Hundreds of Amazon employees demand company cuts ties with IDF

More than 500 anti-Israel employees call on internet giant Amazon to cut all business contacts with the IDF and by extension Israel.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A group of more than 500 employees at the internet giant Amazon sent a letter to company CEO Jeff Bezos and the head of Amazon Web Services Andy Jassy calling on the company to cut its ties with the Israel Defense Force, the news website The Verge reported Wednesday.

The letter invoked “Amazon’s historic position in favor or human rights” and called on the company to adopt a litany on anti-Israel steps to recognize employees right to express their “anti-Zionism,” acknowledge Palestinian suffering “under an illegal occupation” and create a relief fund for Palestinians.

The petitioners, who represent only a tiny fraction of Amazon’s estimated 1.2 million employees, also want the company to cut ties with Israel.

“We ask Amazon leadership to commit to review and sever business contracts and corporate donations with companies, organizations, and/or governments that are active or complicit in human rights violations, such as the Israeli Defense Forces,” the letter stated.

The letter tried to leverage the fact that Amazon has offices in Israel, but only recognized that the people working there are “Palestinians.”

“Amazon employs Palestinians in Tel Aviv and Haifa offices and around the world. Ignoring the suffering faced by Palestinians and their families at home erases our Palestinian coworkers,” the letter said, not mentioning that the majority of Amazon’s workers in Israel are Jewish, and included many Amazon employees who were targeted by some of the more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.

The letter did not mention at all the words “Hamas” or “rockets,” nor acknowledge that the rockets fired at Israeli population centers are defined by international law as a war crime.

Earlier this week the government of Israel announced is had signed a deal with both Google and Amazon Web Services valued at over $1 billion to establish several regional data centers in Israel. Under the deal, government ministries will migrate their data to cloud based services provided by the two companies.

Bezos, currently the second richest person in the world, announced on Wednesday that he will officially step down from his role as Amazon’s CEO on July 5, with Jassy, who is Jewish, expected to replace him.