{"id":197966,"date":"2021-10-25T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=197966"},"modified":"2021-10-20T05:30:20","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T04:30:20","slug":"amazon-and-google-partners-in-israeli-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/amazon-and-google-partners-in-israeli-apartheid\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon and Google: Partners in Israeli Apartheid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

19 Oct 2021 – <\/em>The best-selling Irish novelist Sally Rooney is openly shunning<\/a> Israel after recent reports from human rights groups warned that Israel practices apartheid, systematically oppressing Palestinians under its rule.<\/p>\n

But while Israel risks becoming a pariah among some cultural producers, it is being aggressively embraced by globe-spanning corporations like Amazon and Google \u2013 among the wealthiest companies in history.<\/p>\n

The two tech giants are not just lining up to do business with Israel. They are actively working to build and improve the technological infrastructure Israel needs to surveil Palestinians and confine them to the ghettos Israel\u2019s army has created for them.<\/p>\n

Through their collaboration on Israel\u2019s Project Nimbus, both companies are helping to remove any pressure on Israel to make peace with the Palestinians and are instead becoming partners in Israeli apartheid.<\/p>\n

Now workers for both companies are speaking out \u2013 most of them anonymously for fear of what they call \u201cretaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This month some 400 employees of the two companies published a letter<\/a> in The Guardian<\/em> newspaper warning that Amazon and Google were contracted to supply \u201cdangerous technology\u201d to the Israeli military and government that would make Israel\u2019s rule over Palestinians \u201ceven crueler and deadlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Under wraps<\/h3>\n

The $1.2 billion contract for Project Nimbus awarded earlier this year means the two tech firms are to build data centers in Israel on behalf of the Israeli military and government.<\/p>\n

Senior staff will need<\/a> Israeli security clearance to work on the project.<\/p>\n

In a sign of how aware Israel is of the potential backlash against Amazon and Google\u2019s involvement, the contract bars<\/a> the tech corporations from withdrawing due to pressure from either employees or the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The terms of the contracts are also being kept under wraps to prevent scrutiny.<\/p>\n

The tech giants\u2019 wish to avoid publicity is understandable. Each pays lip service to ethical business practices. Google claims<\/a> that firms \u201ccan make money without doing evil,\u201d while Amazon\u2019s \u201cleadership principles\u201d state<\/a> a commitment to \u201cmake better, do better and be better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Providing Israel with the technological tools to better enforce both its belligerent military occupation and its apartheid policies privileging Jews over Palestinians looks suspiciously like making a lot of money from colluding with evil.<\/p>\n

In the words of the whistleblowing staff, Amazon and Google\u2019s collaboration allows \u201cfurther surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates expansion of Israel\u2019s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Amazon nor Google responded to a request for comment on the concerns raised in the letter.<\/p>\n

Enforce occupation<\/h3>\n

Two employees, Gabriel Schubiner, a software engineer at Google, and Bathool Syed, a content strategist at Amazon, went public<\/a> on NBC\u2019s website shortly after publication of the letter in The Guardian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

They gave examples of how Israel would be able to use Amazon and Google\u2019s computer services to help enforce the occupation. Data would be used to identify Palestinian homes for demolition<\/a>, in what are often moves towards land clearances by Israel to build or expand illegal settlements.<\/p>\n

And the information collected and stored on the servers would guide attacks on built-up areas in Gaza, which Israel has been blockading for the past 15 years. In previous military campaigns, Israel has bombed Palestinian hospitals, schools and universities.<\/p>\n

Amazon and Google\u2019s servers will also assist<\/a> Israel\u2019s Iron Dome missile interception system, which has helped Israel neutralize rockets from Gaza so that it can maintain an enforced quiet<\/a> from Palestinians as it keeps them caged and imposes a starvation diet<\/a> for the enclave\u2019s inhabitants.<\/p>\n

The two employees also noted that Amazon and Google will be directly implicated in Israel\u2019s wider apartheid policies of the kind criticized<\/a> earlier in the year by human rights groups, including the Israeli occupation watchdog B\u2019Tselem.<\/p>\n

Nimbus will serve the Israel Lands Authority, which not only allocates lands for illegal settlements but oversees<\/a>discriminatory policies in land allocation inside Israel that openly privilege Jews over the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinian natives.<\/p>\n

Israel claims these so-called Israeli Arabs are equal citizens but they suffer systematic discrimination, as B\u2019Tselem and the New York-based Human Rights Watch have highlighted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cData crossroads\u201d<\/h3>\n

