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‘Google fuels Israeli apartheid’ – Anti-Zionist protest outside tech giant’s SF headquarters

Demonstrators claim that cloud computing infrastructure for Israeli government ministries renders Google complicit in alleged “oppression” of Palestinians.

By World Israel News Staff

Dozens of protesters gathered outside of Google’s San Francisco headquarters on Tuesday, holding signs and chanting their opposition to a contract between the Israeli government and the tech industry titan.

The demonstrators expressed their disapproval of Project Nimbus, a Google and Amazon Web Services collaborative initiative to transition many of Israel’s government ministries onto a cloud computing model.

According to local news reports, the demonstrators – who included people identifying themselves as current employees of the company and anti-Zionist activists – unfurled a massive banner reading “Google fuels Israeli apartheid.”

Another banner, depicted in pictures circulating on social media, read “Google: Drop Project Nimbus. #NoTechForApartheid.”

Some hoisted Palestinian flags in the air.

In a statement, the protesters charged that Project Nimbus “will enable the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in occupied territory through Google and Amazon’s technical support of Israel’s AI and mass surveillance apparatus,”

The protesters, spilling out onto the roadway, temporarily blocked traffic on nearby Howard Street.

Police initially attempted to clear the protesters from the roadway but relented and “mostly looked on” as demonstrators continued snarling traffic in the area, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

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Ariel Koren, a former Google employee, spoke at the protest. She said that Google “setting a clear precedent that the motto they were founded on, ‘Don’t be evil,’ and all of their championing of diversity, equity and inclusion, has gone out the window” by engaging in a project with Israel.

Koren, who is Jewish, is a longtime opponent of the initiative and made headlines last year for her claim that Google illegally fired her due to her activism.

That claim was investigated by the National Labor Board and dismissed for lack of evidence.

Although the project is not specifically focused on providing technological capabilities for the Israeli military, the country’s Defense Ministry will transition to Google-backed cloud servers.

In 2022, Atle Erlingsson, a Google Cloud spokesperson, told Wired that “our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads.”

Erlingsson stressed that the company provides technical infrastructure for numerous governments around the world.