Live data from Hacker News

Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

timesofisrael.com

101–110 of 272 posts

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

#101
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Another reason people say that is because anti-Zionism is demonstrably correlated with anti-semitism This isnt true at all. The far right, for example, are pretty openly antisemitic. If somebody takes pains to distinguish the two on the other hand they're rarely bullshitting. The converse is true though. Attempts to conflate antizionism and antisemitism by are almost always ultimately driven by a staunch belief in J…

> This isnt true at all. I just gave numerous examples that I've seen personally. Centrists who don't care one way or the other about Zionism certainly aren't the ones beating up Jews on the streets of London when Israel does something bad.

The guy who beat up a Jew in London screamed "fuck Jews" while he did it. Not shy about his views - like most of your other examples no doubt.

There is close to no overlap between these people and the people who take pains to explain for the 15th time to a likely racist skeptic that they dont hate jews it's the state of israel they have a problem with.

On the other hand, ive yet to hear a single person who purposefully conflates the two condemn Isaac Herzog - the president of israel as a racist for what he definitely said. Literally zero. You would be the first if you were to do it in any such argument ive had. The closest I got was "his views are unfortunate".

I generally interpret this silence as a signal that his views on racial supremacy, his state and its institutions are thoroughly and comprehensively endorsed.

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

#102

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…

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…

> What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

I don't think historically this makes any sense at all. It's normally just a thing used by right wing politicians to say that muslims are not ok.

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

#103

The world is full of these "conflict" spillovers into civilian life in europe right now. Palastinians vs Israelis (or Jews in general), Kurds vs Turks, Shiits vs Sunnits, Wahabi vs all, Thai Royalists vs Students, CCP controlled student chapters vs those with no family ties to the mainland. Also the remnants of old war and warcrimes, being used in these show up time and time again. Todays japanese are dragged for the…

International relations have never been about ideals and morals.

We had colonialism, slavery, European nation exploited other continents for centuries, great game in Afghanistan and Middle East between Britain and Russian Empire and later USA. US supported autocratic rulers in Korea and Taiwan. US funded coups against democratic govt in Central and South America and Iran. US supported Pakistan govt in human right violations against what is now Bangladesh. Ukraine has supported Saudi's human right violations against Yaman. Ukraine and China has supported military govt. in Myanmar which toppled democratic govt.

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

#104
post #85
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…

It's worth pointing out that retaliation, itself, is not illegal or even necessarily morally dubious. If a company were to retaliate against an employee for stealing by firing them no reasonable person would find fault with that. Only retaliation for a protected activity is illegal. Is interfering with or undermining the company's business prospects in service of a political opinion a protected activity? I don't know…

Should you choose between holding a political view or having a job?

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

#105
post #98

The problem from the perspective of many Jews (including myself) is that these kinds of protests and protestors tend to focus on Israel to the exclusion of any other state. Where is the protest of Google's relationships with dozens of other countries accused of major human rights violations? The double standard when it comes to Israel calls into question the motivation behind the protest and makes many Jews reasonabl…

One example of employee’s protesting Google’s business with China: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/27/google-...

One example of employee’s protesting Google’s business with the USA https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/19/google-employees-implore-lea...

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

#106
post #3

I appreciate this is not quite the same thing, but i can't help but wonder what someone who finds survelience morally reprehensible, is doing at a company that is primarily in the business of tracking users.

They found the treatment of Palestine by Israel to be the morally reprehensible thing -- not specifically data collection itself but weaponized data for enacting a system of oppression.

Wouldn’t you want to track a nearby territory ran by leaders that publicly call for your destruction?

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

#107
post #98

The problem from the perspective of many Jews (including myself) is that these kinds of protests and protestors tend to focus on Israel to the exclusion of any other state. Where is the protest of Google's relationships with dozens of other countries accused of major human rights violations? The double standard when it comes to Israel calls into question the motivation behind the protest and makes many Jews reasonabl…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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

#108

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…

> It's very very dumb legislation, and I think derives from a very odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist. I remember reading Bill Clinton's biography. At some point, he mentioned that a pastor told him something along these lines, and that it was an important realisation for him. (I read that years ago, could be slightly wr…

> I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies.

Ahem.

> In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. [..] President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer. [..] He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/a...

> That being said, it's well known that our former French president got advised by an astrologer [1]

Former, former, former, former president Mitterand, not president Hollande.

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

#109
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…

Orthodox Jew would disagree with you considering that there has been a civil war between mandatory IDF service and the orthodox Jews in Israel stating that religion and Zionism are opposites and not the same.

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

#110
post #13
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 an anti-democratic, explicitly racist belief that only Jews should have governing power over all land west of the jordan river.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN