More than 250 employees at Google have called for the company to support Palestinians during growing state violence in Gaza.
The group, self-identifying as Jewish or as allies, said that they were "concerned about the internal dialogue around the political and racial violence in Israel and Palestine."
The Jewish Diaspora in Tech group said in a letter that they "object to the conflation of Israel with the Jewish people, [and] affirm that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism."
Among the calls for actions, the group wants Google to listen to its Palestinian employees, fund relief for Palestinians affected by military violence (along with existing support for Israeli humanitarian efforts), protect freedom of speech, and to "recognize the pain."
Jewish Diaspora in Tech was formed after Google's official Jewish group 'Jewglers' took a nominally apolitical stance, but workers said it supported pro-Israel discussions and was not a safe space to express anti-Zionist belief, The Verge reports.
The newly formed Jewish Diaspora group also states: "Many of Israel's actions violate the UN human rights principles, which Google is committed to upholding. We request the review of all Alphabet business contracts and corporate donations and the termination of contracts with institutions that support Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, such as the Israel Defense Forces."
This year, Google and AWS jointly won a $1.2 billion contract to serve as the cloud providers for much of the Israeli government.
Among the agencies set to be supported is the IDF, as well as the Israel Land Authority, which Human Rights Watch has accused of discriminatory policies designed to segregate Palestinians in occupied West Bank.
Violence between Israel and self-governed Gaza has soared in recent days, and is heading for an “uncontainable security and humanitarian crisis," the UN secretary-general warned.
950 Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have killed 181 Palestinians, including 52 children. At the same time, more than 2,900 rockets fired by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad killed 10 people, including two children, the UN said.
The attacks on Gaza have destroyed 40 schools and four hospitals, as well as a high-rise home to several western media outlets. Power cuts are thought to affect hundreds of thousands of civilians and are expected to impact clean water and sewage systems.
“The reason we have these casualties is because Hamas is criminally attacking us from civilian neighborhoods from schools, from homes, from office buildings,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Face the Nation last weekend.
