A Google engineer sparked a ruckus at a New York tech conference when he accused an executive from the search giant’s Israel-based operations of “powering genocide” by cooperating with the Israeli government.
Barak Regev, managing director of Google Israel, was delivering a lecture at the “Mind the Tech” conference in New York City on Monday when a man wearing an orange Google T-shirt stood up and identified himself as an engineer in the company’s Cloud division.
“I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid or surveillance,” the engineer said, eliciting jeers and catcalls from the audience at the conference, which was sponsored by an Israeli financial newspaper.
“Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger,” the engineer said.
As the engineer was being ushered out of the room by security, he yelled: “Don’t cloud for apartheid. Don’t tech for apartheid.”
In April 2021, the Israeli government announced that both Google and Amazon would be partners in a $1.2 billion initiative called “Project Nimbus,” which would provide an “all-encompassing cloud solution” to government agencies, including its defense establishment.
The conference was held with the goal of “emphasizing the importance of a united global tech community standing alongside Israel in ethical leadership.”
Regev abruptly ended his speech after another protester interrupted him, shouting “Free Palestine.”
Some in the audience were annoyed, with one person heard yelling: “Go and support terrorism somewhere else.”
When “Project Nimbus” was announced, an anonymous group of Google and Amazon employees released a statement to the British newspaper Guardian denouncing the partnership.
“We cannot support our employer’s decision to supply the Israeli military and government technology that is used to harm Palestinians,” the tech workers wrote in October 2021.
Last November, a group of Google staffers which included “anti-Zionist” Jews, Muslims, Palestinians and Arabs circulated an open letter demanding that management cancel the Nimbus contract due to what it calls “providing material support to this genocide.”
The Israeli government has been accused of widespread human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Hamas, the Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist organization, staged a cross-border assault on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians.
In the ensuing months, Israel has conducted a military campaign in Gaza that has thus far claimed the lives of an estimated 30,000 Palestinians.
The Post has sought comment from Google.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
