Google Sacks 28 Employees Over Israel Protest

Google has announced the dismissal of 28 employees who took part in protests against a deal the technology giant has with the Israeli government.

Google has a joint contract with Amazon worth $1.2bn (£960m) called Project Nimbus which provides Israel’s government and military with cloud computing and AI infrastructure.

Employees affiliated with the protest group No Tech For Apartheid staged sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, California offices.

Google said Project Nimbus “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services”.

Google said protesters were disrupting offices, “physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing facilities”.

The dismissals, which Google confirmed to the BBC, escalated longstanding tensions between the company and employees opposed to supplying technology to Israel’s government.

Marches were held last year, following the start of the war in Gaza in October, with protesters holding banners that read “No More Genocide For Profit”.

In the most recent protests, staff entered offices and refused to leave prompting Google to call law enforcement.

In a statement, Google described the behavior as “completely unacceptable“.