Amazon and Google have ignored previous calls from staff to prioritize Palestinian rights over increased profits from colluding in Israel\u2019s war economy.<\/p>\n

In May many hundreds \u2013 again anonymously \u2013 urged<\/a> both companies to sever their ties to the Israeli military shortly after it killed<\/a> almost 260 Palestinians, including more than 60 children, in an attack on besieged Gaza.<\/p>\n

Figures published this month demonstrated Israel\u2019s central place in the global digital economy. Despite its tiny size, Israel\u2019s share of hi-tech investments now amounts<\/a> to a third of those made in European countries.<\/p>\n

Israel has particularly benefited from the growing demand in the West for its surveillance technologies, cyber weapons and developments in militarized artificial intelligence. The Israeli military and offshoot startups launched by retired soldiers have a competitive edge<\/a>, claiming<\/a> that their technologies have been \u201cbattle proven\u201d on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n

According to reports in local media, Israel is poised to become a \u201cglobal data crossroads.\u201d In addition to Amazon and Google, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM are all expected<\/a> to build server farms in Israel to cash in on the greater integration of digital and military technologies.<\/p>\n

The critical role<\/a> of Israel in hi-tech \u2013 from its Intel chip plant<\/a> to firms like AnyVision and Onavo that offer specialist surveillance, facial recognition and data-mining technologies \u2013 means no one can afford to fall out with Israel.<\/p>\n

Google and Facebook have already faced criticisms<\/a> for their work with Israel censoring Palestinians on social media or making them invisible on online maps.<\/p>\n

Profits galore<\/h3>\n

The anonymous staff signing the letter to Amazon and Google sound nostalgic for the days when, they write, the technology they built was designed \u201cto serve and uplift people everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the reality is that tech firms like Amazon and Google have long moved past simple online services such as helping us to buy a book or search for a recipe. The drive for profits, the need to keep competitors at bay and an incentive to avoid state regulation mean they have become key players assisting the \u201cnational security state.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as its notorious union-busting initiatives<\/a>, Amazon has increased<\/a> the surveillance powers of US state and local police forces and of immigration services<\/a> that have been harshly criticized for separating asylum-seeking families at the US-Mexico border.<\/p>\n

From early on, Google partnered<\/a> with, or received money from, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon and the US State Department.<\/p>\n

The 400 or so anonymous employees still hope they can replicate previous victories that ended the tech corporations\u2019 complicity in oppression and military aggression.<\/p>\n

In 2019 Google pulled out<\/a> of Project Dragonfly, intended to help China censor its population\u2019s online searches. And the year before it ditched<\/a> Project Maven to assist the Pentagon with drone assassinations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But China was an official enemy, and the Pentagon is still pressing ahead<\/a> with the drone project, reportedly aided by firms backed by investment funds owned by Google parent Alphabet and a startup tied to a former Google executive, among others, to do the work Google itself had to abandon.<\/p>\n

Getting either Amazon or Google to honor their public commitments to ethical behavior by withdrawing from Project Nimbus may prove much harder \u2013 and not only because of the contractual obligations Israel has insisted on.<\/p>\n

Israel has become too integral to the global surveillance and war industries for any tech giant to risk antagonizing it. With profits galore to be derived from closer collaboration with the military industrial complex, the pressure will be on to forge closer bonds with Israel, whatever its human rights record.<\/p>\n

And with the Israel lobby deeply ensconced in Western capitals, the tech corporations will not wish to risk the reputational damage of being tarred as anti-Semitic for boycotting Israel.<\/p>\n

Pressure may be mounting on many companies to distance themselves from Israel over its occupation and apartheid policies. But for Amazon and Google it is those very practices of occupation and apartheid that are a tech seam waiting to be mined.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Oct 2021 – Amazon and Google aren’t just doing business with Israel. Through Project Nimbus, they are actively helping to build and improve the technological infrastructure Israel needs to oppress Palestinians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":197967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[2302,2221,120,1030,87,267,462,1029,487,2414,2415,2416,771,2417,85,2418,109,287,1572,985,880,126,1025,886],"class_list":["post-197966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-amazon","tag-checkpoints","tag-conflict","tag-fatah","tag-gaza","tag-geopolitics","tag-google","tag-hamas","tag-human-rights","tag-israeli-apartheid","tag-israeli-army","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-nakba","tag-palestine-israel-apartheid-wall","tag-palestine-israel","tag-palestinian-rights","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-settlers","tag-social-justice","tag-state-terrorism","tag-violence","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}