A Palestinian software engineer at Amazon says he was suspended this week after calling on colleagues to protest the company’s role in the “Project Nimbus” contract with Israel.
It marks the spread of the Palestinian tech worker protest movement to Amazon, following weeks of demonstrations at fellow Seattle-area tech giant Microsoft.
The employee, Ahmed Shahrour, said in an online post that he was suspended with pay on Monday pending an investigation, after he emailed CEO Andy Jassy and other senior leaders and posted in Slack channels protesting Amazon’s involvement in Project Nimbus.
Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion multiyear cloudâcomputing deal awarded in 2021 to Google and Amazon to provide cloud infrastructure, AI and machine learning to the Israeli government. Google has stated that the project is principally focused on civilian ministries, but critics argue the contract allows or supports military and surveillance uses.
In his Slack messages, Shahrour equated Amazonâs role with support for violence in Gaza. He urged colleagues to join a new worker-led resistance group to end the deal â describing it as an âintifada,â a term historically associated with Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation.
Amazon cast the situation as a workplace conduct matter, not a political speech issue.
âWe donât tolerate discrimination, harassment, or threatening behavior or language of any kind in our workplace, and when any conduct of that nature is reported, we investigate it and take appropriate action based on our findings,â said Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser in a statement responding to GeekWireâs inquiry about the suspension.
Amazon deleted Shahrourâs statement from Slack channels, according to a press release distributed on his behalf by representatives of No Azure for Apartheid, the group that has led a series of high-profile protests at Microsoft over its contracts with the Israeli government.
Shahrour wrote in a Medium post, âI live in a state of constant dissonance: maintaining the tools that make this company profit, while my people are burned and starved with the help of that very profit. I am left with no choice but to resist directly.â
Shahrour and others went on to distribute flyers outside Amazon buildings, stating that he faced harassment from some colleagues, and was warned by company security when he went into a building lobby that he was trespassing and would be reported to police if he didn’t leave.
