‘Unprecedented Coordinated Action’: Anti-Israel Activists Have Set Their Sights On Big Tech

‘Unprecedented Coordinated Action’: Anti-Israel Activists Have Set Their Sights On Big Tech

Micaela Burrow on September 8, 2022

• Activists descended on Google offices to protest “Project Nimbus,” a cloud and IT contract with the Israeli military activists fear will promote “apartheid” against Palestinians, following the resignation of one of the campaign’s leaders.
• The activists demonstrated under the auspices of groups known for harassing Jews and supporting anti-Semitic movements and organizations.
• “Today’s protests represent unprecedented coordinated action from big tech workers, unified across two companies (Google and Amazon) and across three cities,” Workers Against Nimbus told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Anti-Israel activists protested outside Google offices in Durham, Seattle and New York City Thursday against a Google technology infrastructure contract the company has with Israel’s military after a Google employee resigned over the issue.

The activists, known as Workers Against Nimbus, hope to pressure Google and Amazon to shut down a $1.2 billion cloud computing project with the Israeli government they fear will provide Israel the capability to increase surveillance and other human rights violations of Palestinians, they said in a press release. The contract is part of Israel’s Project Nimbus, an initiative that will allow the country to utilize Google Cloud and AWS, eventually constructing local facilities for data storage.

“We are tech workers at Amazon and Google organizing to ensure our labor isn’t used to power Israeli apartheid,” the organization told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Workers Against Nimbus teamed up with the #NoTechForApartheid movement, a project created by the progressive organization Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) and Linda Sarsour’s MPower Change, to stage the protests. Sarsour, a Palestinian-American Muslim activist and executive director of MPower, has been accused of antisemitism and was forced to step off the board of the Women’s March for saying “Israel has hypnotized the world” and her continued affiliation with the avowedly antisemitic Nation of Islam, Fox News reported.

JVP is a pro-Boycott, Divest, Sanction organization that has harassed Jews and vocally supported Palestinians convicted of terrorism, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

“Palestine has become a cause du jour among many grassroots social justice groups, which has led to an infusion of antisemitism by those promoting anti-Israel narratives,” Josh Lipowsky, senior research analyst for the Counter Extremism Project, said to the DCNF. “We’ve witnesse[d] a rising number of antisemites hijack social justice causes and spread anti-Jewish discrimination.”

“Time to show these companies that the general public, their own users, and their workers are united against the companies’ decision to profit off of fueling Israeli apartheid,” Ariel Koren, who headed Google’s internal movement to drop Nimbus, Jewish Diaspora In Tech, wrote on Twitter Wednesday in preparation for the protests.

.@amazon & @google workers are leading direction actions at their offices, turning up the pressure on their companies to end their contracts with the Israeli military and apartheid government.

Join us in Seattle, SF, or NYC on Sep 8! https://t.co/0yXbNGfdSv#NoTechForApartheidpic.twitter.com/N9qcU3jibW

— MPower Change #NoTechForApartheid (@MPower_Change) September 1, 2022

We’re in San Francisco, about to start our #NoTechforApartheid rally, with dozens including tech workers from Google & Amazon protesting the Project Nimbus contract w/Israel.

We’re out here even as colonialism attempts to claw this victory back this morning.

Follow 👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/k43M2q1NVw

— Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) September 8, 2022

“Today’s protests represent unprecedented coordinated action from big tech workers, unified across two companies (Google and Amazon) and across three cities,” Workers Against Nimbus told the DCNF. A fourth city was later added to the roster.

Workers Against Nimbus told the DCNF it is a “worker-led campaign,” adding that MPower Change, JVP and other sponsoring organizations were “coordinating with us to support our efforts.”

Google stakeholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to shut down the project in June.

Koren announced on Aug. 30 she would leave the company after claiming she suffered “retaliation and hostility” for advocating against Google’s contribution to the Nimbus Project.

Google also denied Koren’s accusations that the company’s anti-Palestinian bias motivated a decision to force her to relocate or lose her job in a violation of company policy.

“We thoroughly investigated this employee’s claim, and our investigation found there was no retaliation here,” Google spokesperson Atle Erlingsson told the DCNF. The U.S. Labor Relations Board also dismissed Koren’s complaint, he added, noting that Google decided to relocate her before she spoke out against the project.

Koren, MPower Change and JVP did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.