Google fires employees over anti-Semitic posts

Google has fired several employees after they posted anti-Semitic content on the company’s internal communications systems, sources familiar with the matter have told “Globes.” The posts were shared on internal communications systems with employees and cannot be seen by users of Google content.

The sources say that several Google employees created memes, clips and images serving internal communications between employees with insinuations of an anti-Semitic nature. These were reported to the company’s management by some Jewish employees, and it decided to take a tough stand on the matter and fire the content creators.

This was a swift and firm step by Google as part of the fight against anti-Semitism, within the tech giant. The move was made after Google withdrew as a sponsor of next month’s Web Summit” conference in Lisbon after CEO Paddy Cosgrave, called Israel’s bombing of Gaza a “war crime”, and initially refused to condemn the massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7. Cosgrave subsequently apologized and resigned from the management of the conference.

Google, like other international companies, has been plagued by anti-Semitic remarks and pro-Palestinian protests in recent years, which included a call for it to stop working with the Israeli government, after it won the Nimbus government cloud data centers tender. Just last August, about 30 company employees blocked access to a conference in the field of cloud computing held by the company in San Francisco. The workers chained themselves to the fences and waved banners condemning cooperation with Israel, which they called an “apartheid government,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

About a year ago, a marketing manager at Google – an American Jew – who was one of the leaders of the protest against cooperation with Israel, was forced to resign from Google. According to her, Google tried to harass her due to the opinions she expressed and her activity against the agreement with the Israeli government, which she claims, “will harm the Palestinians.”

Following the massacre on October 7, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, issued a statement of solidarity with Israel and the company’s more than 2,000 employees in the country. Pichai wrote that the company is fighting false information on the web. He added that Google had signed an agreement with the Anti-Defamation League in the US and said that the tech giant will donate $8 million dollars to Magan David Adom, the Eran Association, the Palestinian Red Crescent and UNICEF. The company will also fund advertisements for the associations dealing with aid in Israel and Gaza.

No response has been received from Google’s response could not be reached.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on October 22, 2023.

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