US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by danaris » Thu, May 25, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

droopyEyelids wrote: post #17

I'm curious why PayPal bans Palestinians. It's not like they want to limit their addressable market. Seems likely related to OFAC, which is tough to google casually https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-inf... Nothing specific to Palestine on the country programs, but OFAC explains further that our sanctions are much more complicated than country-by-country here: https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions…

My guess is they don't want to piss off the Israeli government—or the elements in the US government who see blindly supporting Israel as an axiomatic good.

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

#172

Post by fnovd » Thu, May 25, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #168

the_only_law wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the point of sanctions was to discourage whatever behavior caused the sanction to be implemented in the first place.

No one claimed that sanctions alone will stop the war. And ALL of the russians are under sanctions since 2014 btw. and that clearly did not prevented the big war, or made Putin less powerful. So if anything, this refutes that sanctions against a whole population are helping.

No, it doesn't, because you don't know what the world would have looked like if there were no sanctions. If the impact of the sanctions delayed the war or forced Russia to go in with fewer supplies then the sanctions absolutely had a measurable impact. Just because Putin has strong authority now doesn't mean he wouldn't have been stronger without sanctions. Your arguments have no basis in reality.

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

#173

Post by milesskorpen » Thu, May 25, 2023, 6:20 PM UTC

ascar wrote: post #112

milesskorpen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) would not be legal without an enormous amount of work.

Your comment is ironic considering PayPal does exactly that and is in fact not a bank. They are licensed as a money transmitter.

Sure. I didn't say it was impossible or that they needed to be a bank. Getting licensed as a money transmitter is really challenging.

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

#174

Post by lesuorac » Thu, May 25, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #165

lesuorac wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should we not sanction countries ruled by terrorist organizations? Correct. The punishment should fit the crime. Being born in a location run by a terrorist organization is not a crime. This idea of group punishment is a very slippery slope and I believe you've already slide down it. As I pointed out in the previous comment, there are domestic terrorists in the US. And I'll go even further, members of the US curren…

> The punishment should fit the crime. Being born in a location run by a terrorist organization is not a crime. The problem is, as soon as you remove the sanctions, Hamas will use that to collect funds to buy more weapons to send off to Israel. The only way to achieve actual, lasting peace in Israel and Palestine is to get an Arab country as a guarantor that Israel won't be attacked - but Hamas is so deeply connected…

Why would an Arab country guarantee Israel won't get attack? They literally want that land for themselves and went to war over that.

Actual people are the ones giving money to Hamas. Those people can and should be sanctioned. The people that aren't shouldn't be. It's a simple concept.

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

#175

Post by ausbah » Thu, May 25, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

johngladtj wrote: post #144

causi wrote: post #130

People forget that just because a payment services is so entrenched and powerful that many people think of it more like a public utility doesn't mean it isn't just as amoral as any other company. Visa has shattered entire industries on a whim by deciding it was simply more profitable not to service certain classes of people or professions. Somehow they're allowed to do that. We need common-carrier rules for payment p…

Have you considered that regulation is what causes those issues?

stuff like processing sex industry related payments isn't illegal but isn't supported by big payment processors so it's defacto illegal. govt indecision to regulate here allows them to make shots of how economy operates via monopoly power

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

#176

Post by belter » Thu, May 25, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

from wrote: post #134

The sad reality is that Paypal doesn't serve these territories because they are "high risk" and also low income which means the amount of compliance officers they would have to employ to watch people in these territories and the regulatory penalties for accidentally letting a Hamas transaction slip through (these aren't easy to detect either as the government emphasizes that "terrorist financing" can be as little as…

Funny...PayPal is available to Israeli settlers residing in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. So it seems it is not the region...Western Union seems to be able to manage fine there: https://location.westernunion.com/ps?page=2&country=PS&q=Pal...

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

#177

Post by vxNsr » Thu, May 25, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

f6v wrote: post #136

vxNsr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

It’s gross moral equivocating to compare the two. The famous line that every Israeli knows is “If the Arabs laid down their weapons there would be peace, if the Israelis laid down their weapons they would all be killed.” This has been shown to be true again and again.

Only one side celebrates and encourages people to walk into a building full of random people and blow it up. Only one side handed out candy in the street when one of their own stabbed an entire family to death (including a 3mo baby). You are very wrong to compare the two and it shows either your ignorance or total disregard for human life.

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

#178

Post by polski-g » Thu, May 25, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

flagrant_taco wrote: post #88

fsflover wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A company with larger than may not freeze your account without giving any reason and without any recourse.

That's a pretty serious step with the federal government directly limiting what every business can do. I'm not actually sure if that would even be constitutional given that it severely limits how potentially privately owned businesses set their own terms of use. Defining what those limits are is entirely arbitrary, how do we pick a number that makes sense universally? Is that number adjusted for inflation, population…

> That's a pretty serious step with the federal government directly limiting what every business can do. I'm not actually sure if that would even be constitutional given that it severely limits how potentially privately owned businesses set their own terms of use.

See: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-ac...

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

#179

Post by q1w2 » Thu, May 25, 2023, 8:18 PM UTC

from wrote: post #134

The sad reality is that Paypal doesn't serve these territories because they are "high risk" and also low income which means the amount of compliance officers they would have to employ to watch people in these territories and the regulatory penalties for accidentally letting a Hamas transaction slip through (these aren't easy to detect either as the government emphasizes that "terrorist financing" can be as little as…

This is also why they don't serve Haiti, for example.

It's also not coincidental that this letter was just written, since only a couple months ago Hamas was forced to stop accepting Bitcoin donations because a number of their donators in the US were arrested after their contributions were arrested for sponsoring the terrorist group.

In fact it's such an unlikely coincidence, that some of the 11 US legislators that signed this letter are associated with non-profits who's donations seem to trickle into Hamas bank accounts...

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/ilhan-omar-ras...

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

#180

Post by rightbyte » Thu, May 25, 2023, 8:21 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #68

rightbyte wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good reasons? Kim Jung Un can send boats with gold bars. Meanwhile I can't send money without the bank asking me 'what ya gonna do with "your" money little friend?' Just have the money in escrow for 30 days or whatever if fraud is a concern. It is all about messing with us and showing who is in charge.

> Kim Jung Un can send boats with gold bars. Which is orders of magnitude more complex than running a SWIFT transfer, which is the entire goal of the sanctions : make it as hard as possible for the sanctioned country to do anything. Everyone knows and we've seen it over the last years that it is possible to evade any sanction - hell, even over many decades like Cuba - but it is a serious incentive for any government…

NK might be a bad example on my part as it is such a strange state. I.e. I can't buy kimshi from some NK farmer. However, I believe the right to trade is more benifitial in the long term for mutual peace love and understanding etc. The states can circumvent the restrictions by being states and it hurts mainly the populace.