Within a few days, her post, her full name and the name of her employer had been posted to the website, built by a software engineer in Tel Aviv.
“Your support for terrorism is being watched and recorded,” someone responded to her LinkedIn post in a comment that has since been deleted. “Good luck finding [a] job in the future.”
As the world watches the death tolls in Israel and Gaza mount, tensions in the United States, where the corporate world has close ties to Israel, are reaching a boiling point. While many top executives made public statements in support of Israel following Hamas’s devastating Oct. 7 attack, some U.S. employees have begun to pressure management to make similar statements about Palestinian deaths following Israel’s bombing in Gaza.
Employees at companies like Google and Amazon have pushed bosses to take a public political stance, but some say that, internally, calls for a cease fire have been unfairly censored. A handful of people — including a law student, an airline pilot and an adult-content influencer — in the United States and around the world have lost their jobs, or have faced discipline or backlash, for their online posts criticizing Israel. And the founder of a major tech conference resigned on Saturday after major sponsors pulled out of the upcoming event over his tweets calling Israel’s actions “war crimes.”
Meanwhile, employees feel threatened by the creation of websites attempting to blacklist workers who speak out against the war or in support of Palestinians.
The U.S. government sends billions of dollars of foreign aid to Israel, and the tech, finance, science and energy sectors all do major business there, which makes the issue a sticky one for executives. Amazon, Meta and Google have offices in Israel, and employ thousands of people there, some of whom have been called up as reservists to fight in the Israel Defense Forces.
Weighing in on political issues can thrust companies into tough situations said Anne Marie Mitchell, senior vice president at public relations firm Reputation Partners. Just look at McDonald’s, which is facing a maelstrom of tension amid conflicting responses from its franchises. One in Israel offered free meals to members of the Israel Defense Forces, while McDonald’s Malaysia made statements noting it is “100% Muslim-owned” and donated money for humanitarian aid in Gaza.
U.S. employees are aware that the Israel-Gaza conflict is an especially delicate — and personal — issue. But American workers, especially younger generations, increasingly expect their employers to take political stances.
“This is not an easily resolved issue,” said Mitchell. “People all over the world are watching.”
McDonald’s previously told The Post that the company’s top priority was ensuring the safety of its people and teams on the ground.
On LinkedIn, the Google employee, who declined to comment on this story saying she considers her posts — some of which have since been deleted — on the issue personal, vowed not to be intimidated. A co-worker shared contact information for an employment lawyer in support of her and others named on the site.
“A lot of us are dealing with harassment,” said an Amazon employee who is a member of the Arab employee resource group there and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job. “They’re scared to speak out.”
Google declined to comment on this story. Amazon spokesperson August Aldebot-Green said the company’s safety and security teams had been alerted to the website, which also names Amazon employees.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.)
In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was focused on making sure all of the company’s roughly 2,000 employees there were safe, the executive said in an email to employees.
Three days after the attack, on Oct. 10, Pichai tweeted that he was “deeply saddened by the terrorist attacks in Israel this weekend and the escalating conflict underway,” adding that it was “unimaginable” what the company’s employees in Israel were experiencing.
But as Israel began mounting its counter attack on Gaza — an offensive which has so far claimed over 3,000 lives, according to Palestinian officials — some Google employees grew increasingly dismayed that the company had made no statement regarding the loss of Palestinian life.
Since 2022, hundreds of Google employees have opposed the company’s cloud computing contract with Israel, called Project Nimbus. Israel’s war on Gaza has reignited the issue within the company. On Wednesday, employees who oppose working with Israel began circulating a petition demanding the deal be canceled and that Pichai make a public statement on Palestine.
An employee involved in organizing the petition who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their job said it has been signed by more than 500 employees. It calls Israel’s attack on Gaza “genocide” and says that by “supplying artificial intelligence and other technology to Israel, Google is complicit in the mass surveillance that enables the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.”
“Sundar Pichai and Google’s leadership writ large have been publicly silent on the unfolding genocide, voicing public concerns for Israelis but saying nothing about Palestinians. Internally, Sundar has quietly expressed sympathy to Google for Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities, but has given no public statements of solidarity or sympathy,” the petition reads.
It goes on to demand that Pichai and the head of Google’s cloud division, Thomas Kurian, publicly condemn Israel’s actions.
“Anything less is acquiescence and complicity,” the petition says.
Internally, Pichai has shared his concerns for Israeli employees, Jewish Googlers facing antisemitism around the world and with the “Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers” who are “deeply affected by a concerning rise in Islamophobia, and are watching with dread as Palestinian civilians in Gaza have suffered significant loss and fear for their lives amid the escalating war and humanitarian crisis.”
His email was posted on a Google blog, but so far, he has not made public statements about Palestinians.
