Zionism in Tech

Randa on working in tech as a Palestinian

This week, I’m thinking about what it means to get silenced, implicitly or explicitly. Journalists in Gaza have been killed. Citizens of Israel are getting arrested for social media posts. Here, in the United States, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was censured over her comments on Israel (I’d recommend watching her speech in response).

This sort of thing is happening to people in my community as well. My friend got suspended from her job for saying Israel has committed war crimes, and a writer I work with was chewed out by her management team for posting pro-Palestine content. 

When you are Palestinian living in the United States, this type of shit is commonplace. The first time I remember being silenced for my opinion was in high school. Some kid in my class shouted at me, calling me antisemitic during lunch one day, in front of everybody. It was then that I realized there were social consequences to simply stating my ethnicity.

As a conflict avoidant person, I learned to only reveal that I’m Palestinian when it seemed safe to do so. I didn’t want people to immediately dismiss me (or publicly shame me school-lunchroom-style) for an unchangeable aspect of my identity. I would carefully suss out if there were Zionists in my midst and strategically avoid the topic of my Palestinian-ness. Since I work in tech, that means almost never talking about it with coworkers.

I grit my teeth and wait for the subject to change when I’m listening to a conversation about how Israel is just like California. I quietly order something else for lunch when the office is having “Israeli food.” I wonder what would have happened had I spoken up in these moments. But I think I already know.

Almost 900 VC firms have signed a statement of support for Israel. Why might this be? Perhaps because tech and venture capital are yet another pawn in Israel’s ongoing propaganda project. This is disappointing but unsurprising. It also presents a challenge for anyone expressing pro-Palestinian views while looking to make it in the relationship-dominated world of venture-backed tech.

In 2018, Forbes did its 30 under 30 summit in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Schusterman Foundation, whose stated mission is “a future in which the United States and Israel live up to their highest ideals and achieve more just and inclusive societies,” takes American leaders (one version of the trip is for tech) to Israel on a version of a Birthright trip. Israel expertly aligns itself with influential Americans in tech and turns them into evangelists.

When I look at tech Twitter, it appears that most people aren’t posting about Israel or Palestine. Most are silent. But those who are loud are pro-Israel. It seems like most Arab and Muslim tech workers aren’t posting for fear of reputational consequences. Paul Graham can afford to do it, but I’m not sure about the rest of us.

We know there’s internal conflict at Google, but I’m not sure what’s happening at other companies. I suspect there’s a mixture of indifference, lack of education, and fear factoring into why people aren’t speaking up. I am doing it anyway. It might cost me something, I don’t really know. But I know that writing about this has swayed people in my community and that is worth the risk for me.

As we have written before, shifting public opinion here in the U.S. matters. It’s not the only thing that matters, but it has an impact. Silencing tech workers makes it harder to spread information that will lead to change.

Even if you don’t care about Palestine or Israel, making people afraid to speak up is totally un-American, and runs counter to the post-woke-free-speech-Based-Libertarian tech community ideals. If we’re really as free-speech-pilled as we say we are, we should engage in good faith discussions rather than bad faith name calling. But maybe this all goes back to one of my favorite Paul Graham essays, Keep Your Identity Small:

You can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants. What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people's identities. But you could in principle have a useful conversation about them with some people.

Zionism has seeped into the identities of many Jews and non-Jews. It may take time to unlearn. I hope to have more useful conversations.