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> Google fired an employee who disrupted an Israel executive’s conference keynote this week, CNBC has learned. Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who

by siva7 3y ago

> Google fired an employee who disrupted an Israel executive’s conference keynote this week, CNBC has learned. Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly.

bluefishinit 3y ago
Why would a big tech company be hosting an event with a state committing genocide? That (and working with said regime) is the problem, not people protesting. It's not possible to be a consumer brand and support Israel. The world is too divided and it's not getting any less so.
- c0mbonat0r 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    I don't agree with you and I'm actively boycotting all companies that work with Israel. This is why consumer brands can't support Israel, I'm not alone.
    - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    Both side in that war are behaving badly and nobody should take either side. I look forward to the day when allying with any theocracy is recognized as an ethical mistake.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      There is Hamas, there is the Israeli government and there are the Palestinians, and before, Israelis who did nothing that suffer. I take the side of those loosong their homes, families and lives in Gaza deapite doing nothing at all.
    - goethes_kind 3y ago
      Both sides have resorted to terrorism. In fact that seems to be the modus operandi for both sides. What Israel does every day is also terrorism. The random bombings on civilians, the targeted bombings on key entities (doctors, journalists, authors, peace activists, ....), the detention without judicial recourse of Palestinians, the torture and rape, beating and murder, that happens during those detentions. The stealing of homes in the west bank, the evictions, the harassment of non-Jews (and even some non-Zionist Jewish sects) in Jerusalem and the west bank. The illegal settlement and the constant bullying and taunting of the armed settlers with their rifles and their IDF body guards. The destruction of all Palestinian means of production, whether it be shops or olive orchards. That is all terrorism and that has been happening for decades. But that the end of the day, Israel IS the oppressor and the Palestinians are their victims. That is a very important distinction.
  - PheonixPharts 3y ago
    > propaganda news outlets. Most major news outlets are still wildly pro-Israel. My and most people's opinions on the subject tend to not to drive from main stream media accounts, but research and journalistic investigations into the situation there. I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. Most people who are "fine" with the situation are the ones getting their opinions from the news.
    - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - GordonS 3y ago
      > I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that until Israel's propaganda and genocidal response to the Al Aqsa Flood attack, I believed Israel were basically The Good Guys doing their best against terrorist neighbours. I feel like most people in the UK thought like that, and I rarely saw any negatively portrayals of Israel in the MSM. From what I've learned since, I've been... horrified - and like you said, by their actions going way back.
  - izietto 3y ago
    > propaganda news outlets Is ONU considered a propaganda news outlet nowadays? https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-146 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-i...
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I would say that the UN uses propaganda but in this case the page you linked to is a fairly factual description of the current situation.
- fny 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    The ICJ didn't rule on whether or not Israel was committing genocide. It said Israel needed to take the steps to not commit genocide. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-world-court-decision-israei-genocide-case-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-worl...
    - fny 3y ago
      The case against Israel brought forth by South Africa states quite clearly South Africa asserts Israel is violating the Genocide Convention [0]. The ICJ never corroborated this claim meaning there was not enough evidence to substantiate it. [0]: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
    - egberts1 3y ago
      But it remains a court order in which carries the full weight of the ICJ. https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-international-court-justices-ruling-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20Israel%20must%20conduct%20the,does%20not%20commit%20%5Bgenocide%5D%3B%E2%80%9D https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-int...
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    ICJ was not asked to convict Israel of committing genocide. That was not in the initial ask. The ask was to force Israel to stop its military operation. The ICJ's provisional verdict was _actually pretty bad_ for Israel: "The aforementioned facts and circumstances are sufficient to conclude that at least some rights of the Palestinians to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts in Article 3 of the Genocide Convention, and the rights of South Africa to seek protection of these rights." Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-cites-inflammatory-comments-by-gallant-herzog-in-genocide-case-ruling/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-c...
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  I think the problem is that folks look at things in a bizarre black and white manner and see it as either 1.) Israel has every right to defend itself from further terrorist attacks and isn't doing anything wrong, or 2.) Israel has no right to retaliate at all. I think the more moderate view is that Israel suffered a heinous terrorist attack perpetrated by a terrorist group in power. Israel has a right to defend their people from such attacks and a military response shouldn't be surprising given the extent of the crimes. However, the people in Gaza (non terrorists) are also human beings who should be treated that way. Not everyone supports the terrorist actions (apparently Hamas is incredibly unpopular amongst the people, but they have little discourse if they don't want to disappear) and the military response from Israel seems to have gotten to a point where children being blown up and starving to death somehow comes with the territory. Surely there is a way to reduce the casualties of innocent bystanders. Surely Israel should provide food and aid to the people after bombing all their infrastructure into the stone age. I admit not being as informed as I should be, but just how many times are we going to have genocide before we learn to stop? Just since the Holocaust we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, Rwanda, China, and now Gaza. In the more distant past it was even more common (e.g. trail of tears).
  - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
    > we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, [...] Just to correct you, the genocide was in Bosnia, not Serbia, as a culmination of years of ethnic cleansing of the muslim (and to a smaller extent the ethnic Croat) population of Bosnia by the Serbian ethnic group during the period of 1992-1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide
    - 7thaccount 3y ago
      Thank you! It's been awhile since I went over that.
hayst4ck 3y ago
This is why we need tech unions. We should be able to take an ethical stance without getting fired.
- minimaxir 3y ago
  They weren't fired for taking a stance, they were fired for how they took the stance.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    This needs to be emphasized more. It's not that they took a stance, it's definitely how they did it that warranted being fired over it.
    - hayst4ck 3y ago
      What's a good way to take a stance?
      - user_7832 3y ago
        In a quiet email to the CEO which will promptly get deleted, and will never hit any big media or HN's frontpage is what a lot of commenters here would argue for. Being "polite" is nice if the person you're talking to is also nice. If the guy wanted to bring attention to the fact he did it very well.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        I mean, this may be a good way to take a stance, for someone who deeply cares about a particular issue. But it's also definitely going to result in being fired, from any company. The two things aren't incompatible. Lots of good ways to take a stance have deprived lots of people taking those stances of far more than just their jobs, like their freedom, temporarily in many cases (like Dr. King) and permanently in many others (like Navalny). Making a stand is often laudable, but also often personally consequential.
user_7832 3y ago
> Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly. Just because something is done by most companies doesn't make it okay. Are mass layoffs "rightful" in any sense of that word?
- swman 3y ago
  Cringe. Mass layoffs are part of the Faustian bargain you accept when you sign the offer letter to work at the behemoths of capitalism. These are the biggest like top 10 companies in the whole world. It’s just business. But then again even those making 400k plus TC make appeals to emotion instead of rational thinking. There are plenty of jobs for these people where they can make 200k TC and not risk getting fired, which is still a good salary. If you want more and more, you must play with the devil. It’s really not that complicated.
- ghaff 3y ago
  If the alternative is the company going out of business? Yes? People can rightly protest the way layoffs are conducted but the idea that a company is "wrongful" to have a layoff sometimes is silly.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    I'm not specifically saying layoffs are good or bad, I was giving an example of how something being common (layoffs) doesn't automatically make it good (it's of course not good for the fired people).
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Of course, certainly not for many of the fired people (although depending on severance and situations--once I would have been happy to have been laid off). And layoff, and the way they're conducted, can certainly be conducted poorly and with less empathy than is called for. (Though, in reality empathy mostly=money in this context.)
- wilg 3y ago
  It's not immoral to fire multiple people from a company.
PheonixPharts 3y ago
I'm confused by your logic here, the fact that all other big tech companies would do something is hardly grounds for considering an action "right" in any moral framework I know of. "Unsurprisingly so" I can get behind. But "rightfully" is a stretch I wouldn't agree with.
- dekhn 3y ago
  Saying "rightfully so" does not imply the rightness derives from morality.
  - drewbug01 3y ago
    The most common, plain meanings of the phrase “rightfully so” do imply a basis in morality. It’s fair to say that it can mean that the “rightness” is derived from other sources, but pretending that the primary meaning of the phrase doesn’t imply morality is just being intentionally obtuse.
godelski 3y ago
Lotta people reading this comment as if it is taking a moral stance (siding with Google). I didn't read it that way but rather as a comment on the state of the current environment. Did I misread?
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  The wording and tone are common for broad agreement, both practical and moral (curtness, appeal to popularity, etc). Otherwise, one would normally use a wording that expresses the scope of one's tone, e.g. "Regardless of the issue, I think it's the right call to resort to firing to enforce this rule." (It's hard to come up with a good example that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about, because the topic is highly subjective, highly emotional, and has a few different angles. There are a million different things the parent could have said to communicate an attitude that doesn't imply an emotional, moral, or political distaste for the context of the protest itself. My example isn't necessarily "correct" for the parent.)
  - godelski 3y ago
    Yeah that's fair. I could see it going either way. But I think when ambiguous it doesn't hurt to ask. And there's a lot of fighting and arguing so I'd rather ask than escalate conflict if there is a misunderstanding. I think we all know how easy it can be to miscommunicate.
fny 3y ago
The employee clearly wanted to be fired, wanted to vilify the company, and wanted the news to broadcast the matter. Who in their right mind who says “I refuse to build technology that ____” wouldn’t already be planning to quit barring outrageous hypocrisy? Who in their right mind screams it out in the middle of a presentation without expecting to be dragged out?
- user_7832 3y ago
  Quite possible, in which case he's likely achieved his goal. Personally I don't think firing him helps Google's PR, rather it makes them look even more "evil". (To clarify, I am NOT saying that it is unexpected for a company to fire such a person. Expectations != what's the morally correct != reality, I'm just commenting on a part of the equation.)
mc32 3y ago
It used to be, at work one would not talk about politics or religion. And, to some degree, salaries... but that was thrown out the window and companies encouraged activism, bring your pets to work, bring your freakishness to work, let it all hang out. You didn't just keep it to yourself and best friends anymore --the company was "your family and friend". The chickens are coming home to roost and they don't like it so much anymore.

