Anyone interested in the entrepreneurship, small and medium enterprises and startups space has surely heard of Start-up Nation. This book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, first published 2009, celebrated what it called "The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle".
On the bright side, for the past fifteen years, leaders around the world, most notably the French President Emmanuel Macron quoted Start-up Nation as the source of inspiration and ambition behind building their high-technology startups ecosystem. Moreover, Israeli companies ranked fourth in terms of the number of companies listed in the US’ stock market — NASDAQ. The number of Israeli companies listed in NASDAQ more than doubled, from around 63 in 2009 to 135 in 2023, behind only the US, Canada, and China.
No one would have ever guessed, that within this same timeframe, Israel will descend from the world’s celebrated start-up nation to be the 21st century’s genocide nation. A more important question for us as communities today is, how can we learn to nurture an inspiring entrepreneurial spirit, instead of nurturing a spirit of racism, hatred, death, starvation, and disease.
Death start-ups
Intelligence can be used for either the benefit or destruction of humanity, and one of the optimal ways to benefit humanity is by divesting from death start-ups and any regime that incubates them directly or indirectly. Israel is the regime in the world depleting billions of aid and subsidy dollars from the US and European Union to produce death and suffering around the world. It has invested in countless projects that used Palestinians as test subjects for evil weapons. This includes but is not limited to, suicide drones developed by companies such as SpearUAV, that have contributed to the targeted and killed around 12,000 children.
Another death start-up Smartshooter facilitated the gunning down of targets of refugees waving white flags, fleeing to “safe areas”. In addition, around 500 rescue workers, medical professionals, and journalists were identified and targeted by death armored vehicles and drones. These are only a few examples of how people choose the wrong side of history by succumbing to hatred and excessive materialism with no regard to the destruction it is causing the world.
Life start-ups
On the brighter side, there are start-ups that have chosen the road less travelled by and chose to benefit the life of their founders and life of others. The Connecting Gaza project by Mirna El Helbawi chose to link hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and other people under siege, instead of investing their intelligence in providing weapons to kill people, animals and plants.
One of the most respected start-up founders and role models around the world Paddy Cosgrave, the founder of Web Summit, chose to step down to make a point that we need to stand by our allies by being tough on them when they commit crimes until they find their way back to the right path. He could have stayed silent and kept making good money while his soul weathered. A third role model is Paul Biggar, who lent his voice to the thousands of people who are prosecuted in the tech industry for speaking up for freedom. He founded tech4palestine after being evilly forced to step down from the start-up he founded circleci.
Tough times show us people’s true character. It is easy to be attracted to power even when it’s evil, and tough to stand by those who are less fortunate. This is the right time to invest in start-up communities that build lives and divest from communities that are consumed by hatred and materialism.
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