After the martyrdom of a Gaza programmer… Criticisms target Google’s collaboration with Israel.. Details
An event organized by current and former employees of Google. and Amazon last Tuesday in New York, initially planned to honor a Palestinian programmer killed in the Israeli aggression along with her family. turned into a demonstration supporting the Palestinian cause and condemning the crimes and massacres committed by the occupation in Gaza.
According to a report by The Guardian. the participating employees criticized the contracts between the two companies and the Israeli army.
The newspaper stated that the workers seized the opportunity to “rebuke their employers for the contracts with the Israeli army.”
The event was held to honor Mai Obeid, a young woman with muscular dystrophy from Gaza and a former trainee in a program supported by Google. She was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza along with all members of her family. The late young woman received praise for her strong and determined vision during interviews conducted by the British newspaper with people who knew her closely.
The newspaper states, “Mai Obeid once dreamed of developing a platform for people with disabilities to communicate.” according to Katherine Tenggard Nikolasen. the former communications director in Gaza .for the Sky Geeks program in the West Bank, who knew and met Mai.
For the residents of Gaza, the report indicates that Mai represented a shining example of what anyone in the besieged sector can achieve in the technology industry if provided with the resources.
Nikolasen said, “What she (Mai Obeid) was in her life was a huge milestone.”
The report notes that the killing of the former trainee served as a reminder of the contract signed by Google worth $1.2 billion to provide technological services to the Israeli government and army. known as “Nimbus.”
The report continues, “Many workers at Google spent the past two years protesting the project, saying that the employer provides tools that help in enforcing the racial segregation imposed by Israel on the Palestinians.”
Despite the efforts of the workers to draw more attention to Mai Obeid’s death. the company has so far refused to speak publicly or internally about her death. according to many employees who spoke at the protest.
Mohamed Khatami, a software engineer at Google and one of the organizers of the protest, considers the company’s .and CEO Sundar Pichai’s silence about Obeid’s death .”a betrayal in every sense of the word.”
Khatami said at the protest held outside Google’s offices. “No email, no decision, no public statement. and no shame at all… Shame on Pichai, and shame on Google.”
Google spokesperson Cortina Mencini declined to answer direct questions about the company’s failure to acknowledge Obeid’s death. However, she said, “This is a very sensitive time and topic for any company,” and Google has “many employees who have been personally affected by the war.”
Mencini pointed out that the contract signed with Israel provides. “only commercial services to Israeli government ministries, including finance, healthcare. transportation, and education. and has no relation to military and weapons, or intelligence.” However, The Guardian said that the Israeli Ministry of Finance had earlier revealed to the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz that the contract includes providing .”cloud solutions” to the government and “the defense establishment.”
Mai Obeid was a Palestinian refugee. her family originally from the displaced village of Beerir. She was among the 13,000 working with UNRWA in Gaza and was killed on November 1st last year.
The UNRWA website mentioned that the late worked as a front-end developer and application programmer with the agency. in partnership with the United Nations International Computing Center.
