HACKER Q&A
📣 antiapartheid

Are you uncomfortable with having an office in Israel?


According to a Human Rights Watch report, Israel is an apartheid state committing crimes against humanity: https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

As more tech companies open offices in Israel, Western employees will be faced with the dilemma of having to work with colleagues living in and contributing to an apartheid state. Imagine if an American company opened a satellite office in South Africa during apartheid and American engineers were forced to work with them.

Are you uncomfortable with your company having an office in Israel? Do you fear speaking out in case you are canceled for being anti-semitic?


  👤 smashah Accepted Answer ✓
I think this is a legitimate question. Don't see why it's flagged. The same question can be asked for companies with HQ in China or some other countries in the middle east.

I personally have some clients of my "open source" work in some of these countries and they don't use my work for any of these reasons but I, personally, would feel iffy/wouldn't join a company with offices in some of these places. My line may be arbitrary and I could be called a hypocrite but that's my line.

One further thing I could do is to donate to these causes - for some, that would not make my working with some of these people OK, which I can understand.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people in these countries who do not agree with what is happening. Most times it's the silent minority though.


👤 pestatije
Same for China isn't it? How to deal with a perfectly friendly person who you know from other sources is abusing his wife? Do shareholders feel ok profiting from a company which is polluting the environment? Same shit happens everywhere, what to do?

👤 easytiger
HRW is a joke, as is this low effort submission from a 10 minute old account. Flagged