No Tech for Apartheid

&gt; By taking this action, you agree to receive emails from MPower Change, Jewish Voice for Peace, The Action Center on Race and The Economy, Adalah Justice Project, American Muslims for Palestine, Athena, BDS Berlin, BDS Movement, Carceral Tech Resistance Network, Dissenters, Eyewitness Palestine, Fight For The Future, IfNotNow, MediaJustice, National Lawyers Guild, the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy&#x2F;Rabet, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Warehouse Worker Resource Center, The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and World Beyond War. You can unsubscribe at any time using the instructions provided in the emails.<p>That&#x27;s a lot of organisations they share your details with, none of which I want emails from. In particular I&#x27;d like to use my work email address to sign this to make a point, but I definitely don&#x27;t want emails from all these groups on my work email.

This sort of rhetoric and this time isn&#x27;t helping the Palestinian people in any way. Calling Israels war with Hamas Apartheid is utter nonsense. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with mass murder of civilians.<p>Hamas is the reason we don&#x27;t have a Palestinian state. They sent suicide bombers during the Oslo accord to stop any chance of peace.<p>There&#x27;s a lot of valid criticism we can levy on Israel, I 100% agree with that. Especially against the current government. That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s important to focus on real issues e.g. a more reliable organization covering the bad things happening in the territories and Gaza: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.btselem.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.btselem.org&#x2F;</a>

A noble campaign, but it may be illegal in the US (and Spain, and legally risky in a few other countries) - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Anti-BDS_laws" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Anti-BDS_laws</a>:<p><i>Most anti-BDS laws have taken one of two forms: contract-focused laws requiring government contractors to promise that they are not boycotting Israel; and investment-focused laws, mandating public investment funds to avoid entities boycotting Israel. [..]<p>The Anti-Boycott Act of 2018 [..] does not target boycotts against Israel specifically, but makes it illegal to “comply with, further, or support any boycott fostered or imposed by any foreign country, against a country which is friendly to the United States” [..] and as the Office of Antiboycott Compliance notes “The Arab League boycott of Israel is the principal unsanctioned foreign boycott that U.S. persons must be concerned with today.”</i>

We need a global solution to refugees and refugee camps throughout the middle east. Israel cannot solve this problem and the people in these camps should be allowed to integrate with another country and live real lives. Including refugees from Syria in European countries.<p>However, Israel has a right to exist and it&#x27;s totally unfair to consider this apartheid.

This is a dupe, see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31601472">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31601472</a>, from 2022.<p>Also, whether you support Israel as defending themselves, or consider Israeli actions a form of genocide, language matters. By using the term Apartheid I interpreted this as an unconscious attempt to marginalize the efforts and sacrifices made by those who fought against Apartheid in South Africa, including Nelson Mandela and many others - in order to increase emotional response for your cause. I am sure that is not what you intended, but in communication perception is as important as intention, if not more so.<p>So I ask that we all keep Apartheid to mean the struggle against racism, segregation and hatred that Nelson Mandela and his people fought hard to win.<p>Instead, come up with a new word. For example Apartheid means &#x27;Separation. The Arabic word for &quot;separation&quot; is ﻓِﺮَﺍﻕ (pronounced &quot;firaaq&quot;). Firaaq could be the word to uniquely mean what is happening in Palestine, as Apartheid is for South Africa. Or use a Hebrew word (Apartheid was Afrikaaner IIRC), such as Hafrada, which is the Hebrew word for &quot;separation&quot;. It can also mean &quot;segregation&quot;.<p>By using a unique word close in cultural context to the events you create something that you can attach unique meaning to, and generate support against.

Israel offered free Palestine as late as 2008 and agreed to remove Israeli&#x27;s settlements but it was Palestinians who declined it. Surprisingly this gets missed by all the major media.<p>Palestinians should have free and fair election and ask for its own free land and negotiate for that. Then they will have my support. Getting money from foreign country for terror shouldn&#x27;t be anyone&#x27;s aim.

What do these people want?<p>I support Palestinian freedom. I want them to have their own state. I want them to be prosperous and happy.<p>But given a free and fair election they didn&#x27;t choose that. They chose Hamas who then turned into a violent dictatorship killing a lot of Palestinians along the way. Now Hamas rips up infrastructure that the West donates like water pumps in order to build missiles.<p>So what do they want? All of us to die at the hands of Hamas and Hezbollah? Their literal goal is to drive us into the sea.<p>We need practical real solutions. I&#x27;m asking an honest question not a rhetorical one: what do they want? If we give Palestinians total freedom tomorrow they will turn around and try to murder us. As they just did to 1300 innocent people. The worst day since the Holocaust.<p>All of this reminds me of the performative actions around Ukraine. End the war to save lives by having Ukraine agree to be incorporated up Russia. Not that any of the people advocating this in the West like Chomsky would volunteer to live in a Russian dictatorship. Same here. How many of these people are willing to go live next to Hamas and Hezbollah and put their own families at real risk of death?

Aside from the rights and wrongs there are legal implications for supporting BDS associated movements in many US states, including that those that do so cannot be government contractors.

I feel sorry for the anti Israel tech crowd, when basically all the tech they use probably has israeli licensed tech &#x2F; ip in it and hence their usage of the tech ends up directly benefiting Israeli tax payers and therefore indirectly the Israeli government.<p>My sarcastic response to them, you need to become a luddite (or have an amish like rejection of modern technology).

Wasn&#x27;t there this rule on not doing politics here? If someone were to create a site proclaiming &quot;No Tech for Terrorists&quot; would that site be allowed to be discussed here or would it be removed because of the aforementioned rule?

&quot;Technology should be used to bring people together, not enable apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism.&quot;<p>I would like to see the authors of this petition clarify their opinion of the United States and its status as a &quot;settler-colonialist&quot; entity.

I wish Palestinians would not use the word Apartheid. It&#x27;s not right and it doesn&#x27;t help their cause.