- The war between Israel and Hamas has sparked debate on college campuses and in the business world.
- Two startup founders and a VC explain why they won’t hire people who support Hamas.
- Support for the Palestinian people is very different from backing Hamas, they said.
“Portfolio companies should not hire individuals who are openly sympathetic to one of the worst terrorists attacks in the history of the world,” says Adam Struck, founding partner of Struck Capital.
The venture capitalist is referring to the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people. Struck has pledged never to hire people who support Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the US. And Struck is urging the companies he’s backed, more than 75 businesses, to avoid such candidates as well.
He was joined by two other Jewish American tech executives, Michael Broukhim and Matt Frischer, who spoke with Insider recently. They drew a distinction between backing Hamas and expressing concern for the plight of Palestinians. In the days following the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, this distinction was sometimes lost.
“Very few people seem to realize that anti-Hamas is PRO-Palestinian,” Oren Etzioni, a partner at Madonna Venture Group, wrote on X recently.
Other businesses and executives have made similar decisions lately, and some have rescinded job offers to those who blamed Israel and made similar statements.
Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square, called for the public naming of Harvard students who were involved in writing a letter that blamed Israel for Hamas’ violent attacks. The goal being to avoid hiring those people.
Three law students from Harvard and Columbia lost job offers over student organizations’ statements on the Israel-Hamas war. And an NYU law student lost a post-grad job offer after a statement blaming Israel for the Hamas attacks, Insider recently reported.
In their interviews with Insider, Struck, Broukhim, and Frischer explained nuanced stances and where they draw the line on this issue.
Broukhim’s view
Broukhim is co-CEO and co-founder of FabFitFun, an e-commerce startup based in Los Angeles that has raised more than $250 million and has about 400 employees. He’s also a Harvard alum.
After Jonathan Neman, Sweetgreens cofounder and CEO, tweeted his agreement with Ackman’s position, Broukhim posted “We are in as well.”
Broukhim told Insider he has “absolutely unequivocally” no intention of hiring those individuals.
“This was the most comically easy decision I’ve ever made as a CEO to not support these people because it was absolutely crazy, lunacy, irresponsible to sign a statement like that,” he added. “If you find your name associated with a statement like that, at a time like that, it’s irresponsible to not immediately do whatever you can to disaffiliate with that statement.”
Broukhim said he would reconsider if people who signed such a statement then quickly rescinded their support. Indeed, some Harvard students groups retracted their support for the letter that blamed Israel for the Hamas attacks.
Broukhim also won’t judge people who engaged in general pro-Palestine protests.
For him, the line is: “If someone is an explicit supporter of Hamas, they have no place at FabFitFun.”
Frischer’s take
Frischer has similar opinions. He’s the Bay Area-based co-founder of an Israeli startup Protect, which offers a live video app that uses smartphone cameras for safety. It has about 40 employees worldwide.
“Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization first and foremost,” Frischer says. “Even if I subtract my own personal opinion here, we wouldn’t hire anybody that’s a supporter of a terrorist organization.”
While he doesn’t assume that someone who agrees with terrorist rhetoric would actually commit violent acts, it wouldn’t be worth the risk for his business.
“I wouldn’t knowingly hire anybody that a) supports a terrorist organization and b) that ultimately puts my family and myself and my employees in a threatening situation,” Frischer said.
He would still consider candidates engaged in pro-Palestinian rallies, though, and he would not rule such people out even if they chant slogans such as “resistance is not terrorism” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The latter means removing Israelis from their country and turning the land over to Palestinians. It’s a favorite slogan of terrorist groups that seek to end Israel’s existence through violence, according the the Anti-Defamation League.
“It would depend on who the organization or organizers of the protests are,” Frischer explained, while drawing a distinction between “a pro-Palestinian movement versus Hamas-supported movement.”
Struck’s feelings
Struck’s feelings are similarly nuanced.
“It’s totally okay for people to have questions,” he said, “to be very sympathetic to Palestinian civilians, be very sympathetic to a two-state solution. Any healthy debate I think is a great situation.”
The line for him is, “When you are glorifying essentially the murdering of innocent babies in their cribs, that is an actual massacre. From my perspective, it’s black and white from both a moral and rational perspective.”
He would still consider candidates who want a better life for Palestinians, or feel “that Israel as a state has made mistakes,” he added. “I’m simply talking about the rhetoric like, ‘Glory to the murders. We are all Hamas.'”
If someone can’t differentiate between these stances, “I would be concerned that they have some level of cognitive impairment and would make other very serious mistakes that could harm the totality of the work environment,” Struck explained.
As for situations where slogans favored by terrorists are chanted during pro-Palestian protests, Struck said he’s more concerned with the people who are organizing pro-Hamas rallies.
“I’m talking about people that are leading some of these groups and pushing this violent rhetoric that in my opinion, is essentially promoting acts of antisemitism and terrorism,” he said. “We talk a lot at the board level about the concept of ‘poisoning the well’ with employees that can come in and just drag the totality of the company down.”
Stuck explains, “If someone is taking this stance from a cognitive, rational, and moral perspective, I would consider that just dangerous to the totality of the fiber that makes an enterprise grow and flourish.”
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