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News > Israel

Amazon, Google Employees Demand Boycott of Israel

  • Employees at Google and Amazon are calling on their companies to cut their $1.2 billion contract with Israel's apartheid government.

    Employees at Google and Amazon are calling on their companies to cut their $1.2 billion contract with Israel's apartheid government. | Photo: Twitter @pal_legal

Published 13 October 2021
Opinion

More than 400 Amazon and Google employees call on their companies to stop dealing with the Israeli government due to its repressive practices against the Palestinian people.

On Tuesday, a group of over 400 Amazon and Google employees signed an open letter urging both companies to cancel a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and cease all ties with the country's military.

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More than 400 Amazon and Google employees signed the petition anonymously, requesting the cancellation of Project Nimbus, whereby the two tech giants provide cloud services to the Israeli government and military.

“We condemn Amazon and Google’s decision to sign the Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli military and government and ask them to reject this contract and future contracts that will harm our users,” the workers said in the letter published in The Guardian.

“The technology our companies have contracted to build will make the systematic discrimination and displacement carried out by the Israeli military and government even crueler and deadlier for Palestinians.”

According to the letter, the contract would provide cloud services to Israel that will aid in the illegal collection of data on Palestinians, which might be used to enhance practices described by human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, as crimes of apartheid. 

During the Israeli war on Gaza in May, the two enterprises came under fire, and employees demanded that the termination of the contracts with the Israeli military. The war left at least 248 Palestinians dead, including dozens of children, and damaged houses and buildings.

In response, a group of Google employees sent a letter to the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, to publish a statement condemning the attacks, including “direct recognition of the harm done to Palestinians by the Israeli military and gang violence.”

Several days later, more than 600 Amazon employees sent a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos, urging the company “to commit to review and sever business contracts and corporate donations with companies, organizations, and/or governments that are active or complicit in human rights violations,” including the Israeli military.

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