Mentor startups in Gaza
mentor4gazaskygeeks.strikingly.com
mentor4gazaskygeeks.strikingly.com
"This building is the new place for your new startup, the burocracy is atrocious and humiliating; not people neither prime matters can enter or go out freely from here, and the entire place is systematically ravaged and firebombed each two or three years killing your workers, otherwise is fine."
"Last year this nice new zone is flattened and 'cleaned' of people... 1000 or maybe 2000 people were killed, I don't remember... and now we want you (again) to give us your money and effort to clean our mess. We need reclaim the area rebuilding this new free space ASAP to secure the place. Thanks"
Just being as cold blooded and logic as I can... Can someone provide a reason to invest in such unstable place? Will you advise someone to create his/her new startup in a warzone? Why?
We need also to stop tolerating to be labelled as "anti-semitic behaviour" to bona fide criticizing Israel for breaking repeatedly a lot of international laws about human rights, each three years, and for treating palestinian people as human cockroaches.
In the last years USA and Europe were repeatedly urged to pay with trucks full of money the last "Gaza reconstruction". We paid for rebuilding exactly the same UN schools and hospitals that Israel bombed meticulously the last year, in some cases even with UN workers inside.
Is reasonable to asume that if we pay again, the new schools and hospitales will be bombed again in the next two or three years, with the silliest excuses.
There is also the problem that Israel controls the economy of Gaza, so there is not any guarantee that the money for palestinians will not be used instead in buying new bombs to replace that were dropped.
I'm aware that I'm being sour and harsh, but in my opinion, and is just an opinion, the sort of Warsaw Ghetto that became Gaza, need a little more that well-meant investors and little kisses at this moment.
It is a defeatist stance to take, in general, that you should abstain from treating a symptom just because it won't also cure the disease and in that sense I think you are working against the cause of Gaza and doing a disservice to Gazans by dissuading people from offering assistance.
>In the last years USA and Europe were repeatedly urged to pay with trucks full of money the last "Gaza reconstruction". We paid for rebuilding exactly the same UN schools and hospitals that Israel bombed meticulously the last year, in some cases even with UN workers inside. Is reasonable to asume that if we pay again, the new schools and hospitales will be bombed again in the next two or three years, with the silliest excuses.
You're unfortunately correct (about the bombing, not about the excuses), but the children of Gaza need to go to school and the infirm and injured of Gaza need hospitalisation, so not building those facilities is worse than building them and watching them be destroyed a few years later.
This is the opposite of what the initiative is about - it's about bringing normalcy to a troubled region, and if you'd read FAQ you'd see they stress the (relative) safety and economic stability of Gaza. It's a far cry for the "Warsaw Ghetto" and the "Palestinians as cockroaches" that you're throwing around here.
Sounds good. When are we putting Hamas and other militant groups going to the ICC (because their local justice systems are so unable to promote justice)?
>We need also to stop tolerating to be labelled as "anti-semitic behaviour" to bona fide criticizing Israel for breaking repeatedly a lot of international laws about human rights, each three years, and for treating palestinian people as human cockroaches.
Seems fair to hold Israel to any standard every other country is held to. Do it!
>In the last years USA and Europe were repeatedly urged to pay with trucks full of money the last "Gaza reconstruction". We paid for rebuilding exactly the same UN schools and hospitals that Israel bombed meticulously the last year, in some cases even with UN workers inside.
If Israel meticulously bombed the schools and hospitals, would any be standing? They have a lot of bombs and the ability to target fairly precisely for a military- isn't it weird so many hospitals and schools are undamaged? The Israeli military are either incompetent or didn't meticulously target these places.
>with the silliest excuses. What would an unsilly reason look like? Indiscriminate attacks on civilians doesn't seem to fulfill your requirements.
>There is also the problem that Israel controls the economy of Gaza, so there is not any guarantee that the money for palestinians will not be used instead in buying new bombs to replace that were dropped.
I didn't know Israel controls all money going in to Gaza. I know they collect tax money on behalf of the PLO and monitor, along with Egypt, all good coming in (excluding those that are smuggled in of course). It's worth looking into how Israel's gets military aid- a coupon from the US government. They aren't stealing other people's money and spending it. Even the tax money they're withholding from the PLO is sitting in accounts, not being spent.
