A Google engineer who interrupted a tech conference in New York City to protest the company’s partnership with the Israeli government has been fired.
Video showed an unidentified man wearing an orange Google shirt disrupt a keynote speech from the managing director of Google Israel, Barak Regev, during the Mind the Tech conference on Monday.
The conference, which is sponsored by the Israeli newspaper Calcalist, is centered on the global and Israeli high-tech industry.
‘I’m a Google Cloud software engineer and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid or surveillance,’ the man said.
‘Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger. I refuse to build technology.’
An unidentified man wearing an orange Google shirt disrupted a speech from the managing director of Google Israel, Barak Regev, during the Mind the Tech conference on Monday
A Google spokesperson confirmed to DailyMail.com that the engineer was fired for the disruption
The Israeli government launched Project Nimbus in April 2021, which is a $1.2 billion contract with Google and Amazon to provide cloud services for the nations military and government.
As the engineer was being escorted out he shouted, ‘Don’t cloud for apartheid. Don’t tech for apartheid. Free Palestine.’
Speaking anonymously, the protester told Hell Gate, ‘I don’t see any way forward to continue my engineering work without doing this.’
‘I consider this a part of my engineering work, and I hope other engineers within Cloud see me do this, and I hope that it galvanizes them.’
Israel launched a response after the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack that killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and saw over 240 people taken hostage.
Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since then and the UN has warned the Gaza strip faces famine conditions.
The UN said Israel has not helped as much as it could in getting food and medicine into the area, citing concerns the supplies will be taken by the Hamas terrorists they are fighting against.
A Google spokesperson confirmed to DailyMail.com that the engineer was fired for the disruption.
‘Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation – interfering with an official company-sponsored event,’ the spokesperson said.
‘This behavior is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.’
When Regev continued his speech after the interruption he said, ‘Part of the privilege of working in a company, which represents democratic values is giving the stage for different opinions’
Google has faced criticism for its relationship with Israel from both employees and the public
When Regev continued his speech after the interruption he said, ‘Part of the privilege of working in a company, which represents democratic values is giving the stage for different opinions.’
However, the managing director of Google Israel ended his speech when a second protester disrupted his speech shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ video on social media showed.
Google has faced criticism for its relationship with Israel from both employees and the public.
Over 600 employees signed a letter demanding the company drop its sponsorship of the Mind the Tech conference, reported WIRED.
When Project Nimbus was announced, hundreds of Google and Amazon employees published a letter saying, ‘We cannot support our employer’s decision to supply the Israeli military and government technology that is used to harm Palestinians.’