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Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

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Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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The commenter is being a bit inarticulate, I don’t know their intentions and can't speak to their beliefs. But they’re not pushing conspiracy theories, they’re quoting an Israeli newspaper who reported how contributions to US political parties broke down by faith (supposedly 50% of Dem and 25% of GOP coming from Jewish people). I'd take this with a pinch of salt, personally, as I find it hard to believe you can accurately tie a religion or ethnicity to a quantity of dollars donated. But you’ve then overreacted and claimed they are saying Jewish people are behind everything which just isn’t what they said, even if you think it’s what they believe.

What’s clear is the USA is for whatever reason very involved in tipping the balance in Israel, and it’s hurting everyone in the region to some degree - regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#32
post #8

> “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” Ariel Koren said in a statement posted Tuesday to Medium. Many people is missing the point. "Retaliation" is illegal. > Google denied retaliation and the National Labor Relations Board found no wrongdoing after an investigation In m…

Boycotting Israel gets your company in trouble with various state governments in the US, like no supplying services to the government, and in Arkansas, it gets even more viral in that people you supply services to are forbidden from supplying services to the government. My RH contract specifically forbade boycotting Israel, I'm sure for those reasons. And of course, I imagine that Israel has laws about doing business…

I grew up in an Evangelical church and I attend a Protestant church now (although not American) and the only place I've ever heard people claim that my fellow congregants believe that about Israel is online from people outside the church.

I'm sure you'll be able to find _someone_ who believes it, but it is so weird to see people claiming something as a fact about your church that you've never encountered in nearly 40 years. What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#33
post #8

> “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” Ariel Koren said in a statement posted Tuesday to Medium. Many people is missing the point. "Retaliation" is illegal. > Google denied retaliation and the National Labor Relations Board found no wrongdoing after an investigation In m…

[deleted]

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#34
Just read the NLRB dismissal letter of her complaint [0]. The NLRB found that Google decided to offer her a relocation from Mexico to Brazil before she started her BDS crusade against Google.

By the way, discrimination on the basis of national origin is against Google policy and against federal and CA state law. These laws protect Israelis just like anyone else.

[0] https://www.nlrb.gov/case/20-CA-286745

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#35
post #8

> “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” Ariel Koren said in a statement posted Tuesday to Medium. Many people is missing the point. "Retaliation" is illegal. > Google denied retaliation and the National Labor Relations Board found no wrongdoing after an investigation In m…

Yup, I can see no sign of retaliation: "she would be transferred to Sao Paolo, Brazil". I mean, who isn't ready to upend their lives, leave all their friends and family to move into a poorer country on another continent for the sake of their employer? There is only one name for that: "huge opportunity", thank you lots Google for not being evil.

Did it say she has to physically relocate, or can she work remote and just visit there 2-3 times a year?

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#36
post #6

“In her statement, Koren also singled out “Jewglers,” a forum for Jewish Google employees, for not accommodating Jews who hold anti-Zionist views.” Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist, and that Jews have the right to live in Israel. If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.

> Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist, and that Jews have the right to live in Israel.

Zionism is about the right of Israel to exist as an explicitly Jewish nation state. Being anti-Zionist does not mean you believe Israel should cease to exist, unless you define Isreal only in terms of ethnicity and religion.

> If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.

That's a fairly recent development in the grand scheme of things. Prior to the formation of Israel, Zionism was frequently contrasted with Bundism. The Bundist idea was that the "Jewish nation" is inherently a nation without borders and that Jews should organize internationally wherever they are. Bundists still exist but when Israel was created a lot of Jews adopted a more Zionist stance as the existence of Israel pretty much forced their hand in the debate.

There are still many good arguments against Zionism even now that Israel exists, especially from the point of view that just because Israel wants to be a "home country" for (certain) Jews, many Jews already have a home country elsewhere and identifying Israel as their home country only plays into the hands of antisemites arguing they're "foreigners" who don't belong in the country they were born into.

In fact, many white nationalists in the West use Zionism as a talking point to support their demand for white ethnostates: if Jews can have Israel for Jews, why can't "ethnic Germans" have Germany for "ethnic Germans", etc. The arguments of course get increasingly incoherent with places like the US where pinning down an "original white ethnic identity" requires a fair bit of mythologizing.

Arguably, Israel as a "Jewish state" is a late project of 19th century European nationalism, which largely fell out of fashion after WW2 with the increasing globalization of trade and industry and the softening of national borders through common trade areas and projects like the European Union. The perceived necessity for a "Jewish home country" was accelerated by the Holocaust (and the refusal of Allied countries to take on Jewish refugees until it was too late) but the "Jewish consensus" of universal support for Zionism is more manufactured than authentic and Israel has become as divisive as it has become unifying (e.g through the disregard towards Yiddish as a Jewish language, racism towards non-white Jews, prominent individuals like Netanyahu engaging in Hitler apologism, etc) even if you don't consider issues pertaining Palestinian Arabs.

EDIT: Since most people are likely unfamiliar with the term, here's the Wikipedia article on Bundism:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundism

Although primarily a historical movement pre-dating the formation of modern Israel, Bundist movements still exist in many countries today and tend to be especially popular with Jewish socialists (who tend to be critical of Israel which they often perceive as an imperialist and colonialist project).

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#37
post #6

“In her statement, Koren also singled out “Jewglers,” a forum for Jewish Google employees, for not accommodating Jews who hold anti-Zionist views.” Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist, and that Jews have the right to live in Israel. If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.

> If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews. It's a bit more complicated than this. Israel militarily occupies Palestine. And they institute an apartheid system that is unfair to Palestinians, denying basic rights to Palestinians -- they can take your property, they can restrict your travel, they can strangle your eco…

> they're advocating for a one-state solution so that inhabitants of Palestine/Israel can get democratic representation & equal rights. Again, not a crazy take.

This is in fact a crazy take. It’s not quite advocating a shared state for Nazis and Jews level of crazy but it’s certainly getting there. Palestinian nationalism is based on being anti-Israel in much the same way anti-colonial or anti-metropolitan nationalism is. See Catalan, Scottish, Irish or Welsh nationalism.

Palestinian nationalism is much more like Irish nationalism than any of the rest of those in that people have killed for it in large numbers.

When people say something really stupid you have the choice of believing they’re lying or stupid. One staters are some of one and some of the other.

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boycotting Israel gets your company in trouble with various state governments in the US, like no supplying services to the government, and in Arkansas, it gets even more viral in that people you supply services to are forbidden from supplying services to the government. My RH contract specifically forbade boycotting Israel, I'm sure for those reasons. And of course, I imagine that Israel has laws about doing business…

Quoted post unavailable.

You can't do this kind of flamewar here, obviously*, and we've warned you before, so I've banned the account.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

#40
post #8

> “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” Ariel Koren said in a statement posted Tuesday to Medium. Many people is missing the point. "Retaliation" is illegal. > Google denied retaliation and the National Labor Relations Board found no wrongdoing after an investigation In m…

Boycotting Israel gets your company in trouble with various state governments in the US, like no supplying services to the government, and in Arkansas, it gets even more viral in that people you supply services to are forbidden from supplying services to the government. My RH contract specifically forbade boycotting Israel, I'm sure for those reasons. And of course, I imagine that Israel has laws about doing business…

> Boycotting Israel

There are legal ways of firing an employee if the employee does something illegal. Bullying is not one of them. And that is my point, people insists that "Google has reasons" that does not justify to commit a crime.

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