Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint | Hacker News Reader

Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

theverge.com

205 pointslladnar370 comments

The meat of it is here:

> Google “retaliated against approximately 50 employees and interfered with their Section 7 rights by terminating and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work,” the complaint reads.

Seems very thin to call on the NLRA here. The "protesters" stated goals were to disrupt work even for people not a member of the non-union (therefore not a strike) which is not a protected activity. Moreover, were any of these employees or any members of the minority union actually working on the Israeli contracts they objected to? While you can protest against your job duties under the NLRA (or job duties of your collective union members) I don't see that you can protest against company functions which aren't job duties you or your class aren't a part of.

If the workers had just walked off the job and peacefully and non-disruptively protested in front of the building and refused to go back to their job until they (or other members of the minority union) had their job duties modified so they were not working on those projects and google had fired them, that seems like it would violate the NLRA.

Anyway this seems like some fun FAFO. I wonder how many of the people who got fired were even members of the non-union before the "protest".

It depends. Given the administrations position on such things right now, the NLRA could be used as a intimidation club against Google to settle.

I mean, go ahead and file a complaint, right?

But my read of the situation while skimming the NLRB summary [1] is this complaint is unlikely to win

> Strikes unlawful because of misconduct of strikers or other loss of protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a “sitdown” strike, when employees simply stay in the plant and refuse to work is not protected by the law.

This feels pertinent, but not a whole match.

> Furthermore, Section 8(b)(4) of the Act prohibits strikes for certain objects even though the objects are not necessarily unlawful if achieved by other means. An example of this would be a strike to compel Employer A to cease doing business with Employer B. It is not unlawful for Employer A voluntarily to stop doing business with Employer B, nor is it unlawful for a union merely to request that it do so. It is, however, unlawful for the union to strike with an object of forcing the employer to do so. These points will be covered in more detail in the explanation of Section 8(b)(4). In any event, employees who participate in an unlawful strike may be discharged and are not entitled to reinstatement.

On the summary page, this looks like striking to prevent their employer from doing business with another employer (IDF) and might apply, but further reading seems to indicate this is about striking to not do business with a non-union employer, which isn't actually relevant. But either way, it's not clear to me that striking about who your employer does business with is a 'lawful' strike.

[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes

The key difference here is that Google really wants the DoD contract and doesn’t care who’s on the losing side of the real battle.

The Google Walkout in the wake of Andy Rubin, David Drummond etc was far more disruptive to their business yet Google on paper felt they got a great deal on the severance packages of Rubin and Drummond ($0). Or at least Sundar was proud of how he cleaned up those messes.

Rubin got $90M as a gift from Google, beyond what was negotiated.

I also don't think this counts as a strike, at least the actions taken do not fully fall within the protections of a strike even if they were striking for a reason for which strikes are permitted. Disruptive protest like what this was isn't a legal strike.

Anyway I have no objection to them taking things to the NLRB, I just don't think they will win. I suspect google will settle by paying some or most of the terminated employees some severance or some other token gesture and will consider themselves lucky to be rid of activist employees.

This is a gross misreading of what the article actually said.

The real meat the article (as reflected very clearly in its original title, not the mangled caption that was unfortunately used for the post; and throughout the article body itself) is that Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear.

As if the higher-ups got together and said to each other: "Ya know, 28 heads just isn't enough. We need to go out and bust some more, to you know, make a point. Plus there's that sound their skull makes when hitting the pavement. I just can't enough of it!"

Google might dispute this - then again Google lies about a lot of things. We'll see how the complaint process goes.

Either way you're going off on an ancilliary aspect of the article, not its main thrust.

> Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but there is deep information asymmetry here and google has all the advantage and must have anticipated that this would end up in discovery and litigation and that the records of the terminated people's employment would be subject to it. That means their chat history, their email history and office surveillance footage.

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.

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-shirts.

The worker then went back to his desk before returning to the protest around 5PM. “I chatted with them for maybe four minutes, like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’” he said. Then, he finished the workday from a nearby couch. The worker says he returned to Google the following day without incident. That night, while at dinner, he got an email from Google saying he had been terminated.

Maybe that what's happened. Or maybe this person forgot to mention some details about something else they did at that day, due to a random lapse of memory without doubt. The point is we have no way to know, based on the words of one, very non-disinterested, side.

