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Who has advocated for Palestinians in the past posted on social media on Wednesday about his run on the beach in Tel Aviv and how it was “great” to be back.
Great to be back in Tel Aviv. I missed this run. pic.twitter.com/xc4LP1MkQm
— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) November 27, 2024
Many responded to his post on X by pointing out that he was only thirty minutes away from the Gaza Strip. Conservative estimates say nearly 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza and two million have been under constant Israeli aggression as they fight what UN experts have called “‘deliberate starvation”.
Some drew comparisons to the Academy Award-winning film, Zone of Interest, which depicts the everyday lives of Germans who lived next to the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two.
The post came as a surprise for those who have closely followed his tech career. In 2019, Patrick visited the occupied Palestinian territories and spoke to Palestinian tech entrepreneurs in Ramallah about the obstacles they face in the tech world.
Irish tech founder Paul Biggar, who also founded the Tech for Palestine coalition, took to X to criticise him, posting: “Why are folks are so pissed at @patrickc’s tweet? It’s because, unlike a lot of people, he actually knows what Israel is doing”.
According to a Bloomberg article about Patrick’s visit to Ramallah, the Irish CEO told the young Palestinians that he could “perhaps relate to a feeling of isolation and the struggle to make an impact on the world” because he had grown up in rural Ireland.
“There is that sense of comparative inferiority. You are clearly much less significant than the bigger forces around you,” he reportedly said.
He also said he wanted to expand Stripe’s business to occupied Palestine, adding that the company is “drawn by places that the rest of the world tends to underestimate”.
Why are folks are so pissed at @patrickc's tweet? It's because, unlike a lot of people, he actually knows what Israel is doing pic.twitter.com/bQtxT1oE7D
— Paul Biggar 🇵🇸🇮🇪 (@paulbiggar) November 28, 2024
Stripe belong to Citibank where there are common practices of fraud by the company of retaining your money and never returning it back to the account.