by siva7 3y ago

bluefishinit 3y ago

Why would a big tech company be hosting an event with a state committing genocide? That (and working with said regime) is the problem, not people protesting. It's not possible to be a consumer brand and support Israel. The world is too divided and it's not getting any less so.

c0mbonat0r 3y ago
[flagged]
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  I don't agree with you and I'm actively boycotting all companies that work with Israel. This is why consumer brands can't support Israel, I'm not alone.
  - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
    [flagged]
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Both side in that war are behaving badly and nobody should take either side. I look forward to the day when allying with any theocracy is recognized as an ethical mistake.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    There is Hamas, there is the Israeli government and there are the Palestinians, and before, Israelis who did nothing that suffer. I take the side of those loosong their homes, families and lives in Gaza deapite doing nothing at all.
  - goethes_kind 3y ago
    Both sides have resorted to terrorism. In fact that seems to be the modus operandi for both sides. What Israel does every day is also terrorism. The random bombings on civilians, the targeted bombings on key entities (doctors, journalists, authors, peace activists, ....), the detention without judicial recourse of Palestinians, the torture and rape, beating and murder, that happens during those detentions. The stealing of homes in the west bank, the evictions, the harassment of non-Jews (and even some non-Zionist Jewish sects) in Jerusalem and the west bank. The illegal settlement and the constant bullying and taunting of the armed settlers with their rifles and their IDF body guards. The destruction of all Palestinian means of production, whether it be shops or olive orchards. That is all terrorism and that has been happening for decades. But that the end of the day, Israel IS the oppressor and the Palestinians are their victims. That is a very important distinction.
- PheonixPharts 3y ago
  > propaganda news outlets. Most major news outlets are still wildly pro-Israel. My and most people's opinions on the subject tend to not to drive from main stream media accounts, but research and journalistic investigations into the situation there. I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. Most people who are "fine" with the situation are the ones getting their opinions from the news.
  - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - GordonS 3y ago
    > I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that until Israel's propaganda and genocidal response to the Al Aqsa Flood attack, I believed Israel were basically The Good Guys doing their best against terrorist neighbours. I feel like most people in the UK thought like that, and I rarely saw any negatively portrayals of Israel in the MSM. From what I've learned since, I've been... horrified - and like you said, by their actions going way back.
- izietto 3y ago
  > propaganda news outlets Is ONU considered a propaganda news outlet nowadays? https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-146 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-i...
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I would say that the UN uses propaganda but in this case the page you linked to is a fairly factual description of the current situation.
fny 3y ago
[flagged]
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  The ICJ didn't rule on whether or not Israel was committing genocide. It said Israel needed to take the steps to not commit genocide. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-world-court-decision-israei-genocide-case-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-worl...
  - fny 3y ago
    The case against Israel brought forth by South Africa states quite clearly South Africa asserts Israel is violating the Genocide Convention [0]. The ICJ never corroborated this claim meaning there was not enough evidence to substantiate it. [0]: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
  - egberts1 3y ago
