Supporters of Palestine have called to boycott the payment platform Stripe after its CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison - an Irish-American billionaire who has advocated for Palestinians in the past - posted on social media on Wednesday about his run on the beach in Tel Aviv and how it was “great” to be back.
Many responded to his post on X by pointing out that he was only thirty minutes away from the Gaza Strip. Conservative estimates say nearly 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza and two million have been under constant Israeli aggression as they fight what UN experts have called “'deliberate starvation”.
Some drew comparisons to the Academy Award-winning film, Zone of Interest, which depicts the everyday lives of Germans who lived next to the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two.
The customer is always right. In the original meaning of the phrase: if enough people are sufficiently mad at your business to stop spending their money for your services, you as the business owner are in no position to argue with them or call their concerns frivolous.
No business owner is being forced to acquiesce to the boycotters’ demands. People are just choosing not to give them money if they don’t like what they’re seeing. If a boycott like this ends up tanking Stripe or any business that uses it, that’s literally the free market at work and the result of consumers exercising their right to choose who to do business with. Tough luck, should have adapted to the market.