Comment by Riaz Haq on November 9, 2023 at 11:12am

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/business/israel-palestine-google...


The letter sent on Wednesday resurfaces another sore point: Google’s role in a $1.2 billion contract to supply Israel and its military with artificial intelligence and other computing power, technology that critics and activists say could be used to surveil Palestinians.

When the contract, called Project Nimbus, took effect in 2021, a number of employees objected publicly and said they were threatened for speaking out in support of Palestinians, claims that are similar to those in Wednesday’s letter. Last year, a Jewish employee of Google who led an effort to get the company to drop out of the contract resigned, claiming it had retaliated against her.

After the fighting broke out last month, employees started a new petition for Google to cancel Nimbus. By Tuesday, it had 675 signatures, according to one of the employees.

“Criticizing Project Nimbus has made people targets,” said Rachel Westrick, a software engineer at Google who said she supported the letter. Ms. Westrick said she also wanted the company to condemn the violence against Palestinians, as it did the attack by Hamas, and address racism that she says her colleagues have experienced.

The company has said Google’s role in Nimbus involves it providing services for run-of-the-mill government agency work and isn’t applied to highly sensitive or classified projects.

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Three people said one worker had been fired after writing in an internal company message board that Israelis living near Gaza “deserved to be impacted.”

The company released a statement condemning Hamas on Oct. 7, and a few days later it told Jewish employees that it was monitoring internal platforms for antisemitism and promised to take action — including firing offenders — if warranted.

The next week, in an email to staff, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, acknowledged that Jewish employees were “experiencing a rise in antisemitic incidents,” and that Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees were “deeply affected by a concerning rise in Islamophobia and are watching with dread as Palestinian civilians in Gaza have suffered significant loss and fear for their lives amid the escalating war and humanitarian crisis.”

But the employees behind Wednesday’s letter say this isn’t enough: “We demand that Sundar Pichai, Thomas Kurian and other Google leadership issue a public condemnation of the ongoing genocide in the strongest possible terms,” it reads. Mr. Kurian is chief executive of Google’s cloud computing business.

Supporters of Palestinians at Meta also feel they are facing unfair treatment. A handful of workers there reported that on Workplace, Meta’s internal communication platform, posts that included the phrase “pray for Palestine” or otherwise expressed support for Palestinians — with no mention of Hamas — were being flagged for removal internally, according to two employees who shared the messages with The Times.

Around the same time that Meta’s workers were having difficulties internally, the company said a “bug” in its code — a mistranslation of Arabic — had led to the word “terrorist” being inserted in some users’ Instagram biographies if they included the word “Palestine” or a Palestinian flag emoji. The Washington Post and 404 Media earlier reported on some of the problems at Meta.

A Meta spokesman declined to comment.

Mr. Gilani said he couldn’t figure out what, if anything, he could say at work about what he saw as the killing of innocent civilians.

He knows the risks of speaking out on such a divisive topic, thanks in part to an experience he had in 2014. After he was repeatedly stopped by airport security, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request to try and find out if he was on a watch list. But instead of getting the information, he was approached and questioned by the F.B.I. at Google’s offices.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 10, 2023 at 10:30am

“Clear Intention of Ethnic Cleansing”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Omer Bartov Warns of Genocide in Gaza | Democracy Now!

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/10/bartov_genocide_apartheid

Israeli American scholar Omer Bartov, one of the world’s leading experts on the Holocaust, says Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip is at risk of becoming a genocide. The monthlong air and ground war has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians in the besieged enclave, a majority of them women and children. Israel has also severely limited the movement of food, water, fuel, medicine and other essentials into Gaza. Bartov says the disproportionate killing of civilians by Israel, as well as dehumanizing statements by Israeli leaders and suggestions of mass expulsion, are of grave concern. He recently joined hundreds of lawyers and academics in signing an open letter warning about Israel’s violations of international law in Gaza. “There is an indication that there are war crimes happening in Gaza, potentially also crimes against humanity,” says Bartov. “If this so-called operation continues, that may become ethnic cleansing … and that may become genocide.”

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OMER BARTOV: I was a soldier in the IDF, in the Israeli Defense Forces, between 1973 and 1976. And so, as a young soldier, the first thing that I experienced was the trauma, the huge surprise of the Arab — the Egyptian and Syrian attack on Israel on October 6th, 1973. And I should say that when the Hamas attack on Israel occurred on the 7th of October, 2023, 50 years and a day later, that was quite traumatic, I think, for myself and many members of my generation. And we can talk further about why it was so traumatic.

But in the course of my service, I also served in the northern Sinai, and the command post that I belonged to was in Gaza. And so I would go quite often to Gaza, which was then — had a population of about 350,000, was poor, hopeless and congested. And since then, of course, now we have between two and two-and-a-half million people living in Gaza, which is much poorer, much more congested and whose population is much more desperate, and has been desperate for a long time, considering that it’s been under Israeli siege now for 16 years. So, for me, the lack of progress for all those years in somehow resolving this terrible humanitarian problem is very personal.

