By Hussein Aboubakr Mansour | October 15, 2021

The last few days saw mounting drama in the ongoing tension between Iran and the western hemisphere. With no clear agenda in sight, Enrique Mora, the European negotiator mediating between the United States and Iran, landed in Tehran this week to inquire about the meaning of “soon,” which is when Iran would like to resume the Vienna negotiations. At the same time, patience is running thin in Washington as the Biden administration signals it is starting to prepare for Plan B. This state of confusion and uncertainty might be exactly what Iran wants. 

This week and prior to Mora’s visit Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saied Khatibzadeh expanded the scope of the expected talks to include Afghanistan and relations between Iran and Brussels. Interestingly enough, the European envoy is coming with only one item in mind: an actual date for the new round of the Vienna negotiations instead of the Middle Eastern “soon” Iranian officials keep giving.  

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October 15, 2021 
Naomi Grant, Director of Communications 
[email protected] 
 

Nearly 400 Amazon and Google employees signed an Oct. 12 open letter in The Guardian slamming a $1.2 billion contract selling cloud services to the Israeli military and government, and demanding that Amazon and Google cancel this contract. 

EMET condemns these Amazon and Google employees in the strongest terms.  

The open letter regarding Project Nimbus refers to Israel’s fictional “systematic discrimination and displacement,” while completely ignoring very real human rights abuses such as Iran’s arbitrary imprisonment, torture and abuse of prisoners, including children, frequently to the point of death, on trumped up charges; China imprisoning its Muslim Uyghurs; and the systemic detention and arbitrary imprisonment and torture of individuals and use of chemical weapons on groups in Syria.  

This move by Amazon and Google employees - who cowardly signed the letter anonymously - is meant to demonize and delegitimize the state of Israel by using a double standard to judge the sole Jewish state that would be impossible for any nation to live up to. 

These characteristics are at the root of antisemitism, particularly in the 21st century.  

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Anti-Boycott compliance, Part II of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, “The anti-boycott provisions of the EAR [Export Administration Regulations] encourage, and in specific cases, require US persons to refuse to participate in unsanctioned foreign boycotts. They have the effect of preventing U.S. persons from advancing foreign policies of other nations that run counter to U.S. policy.”  

Should Google or Amazon take heed of its misguided employees, they could be violating U.S. law and complicit in corporate antisemitism.  

Said EMET president and founder Sarah Stern, “These 400 people are either uninformed or chose to ignore the facts. There would be no Palestinian-Israeli conflict had the Palestinians accepted any one of Israel’s very generous offers: the 1947 UN Partition Plan, Camp David in 2000 and the even more generous plan presented to PA President Mahmoud Abbas by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at Sharm al Sheik in 2007.”  

The letter by these employees of Amazon and Google mentions that they feel “morally obligated to speak out,” saying, “This contract was signed the same week that the Israeli military attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Israel did not ask for this war, nor did they initiate this war. They, as opposed to Hamas, do not indiscriminately fire any rockets at anyone. This was a pure and simple war of self-defense on the part of the Israelis.  

Continued Ms. Stern, “I was in Israel during the May war when approximately 4,340 missiles were fired from Gaza into Israeli residential communities. We had fewer than 60 seconds to get into our sealed rooms.  How would these Amazon and Google employees feel if a terrorist organization fired missiles into their homes and workplaces in California from Mexico, or New York from Canada?  

These self-righteous employees of Amazon and Google do not distinguish the arsonist from the firefighter. It is was past time to put an end to this sort of sacrosanct ‘virtue signaling’ based on illusions, distortions and lies, once and for all.” 

Please contact Amazon and Google to let them know that denying Israel a contract – Project Nimbus - is unacceptable and potentially illegal. Email Amazon at [email protected]  

For Google: 

1. Do a search on Google on any work. 

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the results page. 

3. Hit 'Send Feedback.' 

4. Enter your complaint. Feel free to include links to articles.

5. If you want, you can include a screenshot of an article.

6. Hit Send. 

Earlier this fall, after a protracted period of political infighting, Lebanon finally settled on a new government. How much of this government does Hezbollah control? To what degree is French President Emmanuel Macron going along with a Hezbollah- controlled government, despite his statement last year that he was “ashamed of Lebanon’s political leaders” because of their domination of, submission to and control by Hezbollah?

How much of the Lebanese Armed Forces does Hezbollah control? Why is the United States continuing to pour more taxpayer dollars into the Hezbollah-dominated Lebanese Armed Forces? What is happening to the reconstruction of the part of Beirut, blown up in August of 2020, and how does it relate to Hezbollah’s control of Lebanon’s commercial infrastructure?

To answer these questions and more, EMET was proud to host Tony Badran.

About the speaker: Tony Badran is a research fellow at FDD, where he focuses on Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and the geopolitics of the Levant. Born and raised in Lebanon, Tony has testified to the House of Representatives on several occasions regarding U.S. policy toward Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. His research currently focuses on the relationship between Iran’s Hezbollah model and regional states, as well as the history of and future scenarios for Israel-Hezbollah wars. His writings have appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal,  The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and The Weekly Standard. He is a columnist and Levant analyst for Tablet magazine.