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US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

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Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#151

Post by dfxm12 »

londons_explore wrote: post #36
mikece wrote: post #2

I wish lawmakers would urge (or force?) PayPal to actually give you a detailed reason when they freeze your account and effectively confiscate your money. I still have hundreds of dollars tied up in the limbo of "your account is frozen but we won't tell you why."

> your account is frozen but we won't tell you why If they suspect fraud, they aren't allowed to tell you about it. They also aren't allowed to give you your money back (incase the money is laundered). The only way to get your money back is to get a court to order them to give it back. The process is fairly simple - go to a small claims court, and ask the court to order them to give the money back. They won't contest…

The process is fairly simple - go to a small claims court, and ask the court to order them to give the money back.

Where I'm from you gotta file in person and there's a fee for filing and you pay someone to serve the defendant. Then you gotta show up at the court date. That's a bunch of fees and two days off from work before you even get a decision. I understand that this is the process, but it's not so simple for a lot of people to take days off from work, come up with money for fees (especially if their paypal is frozen), etc. It just doesn't serve the regular Joe all that well.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#152

Post by dontlaugh »

vxNsr wrote: post #98
f6v wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might as well be that the only reason why Iran and others are active in Palestine is because it’s blockaded.

Before all this they had legal and fair election where they elected a terrorist org: Hamas. Stop infantilizing an entire people. They are adults with their own agency. They are responsible for the decisions they make. The reason a terrorist group runs things there is because they want it to. In fact, if elections were held today, Hamas would lose… to Islamic Jihad because they’re more radical. Support for Hamas has b…

What is a terrorist organisation? By what definition is IDF not one? Or the Israeli state that keeps getting support through elections?

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#153

Post by mrguyorama »

hutzlibu wrote: post #91
fnovd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the Russians facing issues due to the actions of their government? Do you think they are all guilty, all deserving of sanction and economic hardship? Of course not, but what's the alternative?

"Of course not, but what's the alternative?" Targeting only the people in charge? Targeting everyone is a good recipe of uniting them all behind the bad ones.

Hamas is their democratically elected government. They have no excuse. Is there no way to leave Palestine if you don't support Hamas?

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#154

Post by fnovd »

hutzlibu wrote: post #91
fnovd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the Russians facing issues due to the actions of their government? Do you think they are all guilty, all deserving of sanction and economic hardship? Of course not, but what's the alternative?

"Of course not, but what's the alternative?" Targeting only the people in charge? Targeting everyone is a good recipe of uniting them all behind the bad ones.

OK, so your ministers are targeted, but everyday citizens are not. It's now trivial to work around sanctions and they don't matter at all. When your sanctions are symbolic, that's fine. When they're meant to actually have an economic impact, that doesn't work. There's an argument for fomenting dissent against the government causing the sanctions, too. If there were good, easy solutions, it wouldn't be the conflict that it is.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#155

Post by f6v »

hgsgm wrote: post #145
f6v wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I support neither Islamists, nor Israel. And I can see how Palestinians look like terrorist to someone from Israel. But I can understand that IDF looks like a terrorist organization when they drop bombs on your head. Point is, both sides take extremely violent actions which affect non-combatants, at least from time to time. It’s hypocritical to take a side. They all suck, but the UN is too dysfunctional to chan…

Why can't we have wars over territory where both sides are honorable and don't kill anyone?

I’d expect people who look the same(even cut their penises ritually) and live close by to not be so pissed at each other in 2023. Too much to ask.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#156

Post by foooorsyth »

ascar wrote: post #110
foooorsyth wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty amazing how nonchalant you’re talking about theft. I guess the approved strategy for legal theft is as follows. 1. Create a payments company that accepts deposits and holds balances (a bank — but don’t call it that) 2. Create a broken AML algorithm that flags X% of deposits as fraud 3. Force the falsely accused to take you to court to get their money back 4. Keep the rest. Most people won’t contest What a grea…

You assume malice. It's not. They're just covering their asses. They earn magnitudes more on the transaction fees of legitimate purchases than they could ever get from stealing money through that scheme. Not even considering that the frozen money isn't even theirs to use but a liability in their accounting.