And, as I pointed out in my original comment, google has massive information asymmetry here.

They have video and email and message history and badge access times and maybe audio recording and maybe more, who knows.

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.

I wish we had a HN equivalent for the HR crowd because I find situations like this fascinating. HR is going to have to come up with a policy for how coworkers interact with protesters without getting fired because some level of interaction is necessary. If someone is in your office, you're going to need a "Hey, what's going on?", "Can you move over a bit so I can sit at my desk?", and "So what are you guys protesting?". A blanket ban on all interaction won't work because guys like this will get canned but by the same token, you can't have people toeing the line going in and out and pretending to interact so they can stay in the area without having their jobs threatened.

Nonsense.

If you read the original article it specifically says he sought out 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.

Is a single google cafeteria/lounge employee being terminated for happening to be in the lounge when the protest happened? Of course not because that would be nonsense.

How is "checking out a protest" while on one's lunch break disruptive?

If you read the original article it specifically says he sought out the protestors

He was being "Googley" and curious, in other words. And got whacked for it.

From some random snippet attempting to define that nonsense term:

Googleyness is about embracing the unknown. Not just tolerating the unfamiliar, but really appreciating it. Celebrating finding yourself in a place you didn’t expect. Finding the joy in being surprised and dealing with unforeseen circumstances instead of resisting the reality you now occupy

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 doesn't matter if he spent 40 minutes talking to them, four hours talking to them or 4 minutes talking to them

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.

> assuming he must be guilty of something awful

He is. He is guilty of doing something his employer didn't like and they fired him for it.

Reminds me of the Chinese social credit system. Having an opinion is terrible, talking with someone who has an opinion is arguably worse! That is how the disease spreads! The signal is that you should cover your ears and run away.

> who either weren't involved the protest at all,

Or at least they say that. Which may or may not be true. Maybe google is lying, maybe they are lying. I imagine if NLRB asks, Google will be willing to provide the grounds for firing and we'd know who is the liar here.

Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work. Protest all you want in the public streets where you have freedom of assembly. You do NOT have that freedom within a corporate office building. Regardless of employer. A few firings and maybe they’ll get the message to take it outside.

I empathize with people wanting to speak out over something they are passionate about. I do this often. Just know your venue and know your audience. Bridges take a while to build…

>> Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work

By doing it at work, they are risking high paying jobs, putting their careers at risk. In public.

Risking something for a protest is the whole point. To the extent that they do that with their eyes open, risking high paying jobs, they are heroes.

If they do that thinking the people who control Google will be fine with that and they will still keep their jobs, they are, well, without jobs.

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.

>> Their actions achieved nothing of consequence

They drew attention to their cause, you're talking about them. You're talking about their cause.

>> even from the point of view of someone that supports their views

What views of theirs do you support, exactly?

There is such a thing as bad publicity.

Tell that to Kristi Noem...

There's such a thing as bad publicity for Google also.

there's also the fact that google will just keep being used by nearly everyone. at the same time, for the now fired employees, having "was a google employee" in their resumes will help them land a new job

So long as they never mention why they are a former Google employee. Instead of a current one.

This is accurate. HR doesn't want protesters on staff, and HR often googles candidates, checks social media, etc.

They may find sympathy at some businesses, but the larger the company, likely the less of that.

I think it really depends on the company. There are a lot of companies out there with a wide range of values. Some might even consider this a quality that they want in a candidate (it will certainly eliminate them from consideration for some companies though).

That’s true! Some might even be more inclined to hire you based on your stance on the matter and that you protested. Good point. Just saying it’s not the best light to show why you were let go. I stick to the canned “We were over-resourced and so there were layoffs” is an easy blanket statement.

I doubt the majority of companies will consider it desirable even if they happen to be in political agreement with you --- because people's beliefs change over time.

> They drew attention to their cause, you're talking about them. You're talking about their cause.

You almost got it. We are talking about them… but not about their cause.

And therein lies the gold: they found a cause that they can use to scream look at me me me.

Sadly for them, I don't know any of their names, couldn't care who they are, and their protest will vanish from the news cycle in a few hours ... forever.

I suspect this is the same for everyone, even those who may be discussing Google's response.

So they may have wanted a "me me me" response, or they may have legitimately wanted to raise awareness, but it's a pretty large fail for a now strongly narrowed career path.

> Their actions achieved nothing of consequence.

