John,

While the world has been reeling in horror at the genocide in Gaza and deadly pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank – Google is pressing ahead with a massive government and military cloud computer contract in Israel.

Google workers say that this technology is directly enabling Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. And they are fighting back.

Last month tens of Google employees staged simultaneous sit-ins in New York and California, putting their bodies in the way to defend human rights and disrupt the $1.2 billion Israeli government contract.

Google bosses retaliated by firing 50 of them (even workers who weren't protesting!), but pressure is mounting on the tech giant to drop the Israeli government contract. Let's add our voices and spread the word now:

Tell Google: drop the Israeli government contract and respect human rights

It’s all over the media. One Google software engineer who participated in the New York City sit-in protest in April said that by providing cloud and AI infrastructure to the Israeli military, Google is “directly implicated in the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

Now journalists at The Intercept have an official Israeli government document which proves that Google's statement that the contract is "not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services" is untrue. In fact, the contract commits Google to directly support Israel's weapons corporations.

Google is having a PR meltdown. A crackdown announcement to all employees, leaked to the media, warns “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again.” Sounds a little desperate, doesn’t it?

The truth is, the contract – called Project Nimbus – has drawn condemnation from shareholders as well as employees, over concerns that the project will lead to further abuses of Palestinians' human rights. But we need to grow this campaign all around the world, to change the calculus for the bosses at Google.

There's no other way. The contract with the Israeli government apparently forbids Google from denying service to any particular government entities. So the only way for Google to end complicity in war crimes committed by the Israeli military is to drop the contract completely.

Tell Google: drop Project Nimbus and respect human rights for all

We’ve been fighting in solidarity with tech workers and impacted communities for years. After public pressure, Microsoft sold its stake in AnyVision, a facial recognition startup implicated in Israeli human rights abuses. In 2020, we helped get Apple to adopt a landmark human rights policy to protect its customers. And the Ekō community is still campaigning to stop Google and Microsoft from building data centres in Saudi Arabia, where we know the government will stop at nothing to silence journalists and dissidents.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.