Friday, 15 November 2024

Google Employees Protesting Business with Israel Arrested After More Than 8 Hours in CEO's Office

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Google Employees Protesting Business with Israel Arrested After More Than 8 Hours in CEO's Office
GoogleBeata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Google employees who took part in a protest over the company's continued business with Israel were arrested on Tuesday evening.

Employees from the company reportedly organized and took part in two different protests, one in Sunnyvale, California, and another in one of Google's offices in New York City, according to the Hill.

The activist group No Tech for Apartheid was responsible for organizing the protest in Sunnyvale, according to the group's website. The group reportedly entered the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and demanded that Google stop business with Israel and withdraw from Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with Israel it signed in 2021.

In a video posted to X, a man is seen telling the employees that they have been placed on administrative leave and asking them to leave.

“It's getting kinda late…I wanted to ask you, you know, to cooperate, you know, you've been placed on admin leave, and, you know, we'd like to see if you'd just voluntarily, you know, so it's been a while, so, can you do that for us?” the man says, asking them to leave, as they occupied the office for more than eight hours.

The man explains to the protesters that if they do not leave, he will have to “call law enforcement,” to which the protesters say they understand. Shortly after, police are seen entering the room and informing the protesters that they must leave.

Under Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon work together to provide the Israeli government with “cloud computing infrastructure” and other services. Google reportedly provides cloud computing services to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to TIME.

In an open letter from No Tech for Apartheid to Amazon and Google executives, such as Andy Jassy, Adam Selipsky, Sundar Pichai, and Thomas Kurian, the group says the company's “technology is directly supporting” the “ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”

The group writes:

I'm writing to you with urgency and in solidarity with the hundreds of Amazon and Google workers bravely calling for Google and Amazon to immediately cancel your $1.2 billion contract for Project Nimbus and stop doing business with the Israeli apartheid government and military.

This demand is urgent. Your technology is directly supporting the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the recent genocidal bombing of Gaza that began last month. This devastation includes the complete Israeli siege of Gaza, cutting off food, water, and electricity to 2+ million people, half of whom are children. The recent indiscriminate Israeli bombings of residential buildings that have wiped out entire Palestinian families and neighborhoods in Gaza. This includes the targeted bombings of hospitals, journalists, the border crossing, and Palestinians fleeing under evacuation order. Israeli ministers have declared the intent to “eliminate everything” in Gaza and referred to Gazans as “human animals,” In the past week, the Israeli military have murdered over 10,000 Palestinians, including over 4,000 children.

The protest comes as there has been an increase in pro-Palestinian protests in the United States and around the world in the aftermath of the U.S.-designated Islamic terror group, Hamas, attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, leaving 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 200 people taken as hostages.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Horror of the Hamas Terror Attack on Civilians at Kibbutz Be’eri in Israel

Hamas openly calls for the murder of Jewish people and for Israel to be eliminated.

Breitbart News reached out to the Sunnyvale Police Department for a statement but did not receive a response by the time of publication.


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