American Tech Giants being challenged from within

Jerusalem24 – Four American technology companies, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon, are witnessing an internal movement among their employees to support Palestinian rights, and demonstrations by Palestinian and American activists denouncing the positions of the management of these companies in supporting Israel, especially with regards to their censorship, deletion of Palestinian content on social media, or its financial investments in Israeli settlements and infrastructure that facilitate human rights violations.

Hundreds of Google employees signed an internal letter addressed to the general manager, Sundar, and the company’s executive management, objecting to its bias in favor of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians. The letter calls on the company to donate financially and support Palestinian human rights organizations, and that the value of the company’s donations in Israel equal the same value in the Palestinian territories, and recognize the violence perpetrated by the Israeli army against the Palestinians.

As part of the campaign on Google, the Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr issued a clip in which he indicated that Google is biased in favor of Israel, adding the smallest streets of settlements on its maps, while ignoring even publishing the names of streets in Palestinian cities.

Nearly 200 Facebook employees signed a letter a week ago calling on their corporate management not to delete Palestinian content, or to restrict it, and to demand a third party to conduct an audit of censorship policies towards Palestinians and Arabs, referring in this regard to statements by former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu describing the Palestinians as terrorists.

Within the same direction, the Progressive Bar Association, Jewish Voices for Peace, and the Electronic Rights Group sent a letter to Facebook’s Director of Operations, Shirley Sandberg, calling on her to immediately stop all forms of censorship and removal of content that supports Palestinian rights in all of the company’s subsidiaries, including Instagram, and an official announcement of the control policies it adopts.

More than 1,000 Apple employees signed a letter to the company’s general manager, Tim Cook, asking him to issue a statement acknowledging that millions of Palestinians suffer under the Israeli occupation.

The statement, issued by Apple’s Muslim Employees Association, said that they used to not discuss sensitive political issues, including the Palestinian one in the workplace, but in the face of the continued denial by Israel and the influential forces of the human rights of the Palestinian people, they felt frustrated and sad as employees, demanding the company to declare a position condemning the aggression against the Palestinians. They called on Apple employees to announce the company that the lives of Palestinians are important, and that this announcement should not include general words, such as: clash, or the two parties to the conflict, as an equality between the victim and the aggressor.

On the other hand, 500 Amazon employees signed a letter addressed to the company’s directors, Jeff Bezos and Andy Jesse, asking them to recognize the aggression against the Palestinian people under occupation, and demanding that they not use general terms, such as violence between the two parties, As this puts the Palestinians who are subjected to violence on one side with the one who practices aggression and violence, which is Israel.

While the movement continues within these companies through their employees to attract more signatures to these messages, the demonstrations and events organized by supporters of the Palestinian right in the United States did not stop in front of their headquarters. Since the end of the Israeli military aggression, Palestinian demonstrations are heading towards the headquarters of these companies, where dozens of demonstrations and vigils have been organized in front of their headquarters.