Google employees stage a sit-in at CEO’s office demanding termination of contract with Israel

Google employees are actively occupying the California office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and refusing to leave until the company stops doing business with Israel, video live-streamed by the employees shows.

In a Twitch livestream titled “notech4apartheid,” Google employees can be seen donning keffiyehs and sitting on the floor in his office. On the 10th floor in the New York City Google office, where a simultaneous anti-Israel rally took place, employees carried anti-Israel signs, and shouted chants asking Kurian, “How many kids did you kill today?”

The protests were announced in internal emails to employees that shared a list of demands, including that Google drop its $1.2 billion contract with Israel for Project Nimbus, a cloud-computing project of the Israeli government, and the Israeli Defense Forces that contracts Google and Amazon for various services.

Demands also include that Google cease all “business with the Israeli apartheid government and military,” stop the “harassment, intimidation, bullying, and silencing,” of Palestinian and Muslim employees, and address the “health and safety crisis” among workers who are rattled over their labor being used to “enable a genocide.”

Organized by No Tech for Apartheid, the protesters claim they will remain in the office until Google drops Project Nimbus and heeds the other demands.

Anti-Semitism appears to be rampant throughout Google’s workforce. In February, The Daily Wire reported on internal anti-Semitic incidents taking place at Google, including the words “kill all Jews” found written on a bathroom wall inside its offices, and a Jewish employee being assaulted by anti-Israel protesters on one of their campuses. The Daily Wire also reported that a group of employees attempted to hijack an International Women’s Day event to bash Israel.

“By choosing to provide the Israeli government and military with our powerful cloud computing and AI technologies, we have continuously enabled Israel’s apartheid state in Palestine and ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the letter states. “When our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim colleagues have spoken out against the contract and their conditions of labor through ‘appropriate’ channels, Google leadership has allowed them to be harassed, doxxed, and retaliated against.”

“Years of being silenced, ignored and lied to by leadership has confirmed to us as workers that our concerns will not be heard without significant action, and as you read this, we are sitting in the office of Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, until our demands are met,” the letter reads.

An email sent by employee Kate Sim stated that she is joining her coworkers in “an act of civil resistance.”

“As you read this, I and many others are participating in a sit-in in front of the office of Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, in Sunnyvale,” Sim wrote in an email obtained by The Daily Wire. She also posted a photo of the protest on Twitter with employees holding anti-Israel signs.

HAPPENING NOW

I am with my google coworkers to say DROP PROJECT NIMBUS @NoTechApartheid https://t.co/j9J1yy2C1P

Not another nickel, not another dime, not another tech for genocide. We will not stand by as our work aids and abets the apartheid pic.twitter.com/DasxkTYPim

— Dr. KS (@katejsim) April 16, 2024

Sim’s email accuses Google leadership of lying about the purpose of  Project Nimbus, attributing a statement to Google CEO Sundar Pichai stating he is “proud to be doing Project Nimbus as a partner to like-minded governments that share democratic values around the world.”

“Our leadership continued to insist even when Google Photos was named as a weapon of war aiding and abetting target identification systems,” Sim wrote. “Our execs have blatantly lied to us, as they continue war profiteering from this AI-powered war – a deplorable use of innovative technology condemned by UN experts.”

The employee accuses Google of profiting off of genocide, and states that during the last six months she “saw how AI-powered military technology are killing children at an unprecedented scale.”

Sim, who works on the child safety team, said she can’t “help but wonder what it means to do child safety work, when the technologies we help create, safeguard, and use are being used to aid and abet this scale of destruction.”

Sim’s email linked to a Google document that included a letter to Kurian that accuses Google of enabling “apartheid.”

“Join me and thousands of other workers, to demand that Google to drop [sic] Project Nimbus. Together, in our hundreds and millions, we can stop this and one day, there will be a free Palestine and a world that is more humane, safe, and just.”

Sim sent her email to Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, and thousands of other teams, executives, and employees.

Sim’s Twitter is filled with months of overt anti-Israel activism in the wake of Hamas’s brutal massacre of more than 1,000 Israelis, including encouraging a shoe to be thrown at President Joe Biden after he tweeted that Israel is not alone. On December 7, she accused Israeli women of lying about being raped by terrorists.

“Do not be swayed by karens and their crocodile imperial feminism against rape,” she tweeted. “It plays right into long tradition of yt women weaponizing femininity/motherhood to discipline/punish men of color.”

Employee Rania Ibrahim also sent a similar email announcing her participation in the protests, claiming that she “witnessed six months of live-streamed murder, forced displacement, and destruction of culture in Palestine.”

Outdoor protests began at 2 PM ET and 11 PM ET in the New York City, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Seattle offices, according to Wired.

Earlier this week, Time reported on a version of the Nimbus Contract that showed the Israeli Defense Forces are able to use AI services and store and process data through a “secure entry point” to Google’s computing infrastructure. The contract reportedly shows the IDF was billed over $1 million for consulting services by Google.

The manager of Google Israel, Barak Regev, was interrupted by a Google employee during a speech last month, with the employee stating that he refuses “to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid or surveillance.” The disruptor was escorted out by security.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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