And I should add one thing. I was usually not employed as a soldier in occupation duties, but there was a time that I was. And I have very distinct recollection of that, leading my platoon through an Egyptian city at the time, with people looking at us from behind the windows, obviously not wanting us to be there, obviously afraid of us, and us walking on the street obviously feeling uncomfortable being where we are and being somewhat afraid of what might happen to us as we were marching then. That sort of sense of what being an occupation soldier means stayed with me all those years, and it’s always made me — has been one of the reasons, a sort of more personal rather than political or analytical reason, why I’ve always thought that it’s time to end this occupation, for which we called in that August 4th petition, two months before the Hamas attack on Israel.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 12, 2023 at 4:59pm

Ishaan Tharoor
@ishaantharoor
"We're rolling out Nakba 2023" — Israeli minister just flatly says it, while many in the West tie themselves up in knots to avoid seeing things as they are

https://x.com/ishaantharoor/status/1723712055021105388?s=20

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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-s...

'We're Rolling Out Nakba 2023,' Israeli Minister Says on Northern Gaza Strip Evacuation
Likud Minister Avi Dichter says that 'war is impossible to wage when there are masses between the tanks and the soldiers.' While Netanyahu does not support resettling the Gaza Strip, he says will not give up security control over it 'under any circumstances'

Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”

When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

When later asked if this means Gaza City residents won’t be allowed to return, he replied: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip – half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”

The Gaza Strip’s settlements were evacuated by Israel in 2005 during a unilateral disengagement helmed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. Following coalition members’ declarations regarding reversing this move,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked on Friday if he supports Israeli resettlement in the Gaza Strip after the war. “No, I don’t think so,” he answered, “I said I want full security control. Gaza must be demilitarized. I don’t think (resettlement) is a realistic goal, I’m saying it plainly.”

Netanyahu, who spoke at a press conference alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and minister Benny Gantz, added that he won’t give up control over security in Gaza “under any circumstances.”

In response to a question about the war’s aftermath and the possibility of the Palestinian Authority controlling the Strip, he said: "I repeat, we will have total security control, with the ability to enter whenever we want to eliminate any terrorists who re-emerge. I can say what won’t happen – there will be no Hamas."

"I can say what else will not happen – there will not be a civil authority there that educates its children to hate the State of Israel, to kill Israelis, to eliminate the State of Israel. There cannot be an authority there that pays the families of murderers. There cannot be an authority there whose leader has not yet condemned the terrible massacre more than 30 days after it occurred," added Netanyahu.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 20, 2023 at 11:40am

The majority of demonstrations (worldwide)— about 86% — recorded by ACLED were pro-Palestinian, while a small minority were neutral, calling for peace and a ceasefire without taking an explicit pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian stance

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/MAPS/movajdladpa/

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Infographic: Global Demonstrations in Response to the Israel-Palestine Conflict

https://acleddata.com/2023/11/07/infographic-global-demonstrations-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 28, 2023 at 1:47pm

Pro-#Palestine Protests at #US Colleges Open a Generational Divide. Young #Americans are learning of long #Israeli occupation of Palestine and history of #European colonial oppression from fellow students from countries such as #Pakistan. #GazaGenocide
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/israel-hamas-war-pro-palestin...

College brought new encounters with students from a range of backgrounds, which Little said was eye-opening. With a double major of French studies and fine arts, he signed up for classes about areas colonized by the French empire, Islamic art and theology. He became best friends with a Pakistani American student and joined a South Asian student group, and more recently the Arab Student Union and Muslim Student Association.

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Three years ago, Erin Mullen arrived at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst exhausted by the pandemic and without any appetite for political demonstrations. Last month she sat in a holding cell in an Amherst jail with her hands cuffed behind her back, one of 57 students arrested while protesting the conflict in Gaza.

Mullen is white, her parents were raised Catholic and she grew up in an upper middle class Boston suburb. Her political awakening—along with those of tens of thousands of her generation now enrolled at college—is fueling a surge of campus unrest not seen since the Vietnam War.

A wave of pro-Palestinian protests has swept college campuses, leading to heightened tensions, counterprotests and, in some cases, violence. The conflict has also exposed a generational divide, with many older Americans surprised at the protests’ scope and intensity.

Mullen and other pro-Palestinian college demonstrators say their activism is rooted in a deeply held conviction that the world is divided between the oppressed and their oppressors.

That view frames the suffering of an array of populations, they say, including low-income families being evicted from their homes, Black and brown people who encounter brutal treatment by the police, migrants turned away from safe haven at the border and, in the current conflict, Palestinians struggling to wrest control of territory from the Israelis.

“Gaza is not a two-sided war,” said Mullen, who is 21. “What is happening is the resistance of the oppressed against their oppressor.”

The protesters’ sympathy for Hamas, designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group, sometimes astonishes and rankles bystanders. Roughly half of Americans 18 to 24 years old think Hamas’s October attack was justified by grievances of the Palestinians, according to a Harvard Harris Poll. Just 9% of people aged 65 and older feel the same.