They accomplished me never responding to Google recruiter emails and informing others in my network to avoid Google where they can be fired for happening upon a protest at work.

That might make them Google's heroes.

I would say google is more than okay with that.

Then they shouldn't be suing imo. Suing implies they think they shouldn't have been fired, which means their risk was not intentional. So they're not heroes.

In a just world they wouldn't have been fired for speaking out for what they did.

That's purely based on personal opinion though. I'm sure you could find people with the opposite opinion, that in a just world they would be able to go to work and do their job without having political debates forced on them.

Or alternately, one could easily say that in a just world a person would leave their when they disagree with the company rather than making a spectacle out of it.

You can find people who disagree with me about allowing mixed race couples, but it isn't meaningful to say that it's "purely based on personal opinion". You might as well also comment on how I used air to breath while writing it.

No one was stopped from going to work. There were no "political debates" going on, much less "forced" on people.

I swear you guys are just making stuff up to get mad at. I feel like there are real problems you could be worried about, like the people in Rafah. Instead I see a lot of chuffing about a gathering of noisy people. Whatever makes you feel good about your time on earth, I guess.

I had seen reports that there were people disrupting others trying to work in the office. I also expect that those protesting weren't talking about the weather, they would have been raising the issues they are there to protest.

Call it what you want I guess, but that is IMO stopping work and engaging in political debate.

I'm not sure why you reach for a straw man argument about air or mixed race couples, neither of those are relevant here at all and just make your argument weaker.

Edit: also to be clear, I'm not sure who the "you guys" you're referring to are and I'd rather not be lumped in with some larger group for my opinion on one specific situation. I'm also not looking to be angry about anything and am in no way angry about this. I can have opinions without it throwing my mood out of whack.

Then cite those "reports". Otherwise you are just contributing to the misinformation.

Most articles circulating widely have included quotes from Google that the protesters that have been fired were physically disrupting those at work. I didn't expect that to be a contentious reference without a source, but sure here's one - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/google-fires-more-worke...

To be clear, I'm well aware those are quotes from Google's PR department. I'm not taking them as true and was primarily building off other comments here. I think I covered that well by making sure I including "if true ..." caveats, not sure what else you'd want from me here other than to agree with you.

"We continued our investigation into the physical disruption inside our buildings on April 16, looking at additional details provided by coworkers who were physically disrupted,"

So that is what Google, one party to the conflict, claims. Not something independent sources have verified. I'm pretty sure the protestors deny that anyone was "physically disrupted". Edit: You have updated your comments. My point is that it is unfair to default to believing Google and disbelieving the protestors.

The only update I made above was an explicit "Edit:" note a couple comments up, but that was before you commented here. I haven't changed any context or points I raised, in case that was a concern.

And again to be clear, I'm intentionally not trusting only Google and I called that out when I included a source (as requested). I don't think I've been misleading or unfair here, I'm not quite sure what you're taking issue with at this point.

> I swear you guys are just making stuff up to get mad at. I feel like there are real problems you could be worried about, like the people in Rafah. Instead I see a lot of chuffing about a gathering of noisy people. Whatever makes you feel good about your time on earth, I guess.

This is a bit revealing. If you can't see anything but "us vs them" that's fine, but many people are a lot more objective and less trival than that. And that's why we'll win.

(Kidding about the last part. That's tribal lunacy.)

Yes, employees should be fired for trespassing.

There's no philosophical dilemma here. Each participant in the conflict is using the tools at their disposal to get what they want.

The protestors want change from the company. So they protest. The company wants to shut them up. So they fire everyone.

The protestors still want change, now plus compensation. So they sue. Not suing makes no sense, as it concedes defeat and gets them no closer to their goals.

> Suing implies they think they shouldn't have been fired

Not necessarily. Unfortunately law suit as media event is a thing now.

> Risking something for a protest is the whole point.

I can think of a number of protests that didn’t involve risking one’s career, livelihood, or life - that were pretty successful outside the workplace. Inside the workplace, it’s not a public venue and you don’t have the right to occupy offices and sit ins and disrupt work while expecting the company to pay you for that time.

Get realistic. They aren’t heroes. They are trespassers. Disruptive ex-employees that cost the company money. Now if they did this right outside Google offices on the streets, that’s a different story all together. That’s a public place. However, many states have at-will employment so if the company feels you no longer represent their interests, you’re done. Bye. Doesn’t matter the cause.

