8 ms·

Google employees demand Palestine support in letter to CEO

45 points by billyharris 5y ago

fouc 5y ago
> On Tuesday, a group of 250 concerned "Jewish and allied Googlers" released a signed letter penned to CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding the tech behemoth provide relief to Palestinians suffering from the ongoing humanitarian crises that have erupted during the violent conflict between Israel and Hamas > The letter penned by an unofficial Google group calling themselves the Jewish Diaspora in Tech accuses the official Jewish ERG ... of silencing voices critical of Israel's current military strategy and historical combative relationship with Palestinians. "We object to the conflation of Israel with the Jewish people," the Jewish Diaspora in Tech leaders wrote in their letter.
- roenxi 5y ago
  Doesn't Google employ 10s of thousands of people? 250 concerned voices doesn't seem newsworthy.
  - thefounder 5y ago
    10s of thousands of Jewish people?
    - Google234 5y ago
      How many of the 250 are actually Jewish.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      I dunno, how many Jews do they probably employ? Say 100k Google employees, say 2.5% of the US population is Jewish - maybe 2.5k employed at Google? So 250 signatures out of ~2.5k Jews is order-of-magnitude 10% of the Jews people employed at Google. So if they were literally all Jewish, which they probably aren't, this still doesn't really tell us what Jews at Google think. Even if we do care what Jewish Googlers think. There is nothing here.
  - trhway 5y ago
    250 people risking their cushy jobs in a matter of people half-way across the globe - i think it is worthy of attention. And anyway, the extremes like visible activism is usually just a tip of the iceberg. I don't envy Google leadership here, though they may have to partially blame themselves: "This new internal political divide at Google sheds a spotlight on a long-standing diversity effort: designated employee resource groups (ERG) intended to celebrate employees with marginalized identities. But in today's climate, these groups may be sparking more political controversy than Google ever expected. " I mean you start organize people around their ethnic/etc. identities, and as a result you may deepen the divides and raise the tensions. Reminds the situation of Indian caste system which was really formalized and strengthened by the British.
    - higerordermap 5y ago
      British one was different. They recognized some castes as martial races etc.. but didn't do identity politics on them. Whatever caste system is today there in India, it was before arrival of Europeans as well, but little more flexible compared to the strict categorisation they did.
- fergie 5y ago
  Really refreshing and important to see this call coming from a Jewish group.
  - andyxor 5y ago
    oy vey, there is probably no worst enemy of Israel than leftist ultra-liberal Jews, some of whom live in Israel and even control Israeli media like Ha-Aretz and whatnot. People sarcastically call them Yafei Nefesh (יפי נפש), "beautiful souls". I don't know if it's proverbial Jewish self-hatred or plain stupidity.
    - modo_mario 5y ago
      Why are people against slow ethnic cleansing trough the settlements and such enemies of Israel?
      - Yizahi 5y ago
        By slow ethnic cleansing you mean 70 years of wars and constant rocket bombings of Israeli people?
        candiodari 5y ago
        You can also point out that there are 2 law systems ... one of them makes it a crime, punishable by death, to give someone of the other group shelter (whether letting them stay, or even selling them a house). That law ... is a Palestinian law. https://www.dw.com/en/us-palestinian-jailed-for-life-over-selling-land-to-jews/a-46909304 https://www.dw.com/en/us-palestinian-jailed-for-life-over-se...
        modo_mario 5y ago
        Might have something to do with the slow disappearance of Palestine with settlements after evictions. Besides. It's not like Israel recognises Palestine as a state and consequently it's justice system.(even tho making people stateless goes against human rights.)
rlqmark 5y ago
"demanding the tech behemoth provide relief to Palestinians suffering from the ongoing humanitarian crises" Why don't these 250,000+ per year employees live on 50,000 per year and donate the rest?
- rvz 5y ago
  Good Question.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  Is this 200k donation going to force IDF to stop bombing children ? If yes then they will gladly do it but if not then the problem lies elsewhere. Stop this nonsense about somehow Israel for all their misdeeds and war crimes should be given a free pass because they were subject to same or even more war crimes half a century ago ? So they are doing to others what was done to them, and yet if anyone speaks "hh", that person us called a Holocaust denier. Ignoring the Holocaust they are engaged in TODAY. Yesterday or a day before, some actress was shamed by official Israel account when she spoke for Palestine cause. What? What kind of bs is this?
  - Google234 5y ago
    1st step should be to eliminate Hamas.
    - modo_mario 5y ago
      How are they going to disappear when they're embedded in the population which isn't exactly spread out. Which isn't gonna push them out themselves when they're being ethnically cleansed from their home in many places. Israel helped nurture the Hamas of today to deal with the PLO/Fatah but regardless of whether they expected it to become what it did they won't bomb it out of existence.
      - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        Maybe israel should stop with its apartheid policies in the first place and stop murdering children and stop expanding settlements and take responsibility of the crimes against humanity they have carried out over last 50 odd years and let Palestinians back into their homes. Maybe then there wont be a need for Hamas
op03 5y ago
Fun time being a manager of people these days :)
- andyxor 5y ago
  wokes gonna woke
andyxor 5y ago
violations of palestinian rights? how about stop bombarding Israel with rockets while hiding behind women and children https://twitter.com/SZR_London/status/1392509392130543621 https://twitter.com/SZR_London/status/1392509392130543621
Protostome 5y ago
For unfathomable reason those people decided to advocate for the palestinians, a group of people led by Hamas whose leaders call jews "descendants of apes and pigs". I'm not saying palestinians aren't in need of humanitarian aid, they are. And I'm not saying Israel is the good guy here - they are most certainly not. But viewing the conflict in such a dichotomous way (good vs. bad) is driving both sides away from an agreed upon resolution to the conflict.
- Yizahi 5y ago
  I wonder why exactly Israel are not good people here?
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    This. Warning people before you bomb their buildings is unheard of.
michaelbuddy 5y ago
I wonder if it's a fun mindset. Making demands of other people at scale you won't ever do yourself. There's no end to it, just like there's no end to the pretend tolerance and pretend generosity by using other peoples' money for ideas they have no desire to contribute to, but are forced to at gunpoint and prison threat (taxation).
GoodJokes 5y ago
If google employees actually care about any number of the issues that email someone about they would actually withhold their labor. This is just a bunch of cowardly tech workers ensuring their woke cress with their friends who aren’t taking blood money day and day out.

