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Although Sroor says she does not always find encouragement for her technological pursuits in Gaza, there is one place where she feels at home: A seed accelerator and workspace in Gaza City's bustling al-Rimal neighbourhood called Gaza Sky Geeks.
"The people here are like my second family," Sroor told Al Jazeera inside the loft-like space, amid the buzz of dozens of Palestinian designers, developers and freelancers who work here daily.
The organisation, founded in 2011 with a $900,000 grant from Google, provides mentorship and support to startups in Gaza to help to grow the territory's nascent tech industry.
Since 2013, four companies that went through the Gaza Sky Geeks "incubation" process secured investments ranging from $30,000 to $65,000, the accelerator's social media coordinator, Dalia Shurrab, told Al Jazeera.
Gaza Sky Geeks is now focusing on bringing more girls and women into the fold. Currently, about half of the founders of the startup companies that Gaza Sky Geeks mentors are women, said Rana Alqrenawi, who is in charge of the organisation's female-centred programmes. The goal is to get to 80 percent, she said, in an effort to overcompensate for the current gender gap in the tech world.
They shall know Code, and Code shall set them free.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @12:59PM
soylentnews is going downhill, start cleaning this crap
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 02 2016, @01:47PM
Why is this propaganda?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday December 02 2016, @02:17PM
As far as I can tell, because this article suggests that (A) Palestinians exist, and (B) many and possibly most of them aren't raging anti-Jewish fanatic terrorists. Alternately, because the organization reporting it is Al Jazeera, who consistently takes the viewpoint that (A) Arabs and Muslims exist, and (B) most of them aren't raging anti-Jewish / anti-American fanatic terrorists. That there is all sorts of evidence that that viewpoint matches fairly well with reality is besides the point.
For comparison, the Anti-Defamation League just accused congressman Keith Ellison of racism because he dared to suggest that the interests of the roughly 8 million Israelis shouldn't receive more consideration in US policy than the interests of the roughly 400 million other people living in the Middle East.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 02 2016, @03:00PM
How dare he? Did he further question the wisdom of yoking our policy for an entire region to a country that has no strategic value for American interests whatsoever [wikipedia.org] (and in fact is rather an albatross around our neck)?
Burn him!
Anyway, I find it refreshing to read something about Arabs that does not include terrorism or oil. I also find it generally pleasing to read about more geeks joining our wonderful world of technology.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tangaroa on Friday December 02 2016, @03:50PM
Palestinians are raging anti-Jewish fanatic terrorists by definition. They are a terrorist organization formed in 1964 to remove the Jews from the Jewish homeland of Palestine, borrowing an archaic name for Jews to pretend that they have a claim to the land (they don't). Arabs who are not raging anti-Jewish fanatic terrorists call themselves Arabs.
You would have an easier case claiming that Nazis don't really hate the Jews than you would have saying that about Palestinians.
Al Jazeera is the state propaganda organ of Qatar, a leading financier of international terrorism that is allowed to get away with it because they are a strategic US "ally" against Iran and they pay the Podestas a lot of money for "artwork" (influence). Their manager for several years was a previously a recruiter for the Muslim Brotherhood which you have probably never heard of but you might have heard of their front groups ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas, ISNA, and CAIR. Al Jazeera housed the exiled Islamist government of Egypt which had seized the assets of Coptic businesses and told Zawahiri to run wild with pogroms against Coptic communities. They are full participants in war and genocide.
Keith Ellison has consistently associated with anti-semites and advocated for anti-semites for his entire political career. The Anti-Defamation League endorsed him.
Pull your head out of your ass and find some better news sources. The whole internet is out there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @04:16PM
Palestinians are raging anti-Jewish fanatic terrorists by definition.
Any Arab born in the Gaza or west bank? That's a broad brush.
The Nazis also used a broad brush. Maybe you're no better than they were?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday December 02 2016, @06:00PM
My working definition of "Palestinian": "Person who lives in Gaza or the West Bank and is not a citizen of Israel", or about 3-4 million people. Which does not make them raging anti-Jewish fanatic terrorists by definition because some of them aren't old enough to even know how to talk, much less what Jews are. "Arab" is a much wider group of people, including (among others) Yemenis, Jordanians, Saudis, and Syrians.
I have indeed heard of the Muslim Brotherhood. They were one of the groups that among other things made a serious attempt at introducing democracy to the Middle East using relatively non-violent revolt in what became known as the "Arab Spring". They succeeded in Tunisia, and succeeded temporarily in Egypt until a US-backed coup restored military dictatorship.
