Google Fires 28 Pro-Palestine Employees, Issues Scathing Memo

On Tuesday, police were called to Google’s California office to arrest a group of employees for trespassing after they staged a sit-in protest inside an executive’s office over the company doing business with Israel. Just one day later, the company fired 28 anti-Israel employees.

The radical leftist activists’ protest was organized by a group called No Tech for Apartheid, which claims that Google was essentially aiding “genocide” in Gaza with its “Project Nimbus.”

The activists announced the protests in internal emails, which contained a list of demands that included Google canceling its $1.2 billion contract with Israel for the cloud-computing project. The anti-Israel demonstrators also demanded Google stop the so-called “harassment, intimidation, bullying and silencing” of Palestinian and Muslim employees.

Another demand listed in the email was for Google to address the “health and safety crisis” workers were supposedly facing because their labor was being used to “enable a genocide.”

All of the employees who joined the sit-in were initially placed on administrative leave, while those who refused to leave Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office for over eight hours were arrested after police were called by Google executives.

Google vice president of global security, Chris Rackow, issued a company-wide memo about the arrests and subsequent firing of the anti-Israel employees.

“They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” the memo read. “Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made coworkers feel threatened.”

“Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it,” the memo continued. “It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to … we are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace.”

Rackow went on to note that the majority of Google’s employees “do the right thing,” but warned employees who are “tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies” to “think again.”

Meanwhile, No Tech for Apartheid has also issued a statement claiming that the firings were “illegal” and asserting that several workers who did not participate in the sit-in were also fired.

“Google just fired over two dozen workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the group wrote in a post on Instagram. “This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers.”

No Tech for Apartheid also denied the company’s allegations of harassment by the protesters, while declaring that Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Kurian are “genocide profiteers.”

“The truth is clear: Google is terrified of workers coming together and calling for accountability and transparency from our bosses,” the group added. “They are choosing to reveal the falsity of Google’s ‘open culture’ in order to get rid of a threat. The corporation is trying to downplay and discredit our power.”

The radical anti-Israel group also declared that the firings will not stop them, as they “only serve as further fuel for the growth of this movement.”

“Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide,” the statement concluded.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR