A group of anonymous employees of tech giants Google and Amazon have urged the leaders of both companies “to pull out of Project Nimbus and cut all ties with the Israeli military.”
Google and Amazon won the bid to set up and operate Project Nimbus that is an Israeli effort to build its own local cloud storage servers. The “massive state tender” is backed by an investment of more than $1.2 billion.
“Crueller and deadlier for Palestinians”
In an open letter published in the British newspaper The Guardian on Tuesday, the self-described “employees of conscience” said, “Our employers signed a contract called Project Nimbus to sell dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government.”
The letter said, “The technology our companies have contracted to build will make the systematic discrimination and displacement carried out by the Israeli military and government even crueller and deadlier for Palestinians.”
The anonymous group of workers said that they are from diverse backgrounds and they believe “technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere, including all of our users. As workers who keep these companies running, we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values”.
The authors of the letter said that over 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon have signed this letter internally and they have opted to remain anonymous “because we fear retaliation”.
The letter revealed that that Project Nimbus allows for “further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land”.
Google urged to publicly support Palestinians
Earlier this year, a group of Jewish employees at Google called on their employer to ramp up its support of Palestinians during the Israel-Gaza war that left over than 250 Palestinians dead.
In the letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, employees had urged Google to make a company-wide statement “recognising the violence in Palestine and Israel, which must include direct recognition of the harm done to Palestinians by the Israeli military and gang violence”.
The Jewish employees said, “Both Israelis and Palestinians are hurting right now, but ignoring the destructive and deadly attacks faced by Palestinians erases our Palestinian co-workers.”