Furthermore, casually equating ISIS and CAIR makes less sense than saying that your local Irish-American association is identical in every way to the Real IRA. As in, the only thing ISIS and CAIR have in common is the professed religion of Islam (and actually, both of them would claim the other isn't really Islamic). And linking Al Jazeera to them makes even less sense, when Al Jazeera has far more in common with the BBC than with ISIS.
I don't know what you believe in, really, but what I know you don't believe in is freedom, democracy, or basic standards of honest argument.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Friday December 02 2016, @06:33PM
"My working definition of "Palestinian":"
Mine is a Jordanian whose country has a majority of them making up its population an inconvenient truth in the Palestinian need a home country BS they pull off against Israel.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 02 2016, @07:14PM
Your definition is factually incorrect:
1. Gazans (such as the women featured in the article) were never Jordanians.
2. Some used to live in what is now Israel, but were expelled by force in the late 1940's during the fighting that led to the creation of Israel.
As for any claims about "home country BS", what exactly would you have the non-Israeli residents of the West Bank and Gaza do? The options that are currently not open to them:
* They can't become Israeli citizens - Israel won't let them, mostly because if they did Jews might not be a majority in Israel and thus lose control of the government.
* They can't leave for Jordan or Egypt or other Arab countries due to diplomatic agreements between Egypt, Jordan, and Israel to meet Israel's demands of no border crossings between the West Bank and Gaza and any Arab state.
* They can't stay where they are either, because Israel is continuously taking their land by force, and the ruling party of Israel has made it clear that they intend to have it all eventually.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday December 02 2016, @07:21PM
And all this could've been avoided if they had just agreed to either a One-State or Two-State Solution back in the day.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedGreen on Friday December 02 2016, @08:17PM
"1. Gazans (such as the women featured in the article) were never Jordanians."
Crook of shit where the hell do think they were before Israel existed and even after? The land which became Israel a tiny little slip of a piece was Jordan before and the pieces you spout on about now were gained as a result of the Arabs attacking Israel and them winning yet again the battles that seized it from Jordan. That is what happens in conquest to the victor go the spoils. I still have yet to figure out what the Jews have done to earn them this never ending persecution and worse by the world.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Friday December 02 2016, @08:34PM
Actually the Gaza piece came from Egypt its the West Bank came from Jordan. All artificial lines drawn on a map by the British at the time anyways. Are not the Arabs supposed to be brothers except when it comes to helping out their fellow brothers of course when you can get to kill a few Jews for your cause.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @08:39PM
When I read your posts, it makes me feel like I am stoned because your sentences do not word right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:08AM
it makes me feel like I am stoned
Please do not use this turn of phrase when the topic is the middle east.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:59PM
Thank you for correcting yourself further down. Gaza was never part of Jordan, it was part of Egypt.
As for what Jews have done to be attacked like they have been: In Europe, absolutely nothing (and, for the record, many members of my grandfather's family weren't able to get away).
In what is now Israel, though, the answer is (1) illegally immigrated to the area, (2) form paramilitary and terrorist organizations, the biggest one being Haganah, (3) and after successfully using those organizations to revolt against British rule, they turned their weapons on the Arabs living in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, killing thousands and eventually managing to take about 60% of the land allocated to the Arabs by the UN Security Council, driving off and robbing the civilian population of those areas in the process. The idea that the Jewish leaders just wanted peaceful coexistence is not born up by their behavior either in 1948 or since.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @02:01PM
I will build a wall to keep the propaganda out. Vote AC 2017, make SN great again!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @02:10PM
You have my 3 votes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @11:21PM
And my Axe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:11AM
And my Bow! (Oh, crap, does this mean I have to be Legolas? Why can't I be Aragon? Or at least Golem/jmorris?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:46PM
*Gollum
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday December 02 2016, @02:35PM
I don't know. From what I understand Arab women aren't frightened by computers and maths like women in the USA are, and it sounds like they're not having a problem finding women who would be interested.
That part that's a bit weird though is seeing the lizard people still pushing this gender gap thingie when it's entirely the creation of women in the USA. Well, I shouldn't say weird since it'll probably be used at yet another shaming tool against those of us stupid enough to get into a tech career without having the magickal womyn-born-womyn status.
That seems to be how it works. Something is nerdy and dorky? Avoid it at all costs, then say that the assigned males who were interested in it just hate women because they would rather spend their money on tech than forking over $500/month or whatever rate most Hunnies are demanding these days in gifts to have a girlfriend. (Translation: they're not being good little sex objects.) It seems impossible to ascertain some kind of difference between women in the USA who are “girlfriends” vs. “prostitutes.” At least prostitutes are honest. Why learn shit and become a dorky techie when you can guilt trip guys into giving you $$$? There's the reason for this omg shortage of women programmers right there.
Or maybe the secret is that your genitals have to be mutilated at birth before the compiler will run for you. Well, I've seem some intact people fire up a compiler so that can't be the case 100% of the time. Maybe we should implement the AAP's suggestion to begin performing female circumcision at birth over here just in case, and in 20 years the women programmer problem would be solved.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 02 2016, @02:55PM
Huh?
The rhythm of what you wrote would seem to mean something, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
Can we all speak plainly here? I would hope it's been firmly established that on Soylent you can say whatever you want, but for mod's sake say it with as much crystalline vigor as you can. Parody wrapped with allusion cloaked in allegory will have us all chasing Will-o'-the-wisps into the marsh.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday December 02 2016, @07:14PM
Fair enough. I'm surprised that got an up mod.
We know that in the West we have a perpetual shortage of women programmers. I've also heard that in the Middle East, women don't have these difficulties becoming programmers, even though objectively they're far more oppressed than any woman will be in the USA even if Trumpence does their worst.
So we've been flailing and self-flagellating the past few years about why there are no women programmers. The popular theory seems to be that male programmers are driving women out of programming careers with sexual harassment, death threats, and other nastiness: clearly, TBTP say, there must be no women programmers because they're so horribly mistreated and oppressed. The main stream media (lizard person moon matrix) have been relentlessly pushing the “misogynerd” narrative, that men who are interested in tech (and video games) are generally horrible people. (The contrapositive is interesting: men who are not interested in tech and video games are therefore generally good people.)
However, there are several problems with this assessment. It's well known that even just 100-level CS courses are sausage-fests; it's clear that women are not pursuing CS degrees, which seems to be the regular route to a programming career (even if many of us on this board didn't take that route). Being a highly technical vocation requiring lengthy training as well as excellent critical and abstract thinking skills, this is something that one cannot possibly learn in various “bootcamps,” most notoriously the “hour of code.”
Some feminists have put forward the theory that the subject matter itself is offensive to a woman's nature (see the short essay that sparked C+= as well as the history in feminism of interpreting maths texts as “rape manuals”). (This is odd considering that 150 years ago, Lovelace had to contend with men who did not want to include her in scientific and mathematics pursuits for the same reason!) Arab women, on the other hand, do pursue tech or programming careers. Finally, I can't help but to bring up the example that if we look at trans women (assuming we can see them as authentic women), again, we see no overwhelming difficulty with the subject area compared to cis women.
Clearly, there is some kind of phenomenon that is preventing Western, cisgendered women (not Arab or trans) from being interested in programming and tech. Google and the rest of the tech industry have come under incredible pressure to somehow fix that sociological phenomenon on their own because, presumably, if we assume the “misogynerd” narrative is true, then they are the only ones responsible for it.
It seems that Google has figured out that while it's not possible to make women programmers precipitate out of the æther when there are no women in Western CS courses, it is possible to go where there are women programmers.
Google's efforts seem highly cynical in that light, but it's difficult to blame them.
In searching for some alternative means to get Western women interested in programming, I postulated that the common denominator between men in the West who become programmers and Arab women who become programmers is ritual infant genital mutilation. The issue of ritual infant genital mutilation is highly frustrating to me on a personal level.
In 2010 iirc, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a report that noted that a problematic number of Muslim women travel to Africa and the Middle East to have their newborn daughter's genitals mutilated (the report describes a few different methods used and identifies the most common one) under less than sanity conditions leading to unnecessary health risks such as infection. They recommended that hospitals in the USA be allowed to perform infant female genital mutilation upon request under sanitary, surgical conditions as a harm-reduction measure. This report was utterly condemned by feminists and the main stream media. In the space of a month, political pressure forced the AAP to withdraw the report entirely.
In 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics released another of their intermittent reports on ritual male infant genital mutilation. It noted that fewer and fewer males have been mutilated at birth, down to roughly 50% in 2012, and it raised concerns about UTI, AIDS, and HPV risk. The timing was interesting because it arrived on the coat-tails of a controversy about teenage HPV vaccination. The fear was that vaccinating 10-12 year old girls against HPV would be exposing them to sexuality too soon. The combination of the two led a number of news reporters to conclude that we're better off mutilating male genitals at birth to prevent the spread of HPV since vaccinating against HPV is too controversial. Nobody said as much in one piece, but taken overall, the import was unmistakable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @07:55PM
Thank you for your input, but it is no surprise to me that cutting up male penis is not only accepted, but probably the core of all feminist fantasies. Regardless, the men can take the HPV vaccine as well, if it is too controversial for to women to do so, it beats having their dick mutilated.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 02 2016, @08:23PM
Thank you, that's clearer. I have not thought about gender and technology at all, so it's interesting to look through the window you've opened. I couldn't guess why more women don't go into CS. All I can do is note, as you did, that women don't really sign up for CS in America. Is there something fundamental about computers, programming, etc. that turns women off for some reason? Is it the approach to the material, the socioeconomics, or something deeply epistemological? I have no clue, and would never have a clue without spending many scads of hours of study and deep thinking that I don't have to spare (there are only so many hours in the day and I have devoted all mine to fighting lizard people). Perhaps places like Gaza have more luck attracting women to software because it is a rare outlet in a repressive society. Again, that's pure speculation based on nothing.