45 points by billyharris 5y ago

fouc 5y ago

> On Tuesday, a group of 250 concerned "Jewish and allied Googlers" released a signed letter penned to CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding the tech behemoth provide relief to Palestinians suffering from the ongoing humanitarian crises that have erupted during the violent conflict between Israel and Hamas > The letter penned by an unofficial Google group calling themselves the Jewish Diaspora in Tech accuses the official Jewish ERG ... of silencing voices critical of Israel's current military strategy and historical combative relationship with Palestinians. "We object to the conflation of Israel with the Jewish people," the Jewish Diaspora in Tech leaders wrote in their letter.

roenxi 5y ago
Doesn't Google employ 10s of thousands of people? 250 concerned voices doesn't seem newsworthy.
- thefounder 5y ago
  10s of thousands of Jewish people?
  - Google234 5y ago
    How many of the 250 are actually Jewish.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    I dunno, how many Jews do they probably employ? Say 100k Google employees, say 2.5% of the US population is Jewish - maybe 2.5k employed at Google? So 250 signatures out of ~2.5k Jews is order-of-magnitude 10% of the Jews people employed at Google. So if they were literally all Jewish, which they probably aren't, this still doesn't really tell us what Jews at Google think. Even if we do care what Jewish Googlers think. There is nothing here.
- trhway 5y ago
  250 people risking their cushy jobs in a matter of people half-way across the globe - i think it is worthy of attention. And anyway, the extremes like visible activism is usually just a tip of the iceberg. I don't envy Google leadership here, though they may have to partially blame themselves: "This new internal political divide at Google sheds a spotlight on a long-standing diversity effort: designated employee resource groups (ERG) intended to celebrate employees with marginalized identities. But in today's climate, these groups may be sparking more political controversy than Google ever expected. " I mean you start organize people around their ethnic/etc. identities, and as a result you may deepen the divides and raise the tensions. Reminds the situation of Indian caste system which was really formalized and strengthened by the British.
  - higerordermap 5y ago
    British one was different. They recognized some castes as martial races etc.. but didn't do identity politics on them. Whatever caste system is today there in India, it was before arrival of Europeans as well, but little more flexible compared to the strict categorisation they did.
fergie 5y ago
Really refreshing and important to see this call coming from a Jewish group.
- andyxor 5y ago
  oy vey, there is probably no worst enemy of Israel than leftist ultra-liberal Jews, some of whom live in Israel and even control Israeli media like Ha-Aretz and whatnot. People sarcastically call them Yafei Nefesh (יפי נפש), "beautiful souls". I don't know if it's proverbial Jewish self-hatred or plain stupidity.
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    Why are people against slow ethnic cleansing trough the settlements and such enemies of Israel?
    - Yizahi 5y ago
      By slow ethnic cleansing you mean 70 years of wars and constant rocket bombings of Israeli people?
      - candiodari 5y ago
        You can also point out that there are 2 law systems ... one of them makes it a crime, punishable by death, to give someone of the other group shelter (whether letting them stay, or even selling them a house). That law ... is a Palestinian law. https://www.dw.com/en/us-palestinian-jailed-for-life-over-selling-land-to-jews/a-46909304 https://www.dw.com/en/us-palestinian-jailed-for-life-over-se...
        modo_mario 5y ago
        Might have something to do with the slow disappearance of Palestine with settlements after evictions. Besides. It's not like Israel recognises Palestine as a state and consequently it's justice system.(even tho making people stateless goes against human rights.)

