As we wrote earlier,, tech companies are deeply complicit in the current genocide in Gaza as well as the broader oppression in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Tech workers across these big companies are pressuring their employees to stop actively facilitating the Israeli Occupational Forces’ genocide. Google and Amazon workers, for example, have long been challenging “Project Nimbus” where these companies would provide cloud services for the Israeli military. See No Tech for Apartheid for more information. Or the “No Azure for Apartheid” campaign, where workers are pressuring Microsoft to stop offering Azure’s services to the Israeli military and prison system as well as Elbit Systems. Similarly, Meta employees united in the “Meta Stop Censoring Palestine” campaign to stop its discriminatory moderation.
These tech workers campaigning against their employer’s complicity have faced suppression and serious repercussions. Apple store workers were fired and disciplined for speaking out about Palestine, Google workers have been fired and even arrested for protesting Googles ongoing complicity, and Microsoft workers were fired for organising a Gaza vigil.
Palestinian human rights organisation 7amleh has published a report documenting this suppression in detail. It is titled Delete the Issue: Tech Worker Testimonies on Palestinian Advocacy and Workplace Suppression (PDF). The report details testimonies from Meta, Google, PayPal, Apple, Microsoft, and LinkedIn workers and the conclusions are crystal clear:
The report includes 25 testimonies that shed light on the censorship and discriminatory policies faced by employees advocating for Palestinian rights in their work environments, reflecting a systemic and structural bias against supporters of Palestinian rights within tech companies.
Tech companies prefer retaliating against their workers instead of addressing their (in)direct human rights violations. This shows, yet again, that the systemic complicity in Israel’s genocide and Apartheid regime is no failure or aberration but rather a feature of the capitalist and racist system they operate in.
See: Delete the Issue: Tech Workers’ Testimonies: Stories of Suppression of Palestinian Advocacy in the Workplace at 7amleh.
Please note that academics in the Netherlands face similar resistance from the university. Employees of the University of Amsterdam recently went on a union-supported strike to demand the right to protest and to demand the breaking of ties with Israeli institutions.