I know many Palestinians where I live and work. Many of them, even in their place of residence, are politically hampered into living in a country in the Arab world but not free to travel because they are devoid of political rights. If not because of their country of residents, the issuing body of their travel papers or passports, for many this is Egypt, was so destabilized until now Egyptian authorities would reply officially or otherwise to Palestinians for basic requests like passport renewal: go away, we're busy. And that went on for years.
I know of one person I work with who has a family in Gaza. Her family runs car shops and make decent money where I live. They have had their family's buildings knocked down twice in Israeli military ops in the last five years. They go back and rebuild every time. If we praise SV people for handling "tough problems", how is this not indicative of real entrepreneurship and determination to potentially solve other tough problems in ways we have not conceived? Lots of Africa is now doing WAPI and SMS entrepreneurship in light of limited network infrastructure and proving an interesting counterpoint to our mobile broadband-enabled view of digital startups. Shall we dismiss them because they have situations not much better or worse than Gazans in some of those cases?
Plus, the Palestinan expat community is wide and diverse, in the US, Europe, the Persian Gulf, Africa, and Asia. Misplaced or not, many non-Palestinian Arab communities would buy or donate to any Palestinian cause out of sympathy. Targeting them as a demographic could be viable. And frankly, using the famed "hustle as much as you hate" meme my friends throw around, I would milk that for all it is worth if I was Palestinian.
Just my 2 cents.
Also, people in warzones deserve a helping hand to make them feel normal. It's not in conflict currently. Yes the blockade is bad, but technology is the type of startup that it effects the least.
Also providing humanity to Gaza does not exclude one from trying to bring Israel to court for its war crimes. The latter is just much, much, harder.
I started 3 startups in North Iraq, perhaps not so much of a warzone these days, but still affected by all the drama coming out of it.
The problems I was facing were almost the same when I did my other startup in Sydney Australia, except there were some other odds added to it.
In fact Nokia Maps acquired my startup and it was we had such low burning rate / solving a real problem using proper technology.
So I guess investing in them would make sense at the end of the day if you know what and which ones to go for.
>>We currently cannot bring people to Gaza if you have a West Bank ID or Israeli passport. We can bring people who have an East Jerusalem ID.
Out of interest, I wonder if they accept Jewish mentors.
Edit: I can see there's an article here that sounds like the root of this sort of statement but I can't read any details because I'm in a really remote place with very little internet. Over the last couple of days I've discovered that the wired world no longer cares for those with 7kbs connections :-)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/hamas-kills...
On paper, that's "collaborating" with Isreal leading to execution (GP: "they'd risk execution for "collaboration" if they did this").
I suspect that there was a (horrible) case like this that was promoted within Israel to drive the sort of talk that I was responding to. An incident is taken out of context, rebranded and sold as normal behaviour by a demon state.
I'd like to see the articles about people in Gaza being killed for getting support from people in Israel.
Otherwise, I'd imagine (possibly naively) that remote mentoring would be something good.
If it were possible for you to participate - would you risk repercussions for collaborating from other Israelis?
What? I think that most of the Israelis, including the extreme right, would agree with me and help me, given the opportunity. We hate the terrorists who have power in Gaza and keep the people as hostages and human shields, but we want to help the people themselves, if anything.
(BTW, I may not represent an average israeli — living in TLV, more leftist, less racist part of the country.)
[0] These signs are quite famous, but I know the rules on them are not always enforced - however I still assume they are being honest http://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Isra...
Still, I have a couple of friends who travelled to the territories illegally, with help from their local friends — just for sightseeing. Personally, I think that they were being reckless and stupid, but it's certainly not unheard of.
ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank_Areas_in_the_Oslo_II_...
(These are separate and atomic arguments, which don't depend on each other logically).
1. You assume that "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" are mutually exclusive definitions, while one of them refers to the organisation methods and the other to organisation goals. Deliberately (this is very important word) attacking civilians and trying to increase civilian death toll in order to create a state of terror is, by definition, a terrorist tactic.
2. You go from "UN regards" to "objective fact" pretty easily. This implies that you hold UN as organisation to be of highest authority and consider it's opinion true by default. This approach needs some backup. All other things considered, you could write it as "UN regards them as freedom fighters" (which UN doesn't). Or "by UN logic".
