Amazon Employees Protest Supplying Israeli Military with Intelligence Surveillance
More than 1,700 Amazon employees presented CEO Andy Jassy with a petition calling for the giant tech company to “rescind all contracts with the Israeli military and call for an immediate, durable, and sustained cease-fire.”
Despite that number being a considerably small amount in comparison to more than 1 million employees, several staff members say that the pro-Palestine momentum in corporate America is undergoing a significant shift in the face of the U.S. tech industry’s strong business ties to Israel.
This comes in the wake of the growing numbers of Americans persistently calling for US President Biden to end the US backed Israeli aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip in Occupied Palestine.
“I’ve been seeing a lot more solidarity and sympathy even among people who are not traditionally political,” said an Amazon employee.
Back in April 2021, Amazon and Google unanimously won Israel’s Project Nimbus cloud computing contract. Later that same year, employees from both companies protested against the verdict, calling the campaign ‘No Tech for Apartheid,’ and wrote in a public letter that the contract “was signed the same week that the Israeli military attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip — killing nearly 250 people, including more than 60 children” and in fear that 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.”
Back then, 300 Amazon employees signed the anti-Nimbus letter. Two years later, that number has reportedly grown more than five times.
“Last time it took a week,” said an employee involved in organizing the ‘No Tech For Apartheid’ campaign who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their job. “This literally took overnight.”
According to reports, the cloud computing contract does include the Israel Defense Forces, the same military forces that have been bombing Gaza.
The contract however is kept discreet and employees have claimed that they still don’t know what they are contributing to. Google initially declined to comment on the contract.
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