Google Fires Dozens Of Employees Who Protested $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel

Google has fired more than two dozen employees who publicly protested against the tech giant’s controversial $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with Israel, as institutions face increased pressure to divest from a government whose U.S.-funded military is in its sixth month of attacking Gaza.

The workers held protests on Tuesday at Google’s campuses in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, the latter of which houses the Google Cloud headquarters. Organized by No Tech for Apartheid, the employees participated in a 10-hour sit-in inside the offices — including that of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian — to protest Project Nimbus, a joint contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military with artificial intelligence and cloud services.

Google had police arrest nine of the protesting employees on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the tech giant fired 28 employees following an internal investigation, according to a company-wide email from Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president for global security. The email was obtained by multiple news outlets.

The protesters “took over office spaces, defaced our property and physically impeded the work of other Googlers. Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened,” Rackow wrote, adding that employees should expect company leaders to speak more about standards of behavior and discourse in the office.

“Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it,” he continued. “It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to — including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.”

NTFA confirmed what it