As a Palestinian, what is happening to our people everyday never made me weaker, but forces me to work harder to create a greater brighter reality for us all.
According to the latest Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans approve of Israel's actions in Gaza. Why is Biden so eager to support something that the majority of Americans are against?
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Weโre watching narrative warfare at its finest, and most cold hearted.
My hypothesis is that the cutting of UNRWA funds, at this moment, is at least in part a narrative distraction.
Everyoneโs eyes were focused on the fact that the worldโs court confirmed that it is plausible Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The evidence was read on live TV to millions. Israel was ordered to prevent genocide.
Biden and Bibi needed to change the topic fast - and what better path than targeting UNRWA and connecting it back to October 7th.
Shift to every main news outlet and thatโs now the leading topic.
Of course the reasoning is absurd, 12 out of 13,000 employees, who have been fired, were found to have participated in violence.
This is akin to cutting all funding to the US education system because a dozen teachers were found to be abusive. It is collective punishment.
Driving in Palestine now is more dangerous than ever.
Yesterday, I drove from Ramallah to Dura, a village near Hebron to attend the funeral of Ahed, my friendโs baby sister, who had just become a mother. She was shot by an Israeli sniper. A heartbreaking loss.
If I could use Israelโs apartheid roads designated for settlers, it would be an 80-90 minute drive, but it took me 4 hours.
Why?
First, weโre forced to take segregated Palestinian only roads which make it a 2.5 hour drive because of checkpoints.
But these days, itโs even worse as Israel has imposed an even more strict strangulation policy over the West Bank, which means even some of those segregated roads are blocked and there are 10 times as many checkpoints.
Taking this drive outside our village/cities of residence is extremely dangerous for three reasons:
1. *Settler attacks*: Israeli settlers are in rampage mode, and you donโt know when you could get hit by a rock or bullet from one of their raging mobs.
2. *Soldiers at the end of a wrong turn*: There are no signs for what โroadsโ are currently opened or closed for us, you have to guess or stop to ask locals every few miles. If you make a wrong turn and end up face to face with soldiers, they can shoot you, and claim you attacked them.
3. *Arrests for social media posts*: If youโre stopped at a checkpoint, soldiers these days are taking folksโ phones and checking their WhatsAppโs and telegram and instagram. If you have a message standing in solidarity with Gaza, or anything the Israeli soldiers see as offensive, theyโll beat you to a pulp, and could even arrest you. My friend Diala, a human rights lawyer, was just arrested at one of these checkpoints this evening. We donโt know why, but it likely relates to her work and messages they found on her phone about it.
On my end, driving back at night was a nightmare, mainly because I had a friend in the car and was worried about him.
As we drove back, these historically busy streets were ghostly empty because nobody is taking the risk of driving at night unless necessary.
Every turn Iโd take, Iโd slow down to a crawl to make sure there was no trigger happy soldier or angry settler ready to pounce.
I got lucky as, although we waited at a checkpoint for an hour, the soldiers got bored and literally opened the checkpoint for all the cars to pass without any security check โ proof theyโre using these checkpoints arbitrarily as collective punishment.
In Dura, I saw where Ahed was shot.
The soldiers had stormed her village as part of their intimidation tactics in the West Bank to keep people anxious. Ahed ran to her roof to warn her husband to come home. An Israeli sniper shot her in the head.
As I drove home, thinking of Ahed, her heart broken family, the families of my friends in Gaza, all the souls weโve lost, and how easy my life could be taken for simply driving across my ancestral lands to help my friend in her grief.
It shouldnโt have to be said, but our lives are precious. Theyโre beautiful. Theyโre equally worthy of joy and basic dignity.
Iโm committed to one day being able to drive across my peopleโs ancestral land a free man, surrounded by my liberated people.
If Israelโs death machine is haunting us around every corner, we might as well live fighting for a life worth dying for.
Why you should avoid donor funding
If you are building a venture scale startup, please avoid donor funding.
The whole purpose of donor funding is to focus on areas the private market are not focusing on. They should give that helping hand to the poor business women living outside the main city and start her home business.
But venture capital is a different way of doing business.
Itโs about building innovation and distribution and living on the cutting edge of technology.
Not dealing with โbeneficiariesโ and gender equality and allocation to rural cities, etc.
Those are pre-startup concerns. On a national level indeed where you can put that money into education, infrastructure, up-skilling, digital transformation of government and more.
I advise everyone to stop taking donor funding for anything related to venture. World bank, EBRD, GIZ, are all great efforts by entities that want to do impact.
But that doesnโt bode well with venture thatโs all.
And you have so much to deal with as a founder. Markets, competitors, team, technology and sales. Donโt add new concerns that will have zero impact on you business.
Donโt become an item on someoneโs checklist. Helping them meet their KPIs of deployment.
Become a line item in a great businessโs budget!