Jewish Google employees leading call to cancel £1bn Israel contract
Ariel Koren and Gabriel Schubiner wrote letter saying the agreement to build cloud-based data centres went against 'core values' of the company
Two Jewish Google employees are leading a petition calling on the company and Amazon to cancel a joint contract to build cloud-based data centres for the Israeli government.
The massive contract, worth almost £1billion, was signed in May and is one of Israel’s largest technology infrastructure ventures. Google and Amazon will transfer Israel’s data into six cloud-based storage centres over the next few years.
The open letter says the deal violates the signers’ “core values” by allegedly fostering surveillance of Palestinians and encouraging the expansion of Jewish settlements.
“As a Jewish employee of Google, I feel a deep sense of intense moral responsibility,” said Ariel Koren, who works in Google’s education division. Koren, along with Google software engineer Gabriel Schubiner, helped devise the open letter calling for the two mammoth companies to end the Project Nimbus contract.
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