WASHINGTON: Amazon has suspended a Palestinian software engineer hours after he emailed senior executives and posted on internal Slack channels protesting the company’s ties with the Israeli government.
In his letter, Seattle-based Ahmed Shahrour accused Amazon of complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza through Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract signed with Google in 2021 to supply cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technology services to the Israeli government and military.
Shahrour, who works at Amazon’s Whole Foods division, also criticized the company for silencing pro-Palestinian voices and dismissing workers’ complaints. His letter, addressed to executives including CEO Andy Jassy, was simultaneously shared across several internal Slack channels.
“Every day I write code at Whole Foods, I remember my brothers and sisters in Gaza being starved by Israel’s man-made blockade,” wrote Shahrour, an Amazon employee for over three years. “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.”
He urged Amazon colleagues to support a new worker-led Palestinian campaign calling on the company to end its involvement in Project Nimbus.
