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I could respond with snark and derision, but the short answer I will give is: you wanna help Gazans, and maybe help those who help Gazans. Socio-political or ethical network effect, if you will. 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. |