Google Worker Who Protested Israel Contract Says She Was Forced to Quit
MICHAEL ARRIA
Ariel Koren, former director of marketing for Google’s educational products department. (PHOTO TWITTER)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2022, pp. 46-47
Special Report
By Michael Arria
A GOOGLE WORKER who publicly opposed a company contract with the Israeli military has resigned from her position citing retaliation from her employer.
Ariel Koren, a product marketing manager at Google for Education who has worked at the tech company for more than seven years, explained the situation in her Medium post.
“Due to retaliation, a hostile environment and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” wrote Koren. “Instead of listening to employees who want Google to live up to its ethical principles, Google is aggressively pursuing military contracts and stripping away the voices of its employees through a pattern of silencing and retaliation toward me and many others.”
Koren’s activism targeted Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract between Google, Amazon Web Services and Israel that helped provide cloud services to the country’s military and government. In October 2021 Koren drafted a public letter criticizing the agreement.
“We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip—actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court,” it read. “We envision a future where technology brings people together and makes life better for everyone. To build that brighter future, the companies we work for need to stop contracting with any and all militarized organizations in the U.S. and beyond.”
Hundreds of workers at Google and Amazon signed the letter.
Koren said that Google gave her an ultimatum the following month: either relocate to the company’s Brazil office or be fired. The move prompted Koren to file a complaint with Google’s human resources department and an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
An Israeli soldier uses an unmanned surveillance drone to monitor Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron in 2015. (HAZEM BADER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)
A petition supporting Koren was circulated at the time and it was signed by more than 25,000 people.
Google has publicly stated that they investigated the complaint and found no evidence of retaliation. Koren says the company’s HR team eventually admitted to her that the demand had been “improper and harmful,” but still refused to acknowledge that it came in response to her activism.
In her Medium post Koren, who is Jewish, also says that Google has “sustained a culture of silencing anti-Zionist Jews and creating toxic and unjust conditions for Palestinian, Arab and Muslim workers.”
“Anti-Zionist Jews at Google will not stop speaking out against Israel’s injustices against Palestinians; but we acknowledge our privilege to do so safely while our Palestinian colleagues and friends are not afforded the same privilege to feel safe and be heard,” she wrote. “Our Palestinian colleagues deserve better than this; our Palestinian users deserve better than this. The general public deserves better than this.”
In a YouTube video, <https://jewishdiasporatech.org/voices>, fifteen other Google employees posted testimonials about the company’s treatment of Palestinians, policies of censorship and acts of retaliation. “Working at Google was always my dream job until I learned about Project Nimbus,” reads one testimonial. “I feel like I am making my living off the oppression of my family back home.”
“As a Palestinian, my feelings of marginalization only grew when I began seeing my coworkers issued warnings just for having empathy for Palestinians,” says another employee.
One worker says that they’re now “ashamed” to work for Google as a result of Project Nimbus.
A New York Times article on Koren’s resignation references “Google’s growing reputation for punishing employees who are publicly critical of the company is a notable change for an employer that once nourished an outspoken workplace culture.”
Google marked Israeli legislative elections on March 2, 2020 with a special design. The company is offering advanced artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities to the Israeli government through its controversial “Project Nimbus” contract. The Israeli Finance Ministry announced the contract in April 2021 for a $1.2 billion cloud computing system jointly built by Google and Amazon. (ARTUR WIDAK/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES)
In November 2019, Google fired five workers over organizing. The NLRB filed a complaint against the company saying two of those firings had been illegal and that they had spied on multiple employees.
Koren’s Medium post also calls on readers to take action. She asks people to pressure the company to drop Project Nimbus, join the “No Tech for Apartheid” campaign, and amplify Palestinian voices. “Don’t be complacent or apathetic; take responsibility for your company and how your labor is used,” Koren writes.
For more information google “Ariel Koren quits google.”
Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss, where this article was posted on Sept. 1, 2022. His work has appeared in The Appeal, In These Times and Truthout. He is the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelarria.