[thephyber]

So you commented without verifying the fact was true? And it turns out it isn’t.

Slow down. Don’t trust vague statements that don’t cite sources. Look for the nuance in the situation. Be curious and try to learn, don’t just follow the crowd.

Also, it’s fucking weird to me to assume that all Israeli private businesses are unethical. Sure, there’s probably some. Sure, their tax dollars are fungible with the government actions you consider unethical.

But aren’t you penalizing the secular tech entrepreneurs of Israel by divesting from anything related to the country? These are the same demographic that spent every weekend for most of 2023 protesting their own government’s attempt to become more subservient to the Netanyahu coalition.

[lmm]

> But aren’t you penalizing the secular tech entrepreneurs of Israel by divesting from anything related to the country?

There are no "secular tech entrepreneurs of Israel", in the same sense that there are no private businesses in China. Every adult citizen is required to do military service for the constitutionally non-secular state, and military/government-backed paramilitary operatives routinely disguise themselves as civilians, including running whole tech businesses as front operations. Any given Israeli technology company might not happen to be a government (and therefore religious) organ at the moment, but it can become one at a moment's notice with no notification and no recourse.

> These are the same demographic that spent every weekend for most of 2023 protesting their own government’s attempt to become more subservient to the Netanyahu coalition.

Plenty of people in North Korea or Iran or Russia protest against their governments too. But we don't, and shouldn't, let that persuade us to keep doing business with people in those countries.

[thephyber]

> Plenty of people in North Korea or Iran or Russia protest against their governments too. But we don't, and shouldn't, let that persuade us to keep doing business with people in those countries.

The second you find out your own government has done something immoral, do you immediately get caught in a tight `while true { … }` loop?

You chose those examples exactly because they are extreme. Non-governmental citizens have damn near zero influence over government policy.

A boycott by some citizens in a different country is entirely different than coordinated multi lateral sanctions which are reinforced by law and international organizations who fear breaking the law.

Israel is very different. The Knesset is a multi-party parliamentary rule system. Voters in Israel have a lot more influence on their representatives than I do as a voter in California/USA. My point is that we should be clear about what behaviors we want to shape and provide both the carrot and the stick in plain view.

[lmm]

> You chose those examples exactly because they are extreme.

No, I chose them because they're examples of countries that many people refuse to trade with. Feel free to consider Cuba or any other pariah state.

> Non-governmental citizens have damn near zero influence over government policy... Voters in Israel have a lot more influence on their representatives than I do as a voter in California/USA.

Surely that makes it more defensible to boycott Israeli businesses because of the actions of their state, not less.

> we should be clear about what behaviors we want to shape and provide both the carrot and the stick in plain view.

The people boycotting Israel have been pretty clear about what they're calling for (much clearer than e.g. Iran, which complied with the deal we'd made with them and was then still hit with sanctions anyway).

[ChemiSpan]

> penalizing the secular tech entrepreneurs

During the divestment against South African apartheid, anyone was a fair target.

And yes Israel has been labeled an apartheid state by all the major human rights groups, including Amensty, HRW, and Israel's own Btselem. Linking the 3 reports below, in case you are interested in reading.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...

https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is...

[thephyber]

I also noticed you missed the most important thing about the GP comment of my reply: he misread which whether the relevant company was on the unethical side of the equation and seemed willing to divest without any skepticism or curiosity.

[ChemiSpan]

It's true though, AU10TIX is connected to Israeli intelligence which seems to be a reason why X switched to Stripe. I think the confusion was whether it was Stripe or AU10TIX.

> AU10TIX is a subsidiary of ICTs International, a company established by former members of the Shin Bet and El Al airline security agents.

Ron Atzmon, the founder of AU10TIX, spent his military service with the Shin Bet's notorious unit 8200. Which also produced the infamous Israeli Pegasus spyware used by repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia to spy on citizens.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/identity-verification-or-data-...

[thephyber]

I’m not debating AU10TIX. Let’s both assume what you say is true.

The comment I initially replied to was spring-loaded and ready to punish Stripe (and potentially X) because they thought Stripe was the unethical participant in Israel’s policies, not AU10TIX.

And additionally, my preference is that we don’t boycott unless there is a very direct line of participation. Are we all boycotting all of the startups that received investment from In-Q-Tel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel#Investments

At some point, the proximity of participation moves from complicit to 6 Degrees of Bacon. Boycotting in the latter is To Cur off Your Nose Despite Your Face.

[zozo-whywhy]

Thank you! Great post & resources!

I, and the ethical intelligent people I know, encourage all divestment from Israeli companies.

[rchaud]

> But aren’t you penalizing the secular tech entrepreneurs of Israel by divesting from anything related to the country?

No one is entitled to your or my business. A boycott is about voting with your wallet. It's not exactly withholding humanitarian aid as a famine looms.

If such companies feel that they are being unfairly singled out, they're free to demonstrate their opposition to the the actions of their government.

[thephyber]

I’m not opposed to voting with your feet/wallet. I encourage it.

But make sure your vote is targeted to what behavior you want to change.

If you want to train behaviors in a child, you need to react+respond immediately and proportionately. You don’t wait six months to reward a desirable behavior. To be most effective, You try to reward/punish immediately and you let them know why.

If you avoid Stripe because you mistook them for some other company which is based in Israel, which had no real ability to affect their government’s policies, they won’t interpret that as “we are being punished for supporting Israel’s unethical policies”. They will interpret that correctly as an irrational consumer noise in the data. If you want to enact change, let your target know why you want them to change, in what way, and then do it to the person/people most authorized/responsible for enacting the change.

[rchaud]

In this case the person who brought it up was wrong and acknowledged it.

Generally speaking though, the net impact of a boycott may even be negligible when it comes to Israel because of our government's largesse towards Israel's military industrial complex. Whatever little money is witheld by a boycott from a small minority of voters in the West is dwarfed by the many billions in taxpayer money that Western governments commit towards ensuring that the IDF has more F-16s per capita than anywhere else on earth.

[Levitz]

You can draw that type of criticism with any boycott though. Does whoever cleans the office at Lockheed Martin deserve to be punished for the actions of the company?

The point is to create repercussions for a country, that's going to affect someone, sure, but that's the point. Same as why people don't generally care about random Chinese or Russian companies when people decide to boycott those.

[thephyber]

Moving companies is far lower friction than changing nationality.

Ethics are relative and have tradeoffs. How many innocent people are you willing to hurt to change the behavior of the IdF / Israel’s Oslo Area C policies / Netanyahu’s government coalition?

If you are too sloppy with the splash damage, how are you any different than the IdF or Hamas? Would you even punish Stripe for Israel’s military/government behavior because you read some unsourced comment on social media?

I would rather target boycotts to the most precise entity, within reason, so the entity knows what they are being punished for and what change in behavior would change the boycott to a non-boycott.

If you don’t set an objective standard, then you will always be subject to your own emotions or a mob mentality.

[sneak]

That’s just because they haven’t thought about it enough. Sanctions are unjust.

People’s grandmothers in Russia who can’t get their chemo drugs right now are no different than if your grandma couldn’t get her meds because Bush invaded Iraq.

[ignoramous]

> penalizing secular tech entrepreneurs

"If you kept the small rules [like secularism], you could break the big ones [like occupation]."