Google Employees Detained, Placed On Leave, Following Coast-to-Coast Anti-Israel Sit In
The hours-long occupation is not the first instance of anti-Israel sentiment among Google’s workforce since the October 7 massacre.
Nine Google employees were reportedly detained by police after staging an hours-long, coast-to-coast sit-in — demanding their employer divest from Israel and accusing the company of being complicit in genocide.
“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action,” a Google representative, Bailey Tomson, said in a statement. “These employees were put on administrative leave, and their access to our systems was cut. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.”
The protests — which took place across Google offices at New York City, Seattle, and Sunnyvale — were organized by a campaign called “No Tech for Apartheid.” The protest included a 10-hour occupation of the office of Google Cloud’s chief executive, Thomas Kurian, according to the group.
“Google is enabling and profiting from Israel’s AI-powered genocide through Project Nimbus, their $1B cloud contract with Israel,” the campaign wrote in a statement ahead of the “day of action” across the offices. “The Israeli military is also using Google Photos as part of a facial recognition dragnet across Gaza, which has led to the arrest, imprisonment, and torture of thousands of Palestinians with little to no evidence.”
Google employees have faced backlash for antisemitism in the months following the October 7 massacre — in February, the Daily Wire reported that “kill all Jews” was found written on a bathroom wall and one Jewish employee was assaulted — and injured —by anti-Israel protesters.
Videos posted on “No Tech for Apartheid’s” social media accounts showed protesters outside of Google’s offices shouting “Google’s a genocide profiteer” and “Google, Google, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
“We must recognize that Palestinian liberation and return is indivisible from the complete dismantlement of the Zionist apparatus, including divesting from companies like Google and their partners,” one protester said.