Foreign Affairs

Hamas Applauds Ex-Google Employee Who Resigned Over Company’s Israel Ties

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Hamas is applauding an ex-Google employee who resigned over the company’s ties to Israel, the global terror group said in a statement Wednesday.

Ariel Koren, who began working in marketing at Google in 2015, resigned in a public blog post Tuesday over disagreement with Google and Amazon’s $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” agreement with Israel to supply its military withartificial intelligence. Now, Hamas has announced its support for Koren, praising her for fighting “the Zionist occupation” of Palestine.

“Hamas hails the courageous stance of Google marketing manager, Ariel Koren, who rejects Google’s policy of providing services and logistical support to the Zionist occupation, which targets the Palestinian people and their rights, and accuses Google of being complicit in violations against Palestinian human rights,” the terror group said on its website under a headline titled “Hamas hails Google worker stance against supporting Israeli occupation.”

Koren, who said in her blog post she is Jewish, has spent more than a year protesting Project Nimbus, The New York Times reported Friday. She circulated petitions and lobbied executives at Google to dissuade the company from its deal with Israel and in November 2021 was told she had to move to Brazil or lose her job, the outlet reported.

Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist group and it is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. and other countries. The group is responsible for a wide array of attacks against Israel and has killed American citizens.

“Hamas calls for Israel’s destruction in their charter, and if you’re getting their endorsement, you’re on the wrong side of humanity,” Liora Rez, executive director of the group StopAntisemitism, which tracks anti-Israel bias and violence, told the Daily Caller News Foundation

Alex Winston, spokesman for the Israeli watchdog NGO Monitor, which probes terrorism, told the DCNF “once again the world can see” how campaigns to “delegitimize” Israel are only aiding the cause of Hamas.

I am leaving @Google this week due to retaliation & hostility against workers who speak out. Google moved my role overseas immediately after I opposed its $1B AI/surveillance contracts with Israel. And this is far from an isolated instance.https://t.co/V4y05kOYQv pic.twitter.com/eRMrzTPYfb

— Ariel Koren (@ariel_koko) August 30, 2022

Koren eventually filed a complaint with Google and the National Labor Relations Board over the Brazil incident but no wrongdoing was concluded, The New York Times reported.

“I have consistently witnessed that instead of supporting diverse employees looking to make Google a more ethical company, Google systematically silences Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, and Muslim voices concerned about Google’s complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights — to the point of formally retaliating against workers and creating an environment of fear,” Koren wrote in her blog post.

Koren did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Google.