Employees at Amazon, especially members of the Arab employee resource group, are also growing increasingly frustrated by the company’s response — or lack thereof. Like Google, Amazon holds a contract with the Israeli government, which some Amazon employees have been pressuring the company to drop through protest and public condemnations.
On Oct. 9, two days after Hamas’s brutal attack, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent an email to employees in Israel sharing his support, writing “I’m thinking of you all at this incredibly hard time and understand that your immediate focus needs to be, first and foremost, on ensuring your safety and that of your loved ones.” He tweeted a similar message on the same day.
No email has been sent to Palestinian employees in the United States or abroad, causing consternation among some of the approximately 2,000 members of the Arab employee group. “Amazon does employ Arab employees, and our lives are just as equal,” said the Amazon employee. “They have a lot of employees this is affecting on the other side. We’re not all terrorists, we’re just humans who have families in those situations.”
“People are angry,” the employee said. “They want to see Amazon take a stance.”
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, has been tracking corporate responses to the Hamas attack on Israel. Almost 150 corporations have spoken out, either to condemn Hamas’s attacks and antisemitism or to express solidarity and support for Israel, according to his analysis, including big names such as Walmart, Pfizer, JPMorgan, Disney, Salesforce and Starbucks.
One factor simplifying corporate public-relations calculus in this situation is that “not a single one of these companies is doing a dollar of business in Gaza, Sonnenfeld said. “They don’t have to worry about offending employees there.”
Tech executives who’ve opted to speak out have faced consequences. Paddy Cosgrave, the Irish founder of popular tech conference Web Summit, announced his resignation on Saturday after major tech companies including Meta, Google and Intel pulled out of the event over his comments on Israel. In an Oct. 13 tweet, Cosgrave described Israel’s assault on Gaza as a war crime.
Though Cosgrave later denounced Hamas’s attack, and on Oct. 17 posted a public apology for his statements on Web Summit’s website, his position continued to draw ire.
“You chose to support terrorists,” tweeted David Marcus, a former top Meta executive who now runs a payments start-up. “As such I’ll never attend/sponsor/speak at any of your events again.”
“Unfortunately, my personal comments have become a distraction from the event, and our team, our sponsors, our start-ups and the people who attend,” said Cosgrave, who had been CEO of Web Summit since 2009, in a statement announcing his resignation Saturday. “I sincerely apologize again for any hurt I have caused.”
Katherine Farrell, spokesperson for Web Summit, said the organization “will appoint a new CEO as soon as possible.” The November event will continue as planned and is in “a healthy financial position,” she said.
At Meta, in the days after the attack, employees posted about the conflict in the company’s internal “Workspace” communications platform. One Meta employee said they had a post in which they wrote “Pray for Palestine” taken down after another employee reported it to managers, according to screenshots viewed by The Post. Similar posts that said “Pray for Israel” were not taken down, the employee said on an internal message board, according to the screenshots.
In an Oct. 12 email to Meta managers viewed by The Post, Vice President of HR Janelle Gale wrote that Meta employees are allowed “to acknowledge and show sympathy for civilian victims and those impacted, or have a moment of silence all who are affected,” but are not allowed “to express prayers for armed forces, have a discussion or debate about armed conflict/war, share stories that are graphic or depict violence, or say “I stand with <nation>,” or other related sentiments.”
Meta, which introduced these rules for employee speech in December 2022, declined to comment further.
Amazon employees, meanwhile, said an internal petition in favor of a cease fire circulating on Slack was reported and removed for allegedly violating Amazon’s solicitation policy this week. Another petition, this one gathering signatures in favor of dropping Amazon’s Project Nimbus contract with Israel, was also removed, according to employees.
The same rules were not applied to other petitions, like one raising funds for Palestine Children’s Relief Fund or unrelated petitions posted in other employee groups, they said.
Amazon spokesperson Aldebot-Green said employees are allowed to post fundraisers for preapproved and vetted charities, but added, “Unauthorized posts are removed in accordance with our solicitation policy.”
The website identifying employees who’ve made public statements supporting Palestinians lists hundreds of employers, many of which are universities or foreign start-ups, but the list also includes major U.S. companies like Amazon, Deloitte, Microsoft, Mastercard and McKinsey. Some of the posts flagged as “potentially terror supporting” include statements like, “Our hearts and thoughts are with the people of Palestine.”
The website appeared offline late Saturday.
Nora Fathalipour is a Canadian lawyer who encouraged people who’ve been disciplined at work because of statements supporting Palestinians to reach out. She said she received more than fifty phone calls on Friday alone from people who had been reprimanded and even terminated for their comments on the war. Some terminations were based on anonymous tips, she said.
“The people I’ve spoken with feel wronged,” she said. “It came as a surprise.”
Telford reported from Washington. Will Oremus and Naomi Nix contributed to this report.
