The Israeli government’s deal with Google and Amazon has prompted a number of Google and Amazon employees to express their opposition to it.
The employees have underlined that their firms have signed a deal worth $1.2 billion with a venture known as Project Nimbus, which, according to the employees, “would supply cloud services to the Israeli government, especially involving the military,” according to the employees.
Users would be able to quickly and easily train powerful artificial intelligence using the services, according to the workers, who added that the services include both storage and processing resources.
According to NBC News, the workers have written to Amazon and Google in a combined letter requesting that Project Nimbus be cancelled and that Palestinian human rights be protected. The employees stated that they work with the tech companies because they have a significant influence on people all over the world, but they also stated that they were not naïve about the harm that technology can do to individuals.
Google and Amazon employees wrote in a blog post published by The Guardian that “the technology our firms have contracted to create would make the systemic discrimination and displacement carried out by Israel’s military and administration more crueler and deadlier for Palestinians.”
“As employees who are responsible for keeping these businesses functioning, we have a moral obligation to speak up against breaches of these basic principles. Therefore, we feel obligated to urge the CEOs of Amazon and Google to withdraw from Project Nimbus and to severe all connections with Israel’s military and security forces entirely. So far, more than 90 Google employees and more than 300 Amazon employees have signed this letter on an internal basis. We have chosen to remain nameless for fear of reprisal.”
Early this year, a group of Jewish Google employees called on the business to expand its support for Palestinians, and the company agreed. The employees expressed their displeasure with the attacks in a letter written to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and they called for “clear acknowledgement of the suffering done to Palestinians by Israeli military and gang brutality.”
According to a story by The Verge, the group asked Google to listen to its Palestinian employees, finance aid for Palestinians who had been harmed by military brutality, preserve freedom of expression, and acknowledge the anguish they were experiencing. As part of their request, they requested Google to cancel any commercial partnerships with entities that promote “Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.”