At almost every company I've worked over the years, I had to go through countless mandatory annual trainings that effectively says expressing opinions on non work related subjective political topics with coworkers/employer is not advisable, risky and can be grounds for termination in extreme cases.

Either these people genuinely believed there was scope for discussion, or believed their opinion/choice of topic is a PR minefield that their employer wouldn't dare take action or they really wanted to get fired.

I'm not from the US. So, unless I'm missing some cultural context, their actions like political activism at work (unless related to labor issues and laws) are unthinkable atleast in my country.

Those trainings are mandatory but usually done via an edutech platform that is basically just a QuickTime movie. Ethics, compliance, corporate policy, it’s just a 30 minute video you play while you do something else and then click the obvious multiple choice answers for 100%. Then forget everything in a week.

Lately it’s been those 2D animations using canned software and AI voice over because that’s cheaper than actually giving a damn. Animaker I believe.

This was most certainly work related. It was about a Google contract which is 100% related to Google and workers at Google.

But a company isn’t a democracy. They don’t have a right to protest it.

If they as employees refuse to work (what they’re paid to do), then the employer has every right to fire them. They aren’t forming a union or something.

This is not universally so, but as far as I can see in the US it is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination

I don’t follow.

You’re saying that there are countries where there could be an employee that does all this stuff (refusing to din their day to day job) and potentially politicizes the public image of the company and the company couldn’t fire them?

Not talking about fairness or morality. Just legality.

These aren’t whistleblowers either.

It's a stretch to call it work related for the person protesting. If it were, the simple act of not working would be sufficient protest against the opposed work.

What country and what company made you undergo these "countless" training sessions? I suspect you are making stuff up.

it was front and center in every US non-FAANG employee handbook and sexual harassment training I went to.

No thanks. I'm not really keen on doxxing myself.

But hey, if you are an IT employee and haven't had to go through those annoying trainings I'd be surprised and a little jealous.

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 gone through "those annoying trainings" and since you can't offer a single shred of evidence for their existence...

> Internet is full of liars who claim to be everything from astronauts, to law professors,

And bitter people too I suppose.

I'm honestly shocked you're skeptical about this

Because I'm very used to well poisoners and their lies. As in this case, the liars can't offer any corroborating evidence and implicitly demands that you should disprove their lies. Which of course is impossible. Eventually, the lies become so entrenched because they aren't questioned that people like you become shocked when others disbelieve them.

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 by multiple live events.

Edit: and lest I be accused of harassment, good morning or -silence- to everyone according to your preference!

Ps Also our calendars are provided by the equal employment opportunity office and have helpful quotes each month on what is harassment and what is going to happen to you if you do it!

PPS in addition to multiple asynchronous trainings and live events and calendars it’s also plastered all over the buildings, bathrooms, and break rooms.

PPPS we also get emails regularly from top level secretaries and directors and I think there may be dedicated months as well to increase awareness.

Final: I sound bitter here but I agree harassment is bad but the level of psychological programming makes my stomach turn. Anyways yes it’s real.

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.

Extremely common in corporate America. I had to click through more of them than I can count, luckily the service my employer did it through would let you skip to the end of the videos and blow through it faster. I don't understand why routine CYA being done is so hard to believe.

United States. Every 6 months, mandatory courses exactly as GP described. If you refuse, you don't have a job. This is so absolutely normal for most tech and finance companies, and has been for years, that I'm utterly astonished that you believe the GP is making it up. Hell, even my fast food working niece has to do these courses!

Sure, agree, but what about the employee in the article who wondered onto the 10th floor to check out the protest. That person wasn't actively protesting. And that person gets fired. That's not right.

Guilty by association. Again, at-will employment means they can justify it however they want to and it’s totally legal. Unless the individual is part of a union…

No, at-will employment means they don't need to justify it, however, should they decide to - then the "justification" needs to be true and legal.

> Rule number one of being a rebel.

Don't work for the Empire.

Let me fix this for you

> Rule number one of being a rebel

Work for the Empire. Just don't be surprised when you get fired, but complain about it anyway, because why not.

