography.

Egypt has an airport just west of Gaza. They have a visa exclusive program for Palestinians. And that's not new.

So based on the story, if you presume Israel was Kafkaesque then you must also presume that Egypt was at least as Kafkaesque if he was unable to leave from there.

Or worse... he was unwilling.

And yet, the story is about Israel for some reason. I'd ask why, but I presume to know the answer. Again, this is a shrug towards bias.

He didn't get his visa through Egypt. He got it through Israel, and when it was randomly denied, he probably couldn't apply for an Egyptian one in time to make it.

You've made a good faith guess, I think. But again, Egypt has a visa exclusive program for Palestinians. Visa exclusive means that Palestinians do not need a visa to enter and travel through Egypt. So, at least based on the story so far, the only visa he needed was an American one, having nothing to do with Israel except that he probably was afraid to enter Egypt.

This is all speculative in terms of how it relates to your friend. All this to make the point that bias and generalizing about things, and a desire to blame people one has been taught to hate, can be detrimental to one's success.

> All this to make the point that bias and generalizing about things, and a desire to blame people one has been taught to hate, can be detrimental to one's success.

I agree, you should see the way people are doing this under my very comment about my friend.

In the end, I am sure he knew more than most people about the options truly available to him. He was never biased or hating of anyone. Those who know him today would know

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