    But it remains a court order in which carries the full weight of the ICJ. https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-international-court-justices-ruling-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20Israel%20must%20conduct%20the,does%20not%20commit%20%5Bgenocide%5D%3B%E2%80%9D https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-int...
- aaomidi 3y ago
  ICJ was not asked to convict Israel of committing genocide. That was not in the initial ask. The ask was to force Israel to stop its military operation. The ICJ's provisional verdict was _actually pretty bad_ for Israel: "The aforementioned facts and circumstances are sufficient to conclude that at least some rights of the Palestinians to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts in Article 3 of the Genocide Convention, and the rights of South Africa to seek protection of these rights." Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-cites-inflammatory-comments-by-gallant-herzog-in-genocide-case-ruling/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-c...
7thaccount 3y ago
I think the problem is that folks look at things in a bizarre black and white manner and see it as either 1.) Israel has every right to defend itself from further terrorist attacks and isn't doing anything wrong, or 2.) Israel has no right to retaliate at all. I think the more moderate view is that Israel suffered a heinous terrorist attack perpetrated by a terrorist group in power. Israel has a right to defend their people from such attacks and a military response shouldn't be surprising given the extent of the crimes. However, the people in Gaza (non terrorists) are also human beings who should be treated that way. Not everyone supports the terrorist actions (apparently Hamas is incredibly unpopular amongst the people, but they have little discourse if they don't want to disappear) and the military response from Israel seems to have gotten to a point where children being blown up and starving to death somehow comes with the territory. Surely there is a way to reduce the casualties of innocent bystanders. Surely Israel should provide food and aid to the people after bombing all their infrastructure into the stone age. I admit not being as informed as I should be, but just how many times are we going to have genocide before we learn to stop? Just since the Holocaust we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, Rwanda, China, and now Gaza. In the more distant past it was even more common (e.g. trail of tears).
- C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
  > we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, [...] Just to correct you, the genocide was in Bosnia, not Serbia, as a culmination of years of ethnic cleansing of the muslim (and to a smaller extent the ethnic Croat) population of Bosnia by the Serbian ethnic group during the period of 1992-1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    Thank you! It's been awhile since I went over that.

hayst4ck 3y ago

This is why we need tech unions. We should be able to take an ethical stance without getting fired.

minimaxir 3y ago
They weren't fired for taking a stance, they were fired for how they took the stance.
- reactordev 3y ago
  This needs to be emphasized more. It's not that they took a stance, it's definitely how they did it that warranted being fired over it.
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    What's a good way to take a stance?
    - user_7832 3y ago
      In a quiet email to the CEO which will promptly get deleted, and will never hit any big media or HN's frontpage is what a lot of commenters here would argue for. Being "polite" is nice if the person you're talking to is also nice. If the guy wanted to bring attention to the fact he did it very well.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      I mean, this may be a good way to take a stance, for someone who deeply cares about a particular issue. But it's also definitely going to result in being fired, from any company. The two things aren't incompatible. Lots of good ways to take a stance have deprived lots of people taking those stances of far more than just their jobs, like their freedom, temporarily in many cases (like Dr. King) and permanently in many others (like Navalny). Making a stand is often laudable, but also often personally consequential.

