Supporters of Palestine have called to boycott the payment platform Stripe after its CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison - an Irish-American billionaire 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.
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.
Alright, then they’ll just have to stop consuming a lot of things they buy online. Also they can’t buy from places that use Stripe terminals. I’d like to see an entire group of people get up from their lounges and buy grocery in person because their local home grown market with home delivery uses stripe checkout.
If someone gives a shit about this, they’ll find a way to avoid Stripe. This might surprise you because you’ve presumably have never given enough of a shit about a cause to actually modify your behavior for it, but deciding to participate in a boycott does in fact mean having to sacrifice your own convenience and limiting the options available to you.
Well I’ve hardly ever seen people genuinely follow through on what they say. The people I met are mostly all bark but no bite.
As for myself? I’m an anarchist. I really don’t give a shit for either side of the argument. I’ll gladly watch the world burn :)
Boycots are not only for consumers. They can also be implemented by vendors. Stripe is a large company, but it has competitors.
A tobacco shop near us just moved from stripe to another vendor.
Guessing it was tobacco law related or something internal to their business, but I’ll let them know about this too.
(they’re Palestinian)
So, Gazan
You’re right, boycotting is difficult.