> This is a marked departure from the way Google has handled employee dissent in the past. In 2018, more than 600 Google workers signed an open letter opposing Project Dragonfly, an effort to build a search engine for China. As The Verge reported at the time, the petition began with an internally shared Google Doc, and all subsequent steps were also organized using Google products. Employees also urged Google to drop Project Maven, its contract with the US Department of Defense. That same year, over 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against executives. [...]

> “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.”

This is the most interesting part of the article for me. Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees.

It doesn't actually say anything about how Google handled those employee demonstrations though... Were they less draconian?

>> Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees

I guess that's one possibility. Another possibility is that the owners and board of Google have a very different attitude towards protests in favor of Palestinians than the owners and board of Google had towards other protests in the past.

These protests aren’t in favour of Palestinians, they’re specifically against Israel, and empower and excuse a racist death cult that has taken over Gaza.

One bit of info... this is an employer's market. 2108 was an employee's market.

Did Google change, or was this protest substantially different in character?

In the reporting TFA links to about Maven I don't see any sign of employees staging disruptive protests on Google property. This is how Gizmodo describes that protest [0]:

> Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to the Defense Department for the analysis of drone footage has prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Thousands of employees have signed a petition asking Google to cancel its contract for the project, nicknamed Project Maven, and dozens of employees have resigned in protest.

A petition signed by thousands and a bunch of resignations are very different than staging a sit in in an executive's office and refusing to leave when asked. And both of the protests referred to in the past (Maven and sexual harassment) seem to have had a much stronger base of support than the 20-50 people who participated in this.

Is it possible that Google is the same Google and these people have gotten caught up in unreasonable post-2020 expectations for what valid political expression in the workplace looks like?

[0] https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-f...

I think the difference in the number of participants and base of support is material.

That said, the 2018 protests were definitely more disruptive than this one. 20,000 employees left their desks. [1]

Part of it might also be that several of the organizers of the 2018 walkouts left Google in the months following the walkouts (including Meredith Whittaker, who now runs the company behind Signal).

I think my original argument in the GP is wrong. The more I read about this topic, the more the true narrative seems like "after the 2018 walk-outs, Google took steps to ensure mass political action within the company like the action that tanked Maven would never happen again," and we're now seeing the results of those steps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Google_walkouts

Walkouts are very different in character. It's a mini-strike, not an occupation. People voluntarily leave their jobs for a day, they don't sit in someone else's workspace and prevent them from doing theirs.

Sure, it's more disruptive to the company because the numbers are larger, but the damage done by each individual ends at not doing their work for the day. It's a statement of "this is what your company will look like if you don't address this" not "we're going to make a scene and hang out in your personal space".

This is a very selective and ahistorical definition of "strike". Strikes regularly block shipping lanes and scab workers from entering so they often prevent others from doing work on a job site.

Have you seen this done in recent years?

I've personally seen AT&T employees go on strike but they were nothing like this. The employees on strike wouldn't go to work, and there were signs and a few people sitting at tables near the entrance to main office buildings in Atlanta, but nothing was blocked and the people there sure seemed more like they were paid by the union to be there and didn't really care at all.

The bigger issue with the term "strike" here is that Google isn't unionized (yes, I know AWU exists, but it's less than 1% of their workforce)

If they were unionised the workers wouldn't have been paid for the walkout, presumably.

Yes but that's the illegal version of strike, which is met with violent law enforcement response.

The recent protest did not interfere with anyone's work. The office space they occupied was otherwise vacant.

The Google walkout wasn't a whole day. It was one outdoor meeting

20K people leave their desks every day for lunch and coffee breaks. The walkout break was outside instead of in the snack room.

Google's militaristic business contracts, and militant protests thereof, have both been ramping up in the past decade.

Google was not founded as a military contractor making targeting systems for missiles. But now they are.

> This is the most interesting part of the article for me. Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees.

I have two theories, both come with no warranty:

- Google is alarmed at how much "trust and safety" affected their ability to deliver LLMs, and is listening fractionally less to people of this political viewpoint

- Google has more existential threats and no more ridiculous ZIRP to coast along on, and so needs real income from customers that value it

- The Google department that owns this contract has some clout, and wanted to show its high-paying customer that it wasn't going to be swayed by the politics of its staff members

(I added the third theory and forgot to reword.)

Dammit this is so dumb. Half of google employees I know are literally racist against Chinese people. This is about China vs Israel, not a change in approach.