Prima facie, circumcision doesn't seem a persuasive cause for prevalence of programming interest. In my career I have worked with women software engineers from Russia, China, Vietnam, and India (Hindu, that is, not Muslim). I have never worked with a female muslim programmer. Female circumcision is not practiced in Russia, China, Vietnam, or by Hindus. If female circumcision (the thought of the practice makes me shudder) were so causal as you suppose, we ought to be awash in female Muslim programmers, oughtn't we? Again, that's anecdotal. Maybe we are awash in female Muslim programmers and I haven't seen the data.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @09:05PM
Opinions of news reporters should not be of any value for medical procedures.
Do you have a reference for:
mutilating male genitals at birth to prevent the spread of HPV
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday December 02 2016, @10:32PM
From The American Academy of Pediatrics [aappublications.org] September 2012:
There is also good evidence from randomized controlled trials that male circumcision is associated with a lower prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) transmission, as well as a decreased likelihood of bacterial vaginosis (BV) in female partners. The evidence for male circumcision being protective against syphilis is less strong, however, and male circumcision was not found to be associated with decreased risk of gonorrhea or chlamydia.
Further down:
HPV is among the most commonly occurring STIs in the United States and can lead to the development of cancers, including cervical cancer. The population-based data from NHANES 2003–2006 indicate that the overall prevalence of high- and low-oncogenic risk HPV types was 42.5% among US women aged 14 to 59 years. The prevalence of infection was lower for the 2 viral types with the highest risk of causing cancer, however, at 4.7% for HPV type 16 and 1.9% for HPV type 18.
There is good evidence that male circumcision is protective against all types of HPV infection (nononcogenic and oncogenic). Two prevalence studies with good evidence found a 30% to 40% reduction in risk of infection among circumcised men. These studies fail to provide information on the risk of acquiring HPV and may reflect persistence of HPV rather than acquisition of infection. Four studies provide fair evidence that male circumcision protects against HPV. The selection of anatomic sites sampled may influence the results.
Good evidence of the protective effect of male circumcision against HPV is available from two of the large randomized controlled trials in Africa. In the South African study, the prevalence of high-risk HPV was 32% lower in circumcised men. In the Uganda study, the risk of oncogenic HPV infection (adjusted for other factors) was 35% lower in circumcised men.
There is also good evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of male-to-female transmission of high-risk HPV from HIV-uninfected men. In the Uganda randomized controlled trial, the prevalence of high-risk HPV infection was 28% lower in female partners of circumcised HIV-uninfected men, while the incidence was 23% lower. Good evidence from another Uganda randomized controlled trial of male circumcision in HIV-infected men indicates that a circumcision did not reduce the risk of male-to-female transmission of high-risk HPV from HIV-infected men.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday December 02 2016, @10:34PM
I forgot to cover the “at birth” portion. From the American Academy of Pediatrics Circumcision Policy Statement [aappublications.org]:
Systematic evaluation of English-language peer-reviewed literature from 1995 through 2010 indicates that preventive health benefits of elective circumcision of male newborns outweigh the risks of the procedure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @04:56PM
Thanks for providing the links, especially to an AC.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @03:01PM
Reasonable post until halfway through when you derailed and crashed into the usual gender issue ranting.
We get it; you've got problems. You don't need to constantly be spewing hate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @03:08PM
You wanna watch how you talk about Melania Trump. Don't be disrespectful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @07:51PM
Yeah Good Luck tot he Lizard People convincing me that a fucking Muslim country is more progressive on Women's Rights or Women's Empowerment. I will believe that water burns, fire is a vegetable, and piranhas nurse their young before I swallow that shit.
I'm sure the Muslim woman in her Hijab is an excellent programmer, maybe even better than a man, when her husband or Male relative allows her to leave the house. Yes you can nitpick that the version of Islam practiced there is not as strict as in actual Arab country, but frankly potato-potato.