Comment by chasil

3 days ago

I graduated from an electrical engineering program at a big ten (U.S.) school in the mid '90s, and I am closing in on retirement. I spent today enrapt in an Oracle upgrade from 10g to 11g. Yes, our IT is COBOL-centric, and we are vastly behind the times. Much of today was spent (re)compiling C. The consensus is that I will have to think hard tomorrow about how to fix these problems.

While I was in school, I studied with many Palestinians in my college of engineering. I wonder often what happened to them.

At the same time, within Israel, Intel is the largest civilian employer. The Pentium M is an Israeli rework of the Pentium Pro legacy, and Israel is key to Intel's gains over the past two decades.

I wish that everyone that I knew from the Middle East was fully involved in the advances of Intel.

Perhaps my lost schoolmates' absence was precisely what Intel lacked, but such cultural divides are not easily bridged.

This is a great pity.

62 comments

chasil

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Aromasin  2 days ago

I've worked with a few teams based in Israel during my at Intel, namely in networking and transceiver technology space. I try to make a point of getting to know the people I work with through 1:1s, and you'll be pleased to know there is a good mix of Palestinans and Israelis working together. Everyone there was proud to have a very diverse team.

throwaway2037  3 days ago

This is a great post. Thank you to share your personal experience. Do you think they were first generation Palestinians? Or multi-generation (parents or earlier immigrated)? I know that Michigan state (Detroit, etc.) has one of the largest Arab communities in the United States.

  • aprilthird2021  3 days ago

    I went to school with some first generation Palestinians just 5-ish years ago.

    One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave. He has never been back to Palestine since then because another detainment or missed visa problem, etc. would derail his career.

    • ignoramous  3 days ago

      > One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave

      Terrible.

      Even in the current ceasefire terms, there's an explicit provision to have Israel agree to let the injured leave for treatment to neighbouring countries and be allowed to come back to the Strip.

      Despite arguments to contrary, I can see why some claim it is an open-air prison.

      54 replies →