Google is very explicitly doing mass layoffs throughout the year. At this time, the company has every incentive to fire liberally. They have a quota of headcount to reduce through 2024, and firing for cause is better for morale (not to mention severance costs) than firing employees with good track records. If their layoff quota is 20% for the year, 20% of Google's employees broke the rules somehow, and Google fired them all, that'd be a great outcome for the company. That would mean they don't have to conduct mass layoffs, with all the morale and severance baggage that comes with.

Having a political voice is different than having a voice against sexual harassment at the workplace. Please don't mix things that don't belong together. Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies. SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate.

I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide.

Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired, and supporting a genocide is -- in my mind -- a much more radical political position than objecting to one.

Sexual harassment cases are much more black and white and actionable than genocide cases.

Acting on them also has less of an impact on the bottom line, and doesn't sour the company's connections to Israeli or US military and defense industries.

Corporations tend to act morally only when doing so aligns with their profit motives.

Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use.

You can disbelieve this, of course, and I assume the internal protesters did disbelieve it or at least thought the tech was dual-use (I don't know what Nimbus actually is). But assuming it's true, and also assuming for the sake of argument that Israel is guilty of genocide, I think it raises an interesting question: do otherwise genocidal governments still need and deserve the right to buy civilian infrastructure to support their own people?

I think they do, and that depriving them of that infrastructure could itself rise to the level of a crime (if taken to an extreme).

Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use.

And yet the IDF and other security agencies in Israel are proudly boasted of as clients in their own press releases.

> Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired

I've worked in past with people who were very passionate Gaza supporters. And they received nothing but praise, but their work may have supported people involved with Oct 7th massacres. Should they be fired too?

I don't see how that relates to my point. My point is that repercussions are happening to one side of the issue: those opposing genocide and apartheid. Two things I was sure of everyone could agree on are some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity you can commit.

The genocide has been ongoing for multiple decades, Israel routinely bombs civilians in Gaza, and any Palestinians living in Israel have essentially no political rights and effectively fewer property rights than other people. They have color coded passports and car license plates, and are easy to target by Zionists. Zionists get tried in civil court for committing crimes, and Palestinians living on the e.g. West Bank get tried in criminal court for any offense. An offense can include walking on a certain off-limit street if you are a Palestinian (which is not off-limit to Israelis or tourists).

Israel has killed so many more people than any Palestinian resistance forces that were engaged in October 7th (Hamas, communists, etc.), so trying to center the discussion on October 7th is fairly ridiculous.

Look at these charts and tell me with a straight face that Palestinians are the violent ones:

https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas...

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-20/six-charts-that-show-...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-ham...

Just pointing out your arguments could be applied to any war, e.g. Japan and USA in WW2: Japan lost magnitudes more people than the US, though it's really hard to sell that the US was committing genocide, especially given how aggressive and nasty Japan was when given free reign. Lots of parallels here.

How is it a genocide if the victims have a larger population in the same location than when it started?

Not every bad thing or territorial war, even of conquest, is a genocide.

It is outlined in an 85 page filing to the ICJ—the world highest court—how this is a genocide.

Your rebuttal is not a rebuttal, nobody is claiming that “every bad thing or territorial war, even of conquest, is a genocide”. People are claiming, and are being backed in said claim by several governments, international organization, the UN, and the world court, that this particular thing is a genocide.

Source? Not saying that you're fabricating bullshit but let's see.

This is one of the things that is easy to fact check. Usually you provide a source when you are making a specific claim based on an event or research e.g. “somebody said this” - “here is a link to the quote”, or “research has shown” - ”here is a link research”. However I made a general claim about a well documented subject. But very well, I made the claim, so it is up to me to prove it.

I cited an 85 page filing at the ICJ, and claimed that several governments, international organization, the UN, and the World Court has claimed this particular thing is a genocide. If you google “Gaza genocide” you will find all these claims in the first page of results. You may even find the 85 page filing (but in case you don’t, here is a link[1]).

There is a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to this subject[2], my claims can all be found there, particularly in the section titled: Statements by political organisations and governments. Finally, if you still in doubt, I’ll give you one more source, in particular where the UN is claiming that: “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met” can be found in a report by the UN special rapporteur on the situation in Palestine[3].

1: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the...

3: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...

Any Palestinians living in Israel have essentially no political rights

Simply false, and in fact rather insulting to the large numbers of non-Jewish citizens of Israel who do chose to participate in the political process.