3. You assume that these organisation goal is freedom from perceived (not debating this point now) occupation. However, that's not what they state. These organisations state that their goal is (1) destruction of state of Israel and (2) murder of all jews, primarily living in these territories (but not limited to them). If these organisations succeeded in their stated goals, they, of course, would get "freedom from occupation" (as they perceive it), but it would only be a byproduct of their mail goal, which can not be described other than genocide.
And finally, just out of respect for anonymous commenter on the site that I keep in a very high regard. Just in case you really want to keep a reasonable, logical, healthy discussion, and not a flame war. When you try to put a positive spin on these terrorist organisations, 99% of israelis wouldn't even consider responding to you. Because when you start telling people that organisations with motto "kill all jews" are misunderstood good guys, you don't seem like a guy worth having a discussion with.
2) It's often repeated that Israel has withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, and what it got in return? Only hatred and terrorism. Well, this make it sound like Israel made peace with Gaza and gave it absolute freedom, but this is completely false. Israel removed its settlers from Gaza, but retained total control over its airspace, maritime access and all borders. Would you call Israel free if Iran had complete control of your airspace, coasts and borders? Oh, no, what an idea! Israel would be under siege! And so it is for Gaza. After Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza in 2006 (with an electoral platform that among other things renounced the call for the destruction of Israel), Israel shut the borders of Gaza preventing the flow of people and goods. As a consequence of that, 70% of Gaza's workforce are unemployed and 80% of its residents live in poverty.
3) I don't know where you're getting this idea that the goal of Hamas (I suppose you're talking about Hamas) is to "murder all the Jews". The original charter of Hamas, dated 1988, calls for the end of Israel but stresses, in two separate articles, that it "strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned". (Yes, Judaism is explicitly included). It's an extremists' manifesto, no doubts. But no murdering of the Jews as far as I can see. Then, in the elections of 2006, the electoral platform explicitly renounced the (political, not physical, which was never even contemplated) end of Israel and embraced a two states solution. Now, consider Likud, which just won another election in Israel. Its charter states that Likud flatly opposes a two-states solution, and it wants to gain to Israel all land west of the Jordan. Its leader Netanyahu was elected just the other day after promising that with him no two states solution was possible. Who's calling for the demise of the other?
As for the Israelis that wouldn't even respond to me.. well, seen the results of the recent elections, I doubt that the majority of Israelis are even vaguely aware of what the reality of the situation is and of what would be a balanced point of view. Israel is very rapidly losing the sympathies of the western world - a good part of which it had never earned with its actions but were just the results of the west's sense of guilt. Israelis seem hypnotized by some desire of revenge and total military victory, and completely incapable of seeing their own faults. Nothing good can come out of it, for anybody.
http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns-...
Try to put yourself in Israel's place. Just imagine it for a minute. Israel disengaged from Gaza 10 years ago. What did it get in return? More security? Less attacks? Better relationship with organisations governing the territory? Would answers to these questions encourage you (you're in Israel place, remember) to make more steps like this?
How about we start there. No justice, no peace.
1) Get a government that can be trusted to follow on promises
2) Promise to stop trying to kill us
That's pretty much it. We don't need the land, we don't need the walls, we don't need missiles.
How about the acts of terror that Palestinians endure by israeli occupiers? Oh wait... Palestinians are not jewish so its okay... .they werent chosen by god to be shipped in from europe and the north america to get a free homeland.
We need to fund research, expression, and development without simply monetizing and recreating social contract barriers to entry as social media barriers.
To solve the pervasive language of hidden trauma[3] problems — so empathy is empowered over identity issues — we need less closed forms and more open fields. Taboo of sharing itself, is deeper than the digital divide.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-person-to-person-humanitarian...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Unsayable-Hidden-Language-Trauma/d...
Equally cryptogrammar and cryptoempathy.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/07/24/peace-th...
Check out the Indiegogo page - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-gaza-s-only-startup-.... It has a ton of info
they'd be impossible to hide rockets in and when they nearby buildings are destroyed they'd get new customers.
Israel could be guaranteed the neutrality of those buildings so as to never be targeted.