Amazon suspends Palestinian engineer who opposed company's aid to Israeli regime

US tech giant Amazon has suspended an engineer who was opposed to the company's business ties with the Israeli regime. 

Ahmed Shahrour, a Palestinian software engineer based in Seattle, was suspended by the tech giant this week for writing letters protesting the company's aiding the Israeli regime forces in their genocidal war against the Palestinians.

Shahrour was informed on Monday that he was suspended "until further notice" while the company investigated his possible violation of company policy by criticizing Amazon’s managers for their support of the Israeli regime.

"It has come to Amazon's attention that a post you made in multiple internal company Slack channels may violate multiple policies," an Amazon human resources representative wrote in a message.

Earlier Monday, Shahrour posted messages across several internal Slack channels and sent a letter to Amazon executives, including CEO Andy Jassy, detailing his concerns.

As part of his suspension, Amazon revoked Shahrour's access to company email and tools and removed his Slack posts, he responded in a written interview.

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Shahrour urged the company to drop Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google's joint $1.2 billion cloud computing contract launched in 2021 to provide the Israeli government with artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other infrastructure.

"Every day I write code at Whole Foods, I remember my brothers and sisters in Gaza being starved by Israel's man-made blockade," Shahrour, who joined Amazon three years ago, wrote in the letter. "I 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."

The letter also reveals measures taken by Amazon to "silence" pro-Palestinian employees who have criticized the war against the people of Gaza. Amazon recently issued a warning to an engineer who shared an article about American doctors volunteering in Gaza and it fired an employee in France who spoke out against Israel on social media, Shahrour wrote. CNBC confirmed the account with a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality.

The company has deleted posts in the "Arabs at Amazon" Slack channel that discussed the conflict in Gaza, while posts in other channels disparaging Palestinians weren't removed, Shahrour said.

"It feels like I can't voice anything, and if I do, I'm going to get a warning," Shahrour added.

Never again is now: How global companies are complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza

BDS movement has updated the list of multi-national corporations complicit in Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, intensifying its efforts to hold them accountable.

US tech companies have faced growing pressure from employees and activists to stop supporting the Israeli regime in its ongoing genocidal war against the innocent Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The firms have ramped up security at conferences in recent months over an uptick in protests.

Employees at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Palantir and other companies have become more outspoken in their criticism of US firms supporting the Israeli regime.

Microsoft in August fired two employees who participated in a protest inside the company's headquarters. The company claimed last month that most of its work with the Israeli regime forces involved cybersecurity.

Google last year terminated the contracts of 28 employees for protesting against the company’s involvement in Project Nimbus.

Amazon hasn't acknowledged the Nimbus contract beyond stating that it provides technology to customers "wherever they are located." Google has previously said it provides generally available cloud computing services to the Israeli government that aren't "directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads.

Microsoft employees earlier this year expressed concern that the company blocked Outlook emails containing the words "Palestine," "Gaza," "genocide," "apartheid," and "IOF off Azure."

However, messages with the word "Israel" could go through, CNBC reported in May.

CAIR urges Google to end $45m ad deal with Israel whitewashing Gaza genocide

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on Google to cancel an advertising deal worth a reported $45m, which is whitewashing the Israeli regime’s genocidal actions in Gaza.

In related news, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, on Thursday called on Amazon to lift its suspension of the software engineer.

“We call on Amazon to immediately lift the suspension, issue a public apology, and affirm its commitment to protecting employees who speak out against injustice — especially when their concerns align with basic principles of human rights and international law,” CAIR said. 

“No one should be punished for speaking out against genocide."

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