Also you seem confused about the restrictions that apply to Palestinians in the OT versus those living in Israel proper.

This kind of muddled reasoning is definitely not helpful to understanding the plight of these people who so you are supposedly so concerned about and empathic towards.

It strikes me wrong to call this a genocide as a survivor of an actual genocide. So i have maybe a narrower definition of the word but i feel obligated because of my experiences to remind to being very careful with this word

Genocide survivalship isn’t something it’s passed though generations, otherwise pretty much every person on Earth is a genocide survival.

If you want to get technical, sure the UN didn’t put the rubber stamp on it, but I think the more important thing is a strip of land where most buildings are reduced to dust, dozens of thousands of people are dead and millions starving. Even putting aside the morality for a second, what is the practical objective of all this?

You're aware that the person you're responding to could be a direct/first-generation survivor?

I'm am, but following Nature's rules that's becoming very unlikely even if we see more and more of these "survivors" on the Internet lately.

Please do cursory research [1] before confidently asserting that the only living survivors of genocides must be impossibly old and confidently leveling personal attacks against people claiming as such by calling them liars.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides

"Israel ‘undoubtedly’ committing genocide says Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg". So you are perhaps wrong even if you have survived a genocide.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-undoubtedly-commit...

They're free to leave and should state their reasons. What they're not free to do is disrupt the mission of the company and feel entitled to do so without any consequences. These people weren't fired because they answered some question incorrectly on a mandatory survey. They laid on the floor, prevented people from doing their work and harassed people making many feel uncomfortable. When you see someone like that behaving at your business, do you stop and think "let me hear them out"

It's not complicated.

Please reread the article, if only the first sentence, which is helpfully formatted in bold type. You missed some crucial details about who was doing what among the fired people.

Google disputes this, if you read past the first sentence:

>[A]ll of the workers who were fired were “personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings."

Getting publicly fired and then using your labor rights and bureaucratic processes to draw out the issue seems like a much more effective form of protest than just quitting. Their tactics are good here.

I doubt that was their plan, since if it was going to go down like this, then you might as well have the cops drag you out the building.

Protests don’t work if they can disperse of you that easily or cordon you off to a small block. If only a few of you get arrested and the rest of you disperse, it won’t work. If one of you get arrested, all of you should try to get arrested since they can’t fill up the jails with everyone.

If you are not going to go all the way then don’t bother with this shit. I don’t agree with the Jan 6 riots, but they mostly followed through lol. That’s pretty much how you have to do it, and if you have a really good cause (e.g something not retarded like defending trump), you’d have a lot of support.

College protesters need to straight up super glue themselves to the campus honestly if they really want to do this. Yes, actually glue on bare skin to surface. Then America can watch as the fire departments remove students one by one off the walls of the campus live lol.

Be sticky, protesters.

Yeah fair, I also figure they mostly weren't expecting to get fired. But once you have been you might as well use the system as fully as you can, eke something out of it.

Using the process seems like ‘abuse of process’ in cases like this where the protesters clearly violated the law and their obligations to their counterparty (in this case their employer).

Well, whether they did that is not completely clear? That's what the process is there to decide right.

But in any case and far more importantly protests have goals they want to achieve and being a pain in the ass is absolutely a valid tactic. Protest movements have rarely accomplished their aims by acting fully within the social preferences of their opponents.

The problem with this logic is that I’m not sure you’d want it applied when the tables are turned. How would you feel if Israel-supporting lawyers started filing frivolous nuisance suits against these protesters? Still fair game?

Keep in mind that these junk suits (in both directions), have negative impacts on other people trying to access the justice system for legitimate reasons.

They already do that. And some or maybe all of these people will never be hired again because of zionist activism.

Principled restraint from an effective technique has never deterred an opponent from using it themselves.

Like look at the last decade of the democrats and their deference to decorum and what that has accomplished.

Who says that a totalitarian attitude is desirable?? Freedom of speech implies that expressing your opinions should not cost you your job.

I was told that speech had consequences and anything but the Govt literally silencing you was ok for decades.

Damn. I guess that NOW HN cares about free speech, after highly paid fellows get fired from their jobs for doing dumb shit

You have it backwards. There's a huge backlash when somebody's fired for being racist, or homophobic, or transphobic. Now anti-authoritarian protestors are being doxxed, fired and arrested; yet I haven't heard a peep from those people who "believe in free speech."

