'Free Palestine!': Google employee fired for disrupting speech
Google engineer fired for protest against collaboration with Israeli military; shouted, "I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance."
Google recently fired an engineer after the employee expressed anti-Israel sentiments during the Israeli tech industry conference, Mind The Tech, in New York. During a speech by Barak Regev, Google's CEO in Israel, the employee publicly protested against Google's collaboration in Project Nimbus, the Israeli military's cloud computing project.
"I'm a Google software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance," he shouted before being escorted out by security. He added, "Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger... Don’t cloud for apartheid. Don’t tech for apartheid. Free Palestine Free Palestine!"
Google confirmed the employee's termination, first reported by CNBC, stating, "Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation – interfering with an official company-sponsored event. This behavior is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies."
The organization No Tech For Apartheid opposed Project Nimbus and issued a statement on Friday regarding the engineer's termination. "Google’s aims are clear: The corporation is trying to silence workers to hide their moral failings."
The anti-Israel trend at Google and Amazon
Back in 2021, Google faced public pressure over its involvement in Project Nimbus when the company signed the contract. Hundreds of Google and Amazon employees published an open letter protesting the agreement, claiming that the companies are enabling further surveillance and illegal data collection on Palestinians.
Further, the employee demanded that Google stop using their employees to power genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Since the outbreak of the war on October 7, workers held a "protest strike" at the company's offices in San Francisco in protest of the contract with Israeli companies and more than 600 workers signed a letter demanding that Google end its sponsorship of the Mind the Tech conference, according to a report in Wired.
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