Hundreds of Google, Amazon employees Protest Deal with Israel

Hundreds of Google and Amazon workers have demanded the tech giants to stop working on the controversial Project Nimbus, the $1.2 bn contract between the tech behemoths and the Israeli government.

More than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon have signed a petition internally, calling on their employers to reject the Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli military and government.

“Project Nimbus is a $1.2bn contract to provide cloud services for the Israeli military and government. This technology allows for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land,” the petition reads.

The workers said they were remaining anonymous because they “fear retaliation.”

We are writing as Google and Amazon employees of conscience from diverse backgrounds. We believe that the technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere, including all of our users. As workers who keep these companies running, we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values. For this reason, we are compelled to call on the leaders of Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus and cut all ties with the Israeli military, according to the petition.

The signatories went on, saying: “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.”

“We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court.”

The signatories concluded by adding: “We have watched Google and Amazon aggressively pursue contracts with institutions like the US Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), and state and local police departments. These contracts are part of a disturbing pattern of militarization, lack of transparency and avoidance of oversight.”

In our turn, we stress the importance of imposing an international control over artificial intelligence products, as it may be used to suppress human rights.

We also call on Google and Amazon to stop work on its controversial Project Nimbus that will contribute to human rights violations in the Palestinian occupied territories.