Employees of Google and Amazon are protesting the company's contract to provide cloud services to Israel.
File photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Hundreds of employees of Google and Amazon will hold protests on Thursday outside the companies' headquarters, in opposition to the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus deal with the Israeli government and military.
The #NoTechForApartheid movement announced that the protests would be held in San Francisco, New York and Seattle. The movement is seeking to prevent Israel from using technology to surveil Palestinians.
"Technology can bring people together -- but when these tools are used to harm communities, they make the world less safe for us all," the movement's website said. "That's why workers at Google and Amazon are urging their employers to walk their talk on human rights.''
In April 2021, the two major tech companies signed a contract with the Israeli government and military to provide them with cloud technology.
Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Hundreds of employees of Google and Amazon will hold protests on Thursday outside the companies' headquarters, in opposition to the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus deal with the Israeli government and military.
The #NoTechForApartheid movement announced that the protests would be held in San Francisco, New York and Seattle. The movement is seeking to prevent Israel from using technology to surveil Palestinians.
"Technology can bring people together -- but when these tools are used to harm communities, they make the world less safe for us all," the movement's website said. "That's why workers at Google and Amazon are urging their employers to walk their talk on human rights.''
In April 2021, the two major tech companies signed a contract with the Israeli government and military to provide them with cloud technology.
In the wake of that agreement, the #NoTechForApartheid movement was founded to push back against the deal. The movement says that Amazon and Google are complicit in Israel's May 2021 assault on Gaza, roadblocks that restrict Palestinians from traveling, and the destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
The movement also cited instances of Amazon's technology being used to help ICE deport immigrants, and Google selling artificial intelligence to the Department of Defense to make its drone strikes deadlier.
Ahmad Abu Shammalh, a computer scientist in Gaza, said that Silicon Valley has limited the cellular connection of Palestinians.
"Silicon Valley's tech giants show deliberate and systematic censorship of the Palestinian narrative, which borders on a denial of our very existence," Shammalh said in a statement on the movement's website. "These companies support a living apartheid."
Google has said the deal is directed at everyday work that is not highly sensitive or classified.
"We are proud that Google Cloud has been selected by the Israeli government to provide public cloud services to help digitally transform the country," Google spokeswoman Newberry said, according to TechCrunch. "The project includes making Google Cloud Platform available to government agencies for everyday workloads such as finance, healthcare, transportation and education, but it is not directed to highly sensitive or classified workloads."
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