“If you’re studying business you have to know history - this whole thing is about money and economics. It’s not about religion, it’s not about politics, it’s not about culture. It’s about power and western colonial exploitation.” - Old City of Jerusalem Tour Guide

Palestine may seem like a “foreign policy” issue unrelated to your MBA experience. But unfortunately, many of the companies we recruit for are enabling or even supporting apartheid and the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.

Google, Microsoft, Airbnb, Puma, HP, Paypal, Barclays, Expedia (and thousands more) have profited immensely from the forced dispossession of Palestinian territories.

[source]

More likely than not, companies you’re aiming to work for or currently shop with have already made a business determination of whether or not to participate in the oppression of Palestinians. The burden is on us as MBA students to ensure that our purchasing decisions and career choices are advancing human rights, not suppressing them. Curious to learn how your future employer contributes to the oppression of Palestinians? Check out whoprofits.org

Israel frequently promotes its entrepreneurship scene. As a result, programs like Cornell organize Israel Treks centered on the startup ecosystem (“Silicon Wadi”) and Israeli business development. However, as a Johnson iTrek attendee pointed out, there were no Palestinian speakers featured on the trip. If there were, one would quickly learn that thousands of Palestinian businesses and homes are consistently being demolished, its residents forcibly evicted. All of this is done strategically to further fragment the Palestinian population so that the Israeli government and Israeli settlers can illegally seize their land.

Any MBA student interested in the burgeoning tech sector should question why there is such a deep tie between Israeli tech and its military. Israel prides itself on its deep surveillance of Palestinians, piloting illegal prototype surveillance technologies to purposely create division within Palestinian society before exporting them abroad for a profit. This revolving door between the military and the corporate sector gives tech developers unregulated access to test various invasive forms of control, all of which contribute to Israel’s surveillance empire. As one former Israeli intelligence commander stated, “We were trained to violate people’s privacy for a living, and then were offered even more money to do it abroad.”