Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 405 posts

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#351

Post by Georgelemental »

zeroCalories wrote: post #88
Georgelemental wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there aren't Jews that support Hamas There are around 16 million Jews in the world, I'm sure you can find one or two to support more or less anything. But the Uncle Tom/Kapo analogy doesn't work; there are no Jews under Hamas rule (other than the hostages ofc) so there is no incentive for any of them to betray their people in that way.

Of course there is an incentive. You get to reap social capital and get high on your own perceived holiness. Do you think someone like Norman Finkelstein would be so popular if he wasn't a Jew? Or Candace Owens black?

Where in the world (outside Gaza) does explicitly supporting Hamas (as opposed to opposing war crimes) "reap social capital"?

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#352

Post by faeriechangling »

gitfan86 wrote: post #123
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. I don't see how that makes them "heroes", even from the point of view of someone that supports their views.

[flagged]

I feel "Virtue signalling" isn't really fair when they have so much skin in the game here. That's evidence of sincerity rather than disingenuousness, agree or disagree with them.

Unless the definition of virtue signalling is so expansive as to be meaningless, where every act of protest which is not anonymous is virtue signalling.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#353

Post by linearrust »

shmatt wrote: post #281
linearrust wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate. What's remarkable is that SV allowed protests against US, china, russia, anyone really. But protest against israeli war crimes is where they drew the line. SV, media, congress, everyone supported violent protests that burned down cities. But peaceful protests in college campuses against israeli genocide is where th…

They and We are doing some extra leg work here They were fired for blocking a senior executives private office. Do that in the name of US, china, russia, sesame street, and you're getting fired.

> They were fired for blocking a senior executives private office.

That must be it. That must be why the media, congress, colleges, etc are all cracking down on protests. Where were they a few years ago when 'peaceful protests' were 'peacefully' burning down cities? It says something when both MSNBC and Fox News agree on cracking down on protests.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#354

Post by zeroCalories »

Georgelemental wrote: post #351
zeroCalories wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is an incentive. You get to reap social capital and get high on your own perceived holiness. Do you think someone like Norman Finkelstein would be so popular if he wasn't a Jew? Or Candace Owens black?

Where in the world (outside Gaza) does explicitly supporting Hamas (as opposed to opposing war crimes) "reap social capital"?

Are you naive, or acting in bad faith?

The Muslim world. People like Finkelstein are treated like celebrities in Qatar.

Leftist circles, like the student protesters we like talking about. Have you not heard "this is what decolonization looks like"? Why do you think many lefties refuse to condemn Hamas?

The anti-west/anti-american masses. This is the perfect opportunity for Russians and Chinese to undermine the west by promoting token whities, like Jackson Hinkle.

These are often all the same person.

Edit: Not to mention the growing undercurrents of antisemitism in western countries from the right wing and other minorities.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#355

Post by bjourne »

salad-tycoon wrote: post #349
bjourne wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you aren't keen on doxxing yourself you shouldn't use arguments that require the reader to trust you. Internet is full of liars who claim to be everything from astronauts, to law professors, to IT employees who have gone through "countless mandatory annual trainings that effectively says expressing opinions on non work related subjective political topics with coworkers/employer is not advisable". I have not…

I work for the US government. The trainings are real. I don’t remember this exact verbiage but similar for sure. The grounds of harassment basically constitute whatever the claimed victim feels to be so. For example, (and this is from training), saying goodmorning, commenting on hair, not saying good morning or not repeating back, and more. I just skip through but it’s an in depth asynchronous training supplemented b…

Even if what you claim is correct (which I doubt and you aren't going to offer any evidence), it is irrelevant since you are working in the US and they are not. Moreover, their claim was about "expressing opinions on non work related subjective political topics" while yours is about what constitutes harassment. And this is perhaps what they experienced too. They are told that when someone says "hi" they should reply with "hi", but on the Internet this is blown way out of proportions to be about how every job they ever been at tried to stifle political speech.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#356

Post by racional »

weatherlite wrote: post #344
someotherperson wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete nonsense. The Palestinian National Charter doesn't restrict citizenship to only Arabs, it explicitly keeps citizenship for pre-Israeli Jews and you can bet a million dollars that it wouldn't restrict the Afro-Palestinians, Turkmen or any other groups. The only restriction in the charter for citizenship is for Jews that moved there after the formation of Israel.

Israel doesn't restrict citizenship to only Jews, it is probably more heterogenous than Palestine. Israel is 20% Arab. The Palestinian 'right of return' is meant for Palestinian and no one else (perhaps unsurprisngly). I don't see how this isn't the will to create an ethnostate, it's a mirror image of Zionism.

Israel doesn't restrict citizenship to only Jews,

But its laws extend greatly preferential treatment to (certain kinds of) Jews, of course.

"Jews" (or those deemed as such by certain disputed criteria) may naturalize, but with onerous requirements: demonstrating proficiency in Hebrew being one of them (that "other" indigenous language, Arabic, or other common languages of pre-1947 inhabitants such as Armenian just won't cut it). Also, if you're a citizen and you marry a non-national, citizenship is automatically granted -- unless that person that person has the misfortune of being an inhabitant of the West Bank or Gaza (which includes many descendants of people expelled from what is now Israel in 1947-1949 and afterwards of course).

Israel probably more heterogeneous than Palestine.

