
Mentor startups in Gaza - notyourgrandma
http://mentor4gazaskygeeks.strikingly.com/
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pvaldes
Sorry if I'm being rude, but this sounds like a really bad joke.

"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?

~~~
wazoox
To support people of Gaza through something really helpful and not politically
laden, I'd guess.

~~~
pvaldes
If we really want to help the people of Gaza we need first to put the people
that killed children, women and innocent men of Gaza, in front of an
international trial. And stop voting to them. Is as simple as that.

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.

~~~
pliny
I don't want to get into a political argument - but I will say that helping
Gazans by directly improving their quality of life (like the OP proposed) is
neither mutually exclusive with, nor dependent on, helping Gazans by promoting
their cause politically.

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.

~~~
jbooth
Not to mention, empowering moderate and scientifically minded Gazans is
probably one of the more productive things one could do to contribute to
eventual resolution of the conflict.

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trhway
i wonder whether there are student exchange or similar programs between Israel
and Gaza. Specifically in this case - my understanding that Israel has pretty
booming tech scene and one would expect that sharing the experience with
Gazans would be a win/win for both sides.

~~~
golergka
As a developer from Israel, I'd like to participate in something like this —
but I don't think that there's any opportunity for me to do this. From what I
understand, even if someone tried to do something like that on the other side,
they'd risk execution for "collaboration" if they did this.

~~~
aidos
Do you have anything to back that up? I'd be interested in reading about it.

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...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/hamas-
kills-11-suspected-informers-israel-201482285624490268.html)

~~~
tek-cyb-org
I'm sorry but that article has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Every
country on earth executes informants.

~~~
aidos
That's sort of the point I was making though (even though I couldn't see the
article, that's the story that seemed to dominate when I searched in Google).

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.

~~~
tek-cyb-org
Heres the problem. Most israeli don't care about palestinians. 87% of israelis
supported the massacre of palestinians in gaza.
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israelis-
sup...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israelis-support-
netanyahu-and-gaza-war-despite-rising-deaths-on-both-
sides/2014/07/29/0d562c44-1748-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html)

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untog
Awkward domain name in this context.

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lordnacho
So, what are conditions like? Is there a talent pool? Is infrastructure
working (Do they have brownouts, are there a lot of people with internet)? Is
it easy for investors to get their money in and out?

~~~
notyourgrandma
Lord - Conditions are no-doubt tough, but there is internet infrastructure,
and there is most definitely talent. Brownouts do occur in the evenings. Gaza
Sky Geeks also has a generator so that entrepreneurs in the co-working space
can work late. Investing is not an issue. There's a new $9M fund that just
formed to focus on Gaza.

Check out the Indiegogo page - [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-gaza-
s-only-startup-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-gaza-s-only-
startup-accelerator). It has a ton of info

------
jlebrech
they only thing i can see being a good opportunity in Gaza is something like
capsule hotels.

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.

