Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

> Offer to relocate the employee first?

To Gaza? That's an interesting idea, but I don't think it'd work out very well.

> Remind employees they can work in other areas?

I don't think somebody who can't figure that out by themselves is really a very valuable asset. But also I don't think that's the problem. The person did that not because they weren't aware there are other people in Google working on other things - literally everybody is aware on that. They didn't just requested a transfer to another group. They staged a protest because they wanted to influence Google's decisions by publicly threatening the withdrawal of their contribution. Turns out, Google is ok with that scenario. When you bluff, you should always consider what happens if you're called.

> Google had shutdown the private forum without a proper discussion

As I understand, the reverse had happened - the forum was overflown with the inflammatory activist messaging having no relation to the topic it has been created for, and had to be shut down, because it could no longer serve the function it was created for. "Proper discussion" has never been the activists' intent (and in general, experience teaches us these kinds of activists are a lot more into shutting down and deplatforming opponents than properly debating them). Not that Google has ever lately been on the frontlines of enabling proper discussion - as most major tech companies, they have abandoned this idea years ago in favor of serving as a gatekeepers and the pretorian guard - but in this particular case, it seems to be pretty clear no proper discussing was intended.

> What if they were denouncing racism?

What if Google was literally run by Hitler? You can always make an inflammatory hypothetical. But I don't see much point in discussing it - there's an infinite things that could happen, you can't discuss them all. Better to concentrate on things that are actually happening.

It's right in the relevant sense here, namely that there is a hierarchy in place that you will face consequences for disrespecting.

I don't think the idea of an "intellectual elite" in general is very useful, but assuming any reasonable definition of such an elite that would have to include people who influence real policy, the specific idea of one that's uniformly hostile to Israel's existence in the West runs strongly counter to the observable reality of consistent material and political support for Israel across the political spectrum.

Even among those who see its behavior as a driver of the conflicts it is embroiled in -- even among those who may see Israel as an oppressor -- there doesn't seem to be anything like a coalition around any specific plan for its outright elimination, let alone one that could get traction.

There are some substantial academic criticisms of Israel's behavior or even status as a colonizing oppressor and I think what happens is that when those enter the popular discourse, they get conscripted into simple sympathies and boiled down side-taking (which mostly feeds the conflict dynamic).

One thing I think systems thinkers (hackers, academics, intellectual elites, whatever) do tend to understand is this:

As long as Israel exists in a form where outgroup rights & dignity & lives are disposable, it will be contributing to the conflict.

That's a dynamic-descriptive statement, not a singular prescription. It implies several possible paths: Israel could be dissolved/replaced, Israel could grow into accepting the responsibility of materially valuing outgroup rights & dignity & lives itself even when it's inconveniently in tension with other immediate pressures, Israel could cede some control (and territory) to a larger system that will take on that responsibility for it, or we could accept the status quo.

It's a bit less common to hold that understanding at the same time as another systems reality:

As long as Israel and its ingroup are under existential threat, judging outgroup rights & dignity to be disposable will have broader internal appeal, consolidating the power of those who choose that as their pitch or hold it as part of a fundamental worldview.

This probably is the location of the mistake you have a feeling some in the West are making. When we use rhetoric or steer towards policy whose end seems like Israel's dissolution, we're not just dealing with a question about whether our sympathies are most appropriately placed with Israeli/Jewish people or dispossessed Palestinians, we are exerting force on a lever of the conflict system and the likely outcome is an equal and opposite reaction or a transfer of angular momentum into the circular conflict rotation. It encourages Israeli perspectives like "we're right to aggressively do whatever it takes to fend for ourselves because nobody else is really on our side." It might even tells actor like Hamas that their plan works, that they really can drive a wedge between Israel and the rest of the world by merely provoking Israel into treating tens of thousands Palestinian civilians as collateral damage (basically turning people Hamas hadn't converted into actual soldiers yet into a kind of conscript after the fact, to say nothing of the survivors that might be radicalized).

Why do we do it? I don't know. Maybe thinking in terms of sympathies instead of systems does require more effort. Maybe human nature to simplify. Maybe many of us have the luxury of little actual skin in the game, so we can choose sympathies and symbolic values over the substance and mechanics of the system (though on the other hand, skin in the game also often makes sympathy more immediate).

I kinda hope that in the software era / information age that modestly trains more people to think about some specific systems at least, maybe we can figure out how to do better, but OTOH all the decreased friction of discourse has had mixed results.

No. It's dishonest of you to claim that: "Islam does not allow killing of civilians in war, so this would surprise me. I googled for it and haven't found anything other than pro-Israeli groups saying it." and say that you couldn't find evidence of it when clearly in 1988-2017 Hamas did exactly what you're so surprised of. Is this a new tenant of Islam that came into force after 2017?

Also you know that quote is from the Quran, which takes precedence over the Hamas Covenant...

Hamas killed hundreds using suicide bombers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at...

What about ISIS? Al Qaeda? PIJ? Taliban? I'm not even going to count the millions of civilians killed by civil wars in Muslim countries. The idea that Hamas won't kill civilians because it goes against Islam is so ridiculous and disconnected from reality that I don't think we live on the same planet.

Hamas continues to attack and kill civilians, intentionally, throughout. Including after 2017. Including Oct 7th. You can't seriously say you Googled this and it doesn't exist.

Here's how many civilians were killed before Oct 7th:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/comprehensive-listing-o...

Indiscriminate rocket attacks against civilians:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinian-rocket-and-...

"Wiesenthal Centre Alert: "Hamas Charter 'Fatwa' to Murder all Jews Still in Effect" " - https://www.wiesenthal.com/about/news/wiesenthal-centre-aler...

Just tell me how many references you need and I'll find that number.

EDIT: You should also watch footage from Oct 7th and listen to the testimonies of survivors. Hamas raped and mutilated civilians. They live streamed and filmed some of their actions. They called parents on the victims phone to show them they're killing them. Hamas threw hand grenades into shelters where civilians were trying to hide. It burnt civilian houses down to kill the families hiding inside them. It is a diabolic, fanatical, psychopathic, evil entity. This claim that somehow Hamas doesn't target civilians is just - crazy.

> there doesn't seem to be anything like a coalition around any specific plan for its outright elimination, let alone one that could get traction.

Not everyone agrees on how to do it - the Iranians and their axis are trying to do it by violence. Western sympathizers don't outright support violence but don't outright condemn it either (oppressed people can't commit terror etc, minimizing what happened on October 7th etc) and at the same time they are trying to create the conditions for Israel to not be able to defend itself: attempts for arms embargo, economic and diplomatic isolation and as mentioned above creating an atmosphere that tolerates the violent destruction of Israel. All this is meant to allow the 'Right of Return', where descendants of Palestinians refugees from 76 years ago (!) are still refugees in places like Lebanon, Syria and even Jordan, and to the best of my knowledge are the only people who are kept in an eternal status of refugees so they can return a century later to their 'original' homes.

And using the term intellectual elite is inaccurate but its not wrong - a Harvard professor for gender studies or oriental studies is much more likely to support the plan I outlined above than any other type of solution. So not all intellectuals, but way more than you'd expect.