Given the 517k or so non-indigenous squatters (nearly all of them fit in this category, anyway) in Area C, and the 240k or so non-Arab residents of illegally occupied (that is to say, "still Palestine" per international law) East Jerusalem -- this is a highly untenable statement to make.

I don't see how [the Right of Return] isn't the will to create an ethnostate, it's a mirror image of Zionism.

In human terms, one could also look it as an attempt to restore basic dignity and liberty to these folks, more or less on par to what is provided to prospective citizens of Jewish ancestry via the Law of Return.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#357

Post by racional »

weatherlite wrote: post #340
someotherperson wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody advocates for a Palestinian ethnostate, it's a concession that was made to resolve the issues after the Jewish refusal of a bi-national solution that would have Jews as the minority.

Most Palestinians want a Palestinian ethnostate from the river to the sea.

Some do, but reliable percentage data on this topic seems to be hard to come by.

And many Israelis (and the current extremist regime) want the exact reverse of course. And make no apologies for this fact.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#358

Post by someotherperson »

weatherlite wrote: post #344
someotherperson wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete nonsense. The Palestinian National Charter doesn't restrict citizenship to only Arabs, it explicitly keeps citizenship for pre-Israeli Jews and you can bet a million dollars that it wouldn't restrict the Afro-Palestinians, Turkmen or any other groups. The only restriction in the charter for citizenship is for Jews that moved there after the formation of Israel.

Israel doesn't restrict citizenship to only Jews, it is probably more heterogenous than Palestine. Israel is 20% Arab. The Palestinian 'right of return' is meant for Palestinian and no one else (perhaps unsurprisngly). I don't see how this isn't the will to create an ethnostate, it's a mirror image of Zionism.

I personally never said Israel is an ethnostate, but a Palestinian state is definitely not a mirror image of Zionism. It was never historically monoethnic and issues with Jews is a post-Israeli thing. Not to discount pre-Israel antisemitism or the Arab nationalism movement, but national identity was always tied to a pan-ethnicity rather than religion or bloodline.

Maybe a simple example of this is Armenians (Christian, non-Arab) who would receive full citizenship in Palestine but are still stateless today in Israel[0].

[0] https://apnews.com/article/jerusalem-armenian-community-land...

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#359

Post by runarberg »

ido wrote: post #139
bluish29 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment I was replying to talked about Jewish in israel. They claimed that most of Jews in israel are from Middle East which is wrong and the link shows that. See the table about parental ancestors.

I am talking about Jews in Israel. They are a bit more than half Mizrahi/Sephardi/Beta-Israel (not European) and a bit less than half Ashkenazi (European). The vast majority of Sephardi and Mezrahi in Israel are from what are now muslim countries in the Middle East. Together with 20% of the population that are Muslim or Christian Palestinians people of middle-eastern descent comprise well over 50% of the population (…

I went digging around for numbers in these wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews#Population

These articles agree that Jews of European ancestry comprise around 44.2% vs 44.9% of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) ancestry. The study that gave these numbers admitted on having methodological limitations, so it may be undercounting MENA ancestry.

Another interesting statistic is the paternal ancestral origin of Israeli Jews, with 37% having Israeli paternal origin, 34.6% European, American or Oceanic, and only 27.9% having Asian or African. So at least for the last couple of generations, a plurality of immigrants of of European descent.

I’m sorry, but I’m not finding the well over 50% statistic.

What is also interesting to me is the lack of official statistics from the Israeli government about this ethnic brake down, especially since they make distinctions between Jews and Arabs, which kind of implies—at least to my ears—Arab Jews should not exist. To my ears Israeli culture fancies it self as European (being a member of UEFA, partaking in Eurovision, etc.).

It really looks to me like Israel has made an effort and succeeded in stripping Middle Eastern Jews of their identity[1]. A major tell sign is how Jews of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry speak Hebrew, not Arabic, despite the latter both being a minority language spoken in Israel, and despite the latter being the language of their ancestors. Colonizers often do stunts like these when absorbing the colonized population into their own culture.

1: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/9/20/invention-of-th...

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#360

Post by racional »

worried4future wrote: post #334
racional wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time believing that google would have fired people where the sum of their recorded actions couldn't be reasonably construed to be disruptive. From the article: “When I got there, there were probably 20-ish people sitting on the floor. I didn’t talk to any of them, I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles,” he said, adding that the protesters were wearing matching T-s…

His commentary isn't the exonerating statement you seem to think it is. By his own admission he sought to join the protestors (he went to the lounge on the 10th floor of Google’s New York City office around lunchtime to check out the protest) and spent an indeterminate amount of time talking with protestors the first time around (I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles) Anyway it…

He sought to join the protestors

He went to "check out", and for a fraction of that time "talk with" the protestors, by the words you are quoting.

To "join the protestors" (implying some sort of direct participation) would of course be something entirely different, and in no way grounded in the description we have.

It doesn't matter 4 hours v. 4 min

An impartial observer of the situation would most likely strongly disagree with that take. In any case it certainly doesn't sound (from the description we have) that the net duration was anywhere near the former value. More likely it was around 20 min max.

So far we only have this one person's recollection of the events, where he has a huge bias towards trying to minimize his involvement.

Could be, who knows.

But from the weird semantic distortions you're attempting to lay over the words we do have from this guy -- it seems you're basically assuming he must be guilty of something awful, and therefore to be lying in some major way, also.

Post reply on HN