A,
In direct violation of UN Guidelines, PayPal currently serves Israeli settlers that illegally occupy West Bank but not the Palestinians that live there.
Already, 100,000 SumOfUs members have spoken out against PayPal's baseless discrimination. And we are stepping up the pressure against the tech giant -- with our friends at Jewish Voice for Peace and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, we are delivering our petition straight to PayPal's headquarters in California next week.
Original email:
PayPal operates in Israel’s illegal settlements -- but is refusing to provide service to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, in direct violation of UN guidelines.
Join the international call to PayPal to end its baseless discrimination now.
A,
PayPal does business in 203 countries around the world and is the default method of online payment for millions. But it won’t serve Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank -- even though it has no problem providing Israelis living in illegal settlements with the same service.
This shocking discrimination is crippling Palestine's burgeoning tech sector -- and without PayPal, Palestinian tech companies are at a distinct disadvantage.
But people are starting to take notice. 40 British Members of Parliament just signed a motion demanding the global payments service stop singling out Palestinians. And with international pressure mounting, we can finally get PayPal to stop its baseless discrimination once and for all.
PayPal’s failure to operate in Palestine is having serious repercussions for businesses, particularly on the Palestinian tech sector. The tech sector is one of the few industries that actually has the potential to grow under Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. And there’s no substitute for what’s become a global standard for making online payments globally.
140,000 of us demanded that Airbnb stop profiting off of vacation rentals listed in the illegally occupied West Bank. We delivered your message to Airbnb biggest investor, Fidelity Investments, in 17 different cities around the world, as well as Airbnb's international and European headquarters. We even built a mock site where thousands of our supporters gave Airbnb one-star reviews for its listing on stolen Palestinian land that got us press hits all around the world.
We know SumOfUs supporters care about equality and justice all over the world, and stand with Palestinians in their fight against occupation and if we apply the same pressure, PayPal is sure to feel the heat too.
PayPal has done the right thing in the past -- and together we can make it do the right thing again. In North Carolina, PayPal courageously scrapped a major operations center in protest of an unjust law that took away protections for the LGBTQ+ community.
If we come together now, we can show Paypal that it can expand its market, help the 2,000 IT grads Palestine produces every year find work, and finally end the growing backlash among British politicians, tech companies and concerned PayPal users like us.
Thanks for all that you do,
Angus, Reem, Carys, Toni, Emma, and the rest of the SumOfUs team
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More information:
PayPal brushes-off request from Palestinian tech firms to access the platform, TechCrunch, Sept 9, 2016
Palestinians Say They Need PayPal, But PayPal Isn't Interested, Motherboard, Sept 13, 2016
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