The activists at pro-Palestinian events include a range of student groups who say they can draw a direct line from the causes they support to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

In one protest earlier this month, University of Pennsylvania Students Against the Occupation were joined by groups including Fossil Free Penn, Police Free Penn, Save UC Townhomes and Students for the Preservation of Chinatown at a demonstration outside a board of trustees meeting.

Participants seamlessly shifted between calls for a cease-fire in Gaza and concerns about fair wages for graduate students, the police presence on Penn’s campus, the university’s endowment choices and opposition to the construction of a new 76ers basketball arena in center-city Philadelphia.

“Occupation is a crime, from West Philly to Palestine!” the group of about 50 students and others shouted.

“All oppressed and displaced people are fighting for their right to return,” declared one speaker, who, like most people in the audience, wore a mask covering his face. “From 40th and Market to Palestine, this is the same struggle.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 28, 2023 at 1:47pm

Pro-#Palestine Protests at #US Colleges Open a Generational Divide.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/israel-hamas-war-pro-palestin...

Last month, Brown University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter issued a statement that said the group held “the Israeli regime and its allies unequivocally responsible for all suffering and loss of life, Palestinian or Israeli.” It was endorsed by more than 40 other student groups, including the Teaching Assistant Labor Organization, Burlesque at Brown, Brown Beekeeping Society and Poler Bears, a pole-dancing performance group.

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Noah Thompson, a 24-year-old senior at the University of Oregon, works in a university dining hall to put himself through school. Raised by a single mother, he believes too much of the nation’s wealth has accrued to the most affluent, and capitalism is skewed to help the rich and exploit the poor. He said he’s troubled by war profiteers selling arms to Israel, who then use the weapons to kill children, and has helped organize a “No Money for Massacres” campaign to promote a cease-fire in Palestine.

“There always seems to be enough money, bombs, for war, for intervention abroad, and never enough money for education, for healthcare, for creating a better and secure society for us here now,” he said.

Some student protesters have minimized the brutality of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, when militants killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, including concertgoers and children, and took 240 hostages. Health authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza say more than 13,000 people had been killed there in the war.

Some protesters have referred to the attack in demonstrations and public statements as an “armed uprising” or “act of resistance.” That framing has been particularly abhorrent to Jewish leaders, who have called on campus administrators to denounce such language as antisemitic.

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College presidents are struggling to navigate between championing free speech, mollifying outraged alumni and protecting Jewish and Arab students from harassment. Universities in recent weeks have announced advisory committees, task forces and research centers to address rising antisemitism.

Mullen, from UMass, said criticism of Hamas is often used to undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian movement. She said she feels “deep sympathy for everyone involved” and doesn’t approve of the Oct. 7 attack, but said it wasn’t unprovoked.

Israel set the stage for violence by condemning Palestinians to live in “an open air prison or a concentration camp,” she said. “I think the way that the media portrays it makes it very difficult to understand but in reality it is a pretty straightforward conflict.”

Mullen began following the conflict in Israel and Gaza in October, after a few years mainly on the sidelines of political movements. She said she was confident in her understanding of the power dynamics in the Gaza Strip since Israel pulled out in 2005, but less familiar with the historic events that led to that point.

Friends from school showed her the Instagram feeds of several Palestinian journalists and she began reading Al Jazeera’s website. She saw photographs of Palestinian families buried in rubble and Gazan women holding their dead children. The carnage propelled her to act, she said. Mullen now wears a denim patch on her jacket that says “Free Palestine.”

Last month, Mullen was among about 500 UMass students who protested the school’s connection to an arms manufacturer and demanded the school condemn Israel’s actions in the war. Roughly 100 lined the hallway outside the university chancellor’s office, draping themselves with Palestinian scarves known as kaffiyehs and sporting Palestinian flags and signs like “Stop U.S. Aid to Apartheid Israel!”

A UMass Amherst spokesman said students were warned to leave or risk facing arrest when the building closed at 6 p.m.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 3, 2023 at 10:21am

Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
There's no overstating how extraordinary such a statement by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is, warning Israel it's heading towards "strategic defeat": https://twitter.com/upholdreality/status/1731318768742117738/video/1

"In this kind of a fight the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat."

Essentially saying what is obvious common sense: you create more Hamas than you destroy by killing civilians. And as such what Israel has been doing so far is nothing but dig the hole it's in deeper and deeper...

After, obviously, it's doing all this with Pentagon weapons and support in a myriad of ways, so Austin's words are pretty disingenuous... BUT they see Israel as their "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the region so they must feel that were they to stop this active support it'd "sink" pretty quickly, which they aren't ready to do.

Which actually goes to illustrate just how deep the hole Israel - and America - have put themselves in. The "unsinkable aircraft carrier" is taking water and needs constant US support to avoid sinking but the US is now telling them publicly - in very frank terms - that their actions are actually accelerating the sinking...


https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1731361257784328632?s=20

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