rlqmark 5y ago

"demanding the tech behemoth provide relief to Palestinians suffering from the ongoing humanitarian crises" Why don't these 250,000+ per year employees live on 50,000 per year and donate the rest?

rvz 5y ago
Good Question.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
Is this 200k donation going to force IDF to stop bombing children ? If yes then they will gladly do it but if not then the problem lies elsewhere. Stop this nonsense about somehow Israel for all their misdeeds and war crimes should be given a free pass because they were subject to same or even more war crimes half a century ago ? So they are doing to others what was done to them, and yet if anyone speaks "hh", that person us called a Holocaust denier. Ignoring the Holocaust they are engaged in TODAY. Yesterday or a day before, some actress was shamed by official Israel account when she spoke for Palestine cause. What? What kind of bs is this?
- Google234 5y ago
  1st step should be to eliminate Hamas.
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    How are they going to disappear when they're embedded in the population which isn't exactly spread out. Which isn't gonna push them out themselves when they're being ethnically cleansed from their home in many places. Israel helped nurture the Hamas of today to deal with the PLO/Fatah but regardless of whether they expected it to become what it did they won't bomb it out of existence.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      Maybe israel should stop with its apartheid policies in the first place and stop murdering children and stop expanding settlements and take responsibility of the crimes against humanity they have carried out over last 50 odd years and let Palestinians back into their homes. Maybe then there wont be a need for Hamas

op03 5y ago

Fun time being a manager of people these days :)

andyxor 5y ago
wokes gonna woke

andyxor 5y ago

violations of palestinian rights? how about stop bombarding Israel with rockets while hiding behind women and children https://twitter.com/SZR_London/status/1392509392130543621 https://twitter.com/SZR_London/status/1392509392130543621

Protostome 5y ago

For unfathomable reason those people decided to advocate for the palestinians, a group of people led by Hamas whose leaders call jews "descendants of apes and pigs". I'm not saying palestinians aren't in need of humanitarian aid, they are. And I'm not saying Israel is the good guy here - they are most certainly not. But viewing the conflict in such a dichotomous way (good vs. bad) is driving both sides away from an agreed upon resolution to the conflict.

Yizahi 5y ago
I wonder why exactly Israel are not good people here?
- Bancakes 5y ago
  This. Warning people before you bomb their buildings is unheard of.

michaelbuddy 5y ago

I wonder if it's a fun mindset. Making demands of other people at scale you won't ever do yourself. There's no end to it, just like there's no end to the pretend tolerance and pretend generosity by using other peoples' money for ideas they have no desire to contribute to, but are forced to at gunpoint and prison threat (taxation).

GoodJokes 5y ago

If google employees actually care about any number of the issues that email someone about they would actually withhold their labor. This is just a bunch of cowardly tech workers ensuring their woke cress with their friends who aren’t taking blood money day and day out.