
Gaza: Coding in a conflict zone - goodcanadian
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45643834
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mustuhfa
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.

~~~
jackthrow1
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.

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

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Vinnl
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.

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wallflower
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/](http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/)

EDIT Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963)

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

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walrus01
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.

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ovrkil
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.

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partycoder
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.

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

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padraic7a
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.

~~~
yahoo234
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?

~~~
sgift
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.

~~~
firic
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.

~~~
lucideer
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.

~~~
skrebbel
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.

~~~
lucideer
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.

~~~
amitport
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.

