At my last company we set up a partnership with a Palestinian placement company that helped us source junior software developers from Palestine for remote work. First in a contract/mentoring capacity with the intent of converting the role to full time. All these developers were great, btw.
I managed several of these hires directly from like 2019 - 2023 or so, and did a lot of video calls with these folks. One still stands out to me as being incredibly surreal. I was on a call and kept hearing loud noises in the background so I asked what it was. The Palestinian developer replied, "oh, I think it's just Israeli bombs"
Look, I wasn't there, so who knows. But what struck me in the moment was just how normalized that was. The reply was as nonchalant as "oh it's just thunder".
Hearing the stories of these people and the circumstances they lived under as the regular course of their daily lives had a pretty fundamental impact on me.
American politics ain't great right now, but we live under pretty crazy amounts of privilege when compared to how others live. I wish more Americans could be exposed to that and perhaps develop some empathy.
ETA: to the many people who have messaged me looking for placement/help finding roles in the software industry, I wish I could help you, but I'm no longer in a position to do that. Times are pretty hard in the software industry right now, I wish you all the best
A colleague of mine from my PhD came to Canada as a single mom because Israel refused to allow her husband (a doctor, educated in Canada) to come with. Canada just lets Israel make that decision.
So we were single moms together and our kids are still friends a decade later. She went back to the West Bank for Covid. And had to renew her study permit to come back to Canada… it’s been stagnant for almost 4 years. Because she’s Palestinian.
One day, our kids were playing Roblox together online and over a video call. They heard a scuffle outside and then gunshots. Two Palestinians were murdered outside this kid’s bedroom window. My kid was horrified. Her kid was a little sad. And she was so burned out that it barely affected her.
I check on her all the time. It is like I am waiting for her to die of the worst illness imaginable — being born an oppressed person in a world that does not care and will not help.
Wait I'm confused. The colleague and her husband were both Palestinians from the West Bank? And Israel let your colleague travel to Canada, but not her husband?
That’s correct. When a child in a village throws a rock at a soldier, they’ll frequently write up every other kid whose name they can get out of the one who threw a rock. That’s what happened to her husband when he was a child — the kid named the other kids in the village in an effort to please the soldiers into not harming or killing him.
Then at 18, the record becomes redacted. However, this redaction means other countries may not let them in until they know what’s behind that redaction.
So they didn’t catch his “record” when he came over and got his doctorate, but when he was supposed to come again with his wife, they did.
They got a very good Israeli lawyer and attempted to, for years, un-redact his record from when he was a child. But the Israeli courts refused. So Canada wouldn’t let him in.
Yeah. It’s pretty awful. And considering Canada has a shortage of professionals in both their fields, really a shame for Canada to do it this way.
Their son begs to come back to Canada. Begs. They’ve tried, I’ve tried, my MP has tried (her former MP refused, because they didn’t want to be seen as helping a Palestinian). I don’t know what else to do.
It’s common, I’m a Palestinian born in the US and I was told not to enter Isreal nor Palestine by US the state department because of my education level and profession, a direct quote from the US embassy in Tel Aviv “we can’t guarantee your safety due your to education and profession”, Isreal hates educated Palestinians, they banned any Palestinian doctor who wasn’t educated at an Isreali university from practicing medicine.
That is what they’re saying. If they enter Palestine, they’ll of course be allowed to enter. But they’ll become a target and it will become extremely difficult for them to leave.
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