user_7832 3y ago

> Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly. Just because something is done by most companies doesn't make it okay. Are mass layoffs "rightful" in any sense of that word?

swman 3y ago
Cringe. Mass layoffs are part of the Faustian bargain you accept when you sign the offer letter to work at the behemoths of capitalism. These are the biggest like top 10 companies in the whole world. It’s just business. But then again even those making 400k plus TC make appeals to emotion instead of rational thinking. There are plenty of jobs for these people where they can make 200k TC and not risk getting fired, which is still a good salary. If you want more and more, you must play with the devil. It’s really not that complicated.
ghaff 3y ago
If the alternative is the company going out of business? Yes? People can rightly protest the way layoffs are conducted but the idea that a company is "wrongful" to have a layoff sometimes is silly.
- user_7832 3y ago
  I'm not specifically saying layoffs are good or bad, I was giving an example of how something being common (layoffs) doesn't automatically make it good (it's of course not good for the fired people).
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Of course, certainly not for many of the fired people (although depending on severance and situations--once I would have been happy to have been laid off). And layoff, and the way they're conducted, can certainly be conducted poorly and with less empathy than is called for. (Though, in reality empathy mostly=money in this context.)
wilg 3y ago
It's not immoral to fire multiple people from a company.

PheonixPharts 3y ago

I'm confused by your logic here, the fact that all other big tech companies would do something is hardly grounds for considering an action "right" in any moral framework I know of. "Unsurprisingly so" I can get behind. But "rightfully" is a stretch I wouldn't agree with.

dekhn 3y ago
Saying "rightfully so" does not imply the rightness derives from morality.
- drewbug01 3y ago
  The most common, plain meanings of the phrase “rightfully so” do imply a basis in morality. It’s fair to say that it can mean that the “rightness” is derived from other sources, but pretending that the primary meaning of the phrase doesn’t imply morality is just being intentionally obtuse.

godelski 3y ago

Lotta people reading this comment as if it is taking a moral stance (siding with Google). I didn't read it that way but rather as a comment on the state of the current environment. Did I misread?

happytoexplain 3y ago
The wording and tone are common for broad agreement, both practical and moral (curtness, appeal to popularity, etc). Otherwise, one would normally use a wording that expresses the scope of one's tone, e.g. "Regardless of the issue, I think it's the right call to resort to firing to enforce this rule." (It's hard to come up with a good example that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about, because the topic is highly subjective, highly emotional, and has a few different angles. There are a million different things the parent could have said to communicate an attitude that doesn't imply an emotional, moral, or political distaste for the context of the protest itself. My example isn't necessarily "correct" for the parent.)
- godelski 3y ago
  Yeah that's fair. I could see it going either way. But I think when ambiguous it doesn't hurt to ask. And there's a lot of fighting and arguing so I'd rather ask than escalate conflict if there is a misunderstanding. I think we all know how easy it can be to miscommunicate.

fny 3y ago

The employee clearly wanted to be fired, wanted to vilify the company, and wanted the news to broadcast the matter. Who in their right mind who says “I refuse to build technology that ____” wouldn’t already be planning to quit barring outrageous hypocrisy? Who in their right mind screams it out in the middle of a presentation without expecting to be dragged out?

user_7832 3y ago
Quite possible, in which case he's likely achieved his goal. Personally I don't think firing him helps Google's PR, rather it makes them look even more "evil". (To clarify, I am NOT saying that it is unexpected for a company to fire such a person. Expectations != what's the morally correct != reality, I'm just commenting on a part of the equation.)

mc32 3y ago

It used to be, at work one would not talk about politics or religion. And, to some degree, salaries... but that was thrown out the window and companies encouraged activism, bring your pets to work, bring your freakishness to work, let it all hang out. You didn't just keep it to yourself and best friends anymore --the company was "your family and friend". The chickens are coming home to roost and they don't like it so much anymore.