'Tech for Palestine' initiative launched to support Palestinians

A coalition of over 40 founders, investors, engineers, and other tech industry professionals has recently launched a new initiative called 'Tech for Palestine'. The goal of this coalition is to build open-source projects, tools, and data that can aid the tech industry in advocating for the Palestinian people.

The initiative was founded by Paul Biggar, who is also the founder of the continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) platform CircleCI. As per a report by global tech news platform TechCrunch, the initiative aims to raise awareness about the situation in Gaza, advocate for a permanent ceasefire, and provide a platform for individuals who might be hesitant to express public support for Palestine due to potential career impacts. 

The motivation behind Biggar's 'Tech for Palestine' initiative originated from a widely shared blog post where he criticised the tech industry's lack of support for Palestinians. Following the post, thousands of people reached out to express their support and concerns. Many of these individuals were reluctant to publicly voice their opinions due to career-related fears. Responding to this, Biggar connected these individuals to form the 'Tech for Palestine community', which gained rapid momentum.

While still in its early stages, the platform aims to host projects led by small groups, acting as a central space for sharing resources and advice. Key figures in the tech industry, including Idris Mokhtarzada, the founder of Truebill, have committed to contributing to the platform.

Among the initial projects, the coalition has developed a GitHub badge advocating for a ceasefire and HTML snippets that individuals can incorporate into their websites to display a banner supporting the call for a ceasefire.