Amidst the ongoing Israel’s deadly bombing campaign in Gaza, a group of Jewish Google employees is calling on the company to support Palestinians.
According to a recent report, the employees formulated an internal letter in which they asked the Google CEO Sundar Pichai to put out a statement condemning the attacks, including “direct recognition of the harm done to Palestinians by the Israeli military and gang violence.”
Here is what the letter says.
This letter comes from a new employee resource group that formed last year in response to pro-Zionist sentiment within Jewglers (the colloquial term for Google’s Jewish employees). While Jewglers have tried to be apolitical, two current workers, who want to stay anonymous, say there have been pro-Israel discussions and their groups are not a safe space to express anti-Zionist beliefs.
This rift led to the formation of the Jewish Diaspora in Tech, a group of Jewish anti-nationalists within Google. One of the product marketing managers in the group said,
We were compelled to form our own space because of the fact that we were quite literally not allowed to express our viewpoints in the ERG.
Now, they are calling upon the CEO to support freedom of expression internally particularly around anti-Zionist viewpoints. In their FAQ section, the Jewish Diaspora in Tech wrote,
Google is the world’s largest search engine and any repression of freedom of expression occurring within the company is a danger not only to Googlers internally but to all people around the world.
Pichai has not yet responded to their requests.
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