Amazing how my bank never had this issue. I’ve sent ACH, wires, checks, and Zelles left and right with my major bank for years and years. No issues.

Yet my PayPal account that I used twice and had a $6 balance got closed permanently. Along with millions of others.

>You assume malice. It’s not.

Yes it is. Like many tech companies, they’ve “algorithm’d” something that used to take human investigation work. And their algorithm sucks. Their support sucks. This is all intentional so they can save money on labor. So they’re not stealing my money directly. So what? They’re freezing my funds and forcing me to take them to court so they can operate with lower labor costs. That’s theft — it doesn’t matter if they don’t use my money. If I rob you of some cash and then burn it, is it not still robbery?

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#157

Post by reissbaker »

hutzlibu wrote: post #133
reissbaker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orthodox Jews by vast margins support Israel, you've been a victim of disinformation. There is a tiny sect of ultra-Orthodox that don't, but even the vast majority of the ultra-Orthodox are pro-Israel. Support for Israel amongst Jews in general is somewhere north of 90%. Zionism is simply support for a Jewish state in Israel, not necessarily for settlers. The vast majority of the center-left political groups in Israe…

"Orthodox Jews by vast margins support Israel, you've been a victim of disinformation. " Possible, there is lots of disinformation going on. My wording also might have been bad, but by my definition and understanding orthodox jews aim for a 100% jewish state. And Israel is not 100% jewish, but tries a mixture as they also have arab and beduin population with voting rights. So orthodox jews surely mostly support Israe…

"By my understanding Orthodox Jews aim for a 100% Jewish state"

Most of my family is Orthodox, I was raised Orthodox, and have a pretty clear understanding of Orthodoxy's views on Israel (which is generally pro-Israel). You are confusing various ultra-Orthodox (also called "Haredi") sects, some of whom are anti-Zionist, but not for the reasons you're giving — in fact, the largest anti-Zionist Haredi sect (although "largest" here is still only ~100k globally), the Satmar, are specifically against Israel being Jewish because they view pre-Messianic Jewish states as contrary to Jewish law. The Neturei Karta, an even smaller but more extreme Haredi sect (~5k adherents globally), go so far as to politically support dismantling Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state.

These are pretty niche groups within Orthodoxy, though, which is ~2MM globally; nearly all sects of which support the State of Israel.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#158

Post by z3c0 »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #93
joshenberg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with loooong memories will say that Islamic Palestine arose after the forcible removal of Jewish culture from the area after the Jewish wars against Rome, at which point the Romans relabelled the area from Judea to Syria Palestina. Therefore the idea that Palestinians are 'indigenous' is in contention, since the diasporic Jewish people retained their language and customs in the interim, and then sought refuge…

OK thanks for the answer I guess. That seems like a lot of technical scaffolding to disqualify the use of a common, useful, and mostly accurate shorthand description of the current political arrangement there. I will continue to call it an occupation and continue to get called antisemitic for that probably.

Sadly, its use in politics has shifted the term from referring to a brand of hatred to simply meaning that you do not agree with Israel's claims of victimhood.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#159

Post by vorpalhex »

throw_a_grenade wrote: post #135
vorpalhex wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1,100 That's how many explosive rockets Palestine fired at civilian targets in Israel in 2022. Sorry but that isn't remotely equivalent.

Now please count how many rockets, bombs and other munitions Israel fired at civilian targets in Palestine. Because it's also > 0, then by this logic we must ban all Israeli from accessing financial services.

Israel actually does multiple levels of warning before issuing strikes against shared civilian/terrorist infrastructure including leaflets, audible warnings and so on, and only then fires a payload.

Palestine has dropped more rockets on their own people than Israel has even sent their direction.

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