I don't know, bjourne has been pretty vocal and he keeps getting downvoted.

I also believe they should be allowed to express their views at work and that is consistent with my views in the past.

The issue with free speech historically or currently worldwide is that governments can silence, jail or kill you. It’s a civic issue, not business one.

Maybe a government can find a "legal" way to accomplish those illicit goals, which gives them an edge. But powerful entities like huge companies don't necessarily need to contort the law to accomplish their illicit goals. There are ways to launder responsibility for them through 3rd parties. Protecting people from the government itself is good, but not sufficient in the era of trillion dollar multinational companies.

You are vaguely arguing that we’re living in fascists states.

I am overtly arguing that oppression doesn't originate solely from governments.

No it does not and it never has.

Freedom of speech is a protection from the government, not other citizens.

And I suspect the only reason people take this view is because the speech is something they agree with. Would you, for example, feel like Google was being totalitarian if Hitler Hank hosted a sit in protest against the company for hiring people of color and he was subsequently fired?

Some people have read this (or know some of the history at least):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

Some people mistakenly believe that the first amendment is identical to the above; it is not:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_Unite...

> Freedom of speech is a protection from the government

No, that is the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is a much larger concept.

Yes, it does. The right to free speech is not a right if exercising it costs you your livelihood. The idea that freedom of speech only restricts the government's actions is typical American myopia. George Washington didn't copyright freedom of expression and the US constitution is not the end all to human rights.

> The right to free speech is not a right if exercising it costs you your livelihood.

This sort of free speech has never existed and frankly it would be preposterous for it to exist.

A company couldn't fire a salesperson that went around telling potential customers "Hey, our product is garbage you should use our competitors"? A state employee couldn't be fired for lying to the races they don't like "You don't qualify for this, sorry". An employee couldn't be fired for sexually harassing coworkers because "Welp, free speech, can't stop Bill from telling Jill how much he wants to have sex with her".

If we take this right to its natural conclusion, it would preclude other rights like the freedom of association.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/straw-man-fallacy/

What is the substantial difference between the speech I listed and the speech you want protected?

Is occupying your CEO's office until removed by law enforcement speech?

Were all of the fired employees occupying the CEO's office?

Has the illiberal left not been smugly telling us "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" when others lost their jobs? They hardly have any right to complain when they are hoist by their own petard.

OK cool.

That doesn't explain why the right - which has been just as smugly insisting that freedom of speech must mean freedom from consequences - doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

I couldn't care less what the conservatives think. Their blatantly fake support of freedom of speech was always conditional and self-serving.

Almost everyone's support of freedom of speech and any freedom is conditional and self serving, that's just human nature. Why are you going out of your way to only complain about the "illiberal left?"

Because 1) conservatives rarely bother to speak up on HN; they know they are quite unwelcome here and 2) the illiberal left claims to be allied with liberals and that's clearly false.

Conservatives speak up all the time on HN, and weirdly enough they sound exactly like you do, down to the inability to refer to the left without a pejorative.

Conservatives ignorantly tend to refer to everything to the left of them as "liberals" even to behavior that is quite illiberal, so the distinction is important. But you're welcome to believe whatever you wish; it's a free country.

> as "liberals" even to behavior that is quite illiberal

That's actually the label the left has taken on themselves, blaming conservatives for it is really weird. Yes, the behavior of the modern left has little to do with the classical liberalism, but it's not the conservatives' fault that the left took on themselves this mantle and then failed to live up to it.

but all the center-right comments (what you guys call conservative or more commonly the f-word) are made from throwaway accounts

Because they have been deliberately excluded from participating in the discussion early on, so the only solace they have is watching the left eat their own. If the right doesn't get freedom, they'd at least enjoy their enemies getting the same treatment. It's a sad bargain but the only one available as it seems.

A discussion on what is right is not a game between two football teams and you don't even know what my "side" is. Fwiw, feel free to look up my seven-year-old HN comments about James Damore.

My comment wasn't a criticism of yours? It was more of a comment on the past views of others on HN.

Then we can argue they were not performing their job duties instead. How long should one be allowed to protest on the clock?

> 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 they send in the storm troopers.

In china, they send in the storm troopers if you protest communist rule. It's interesting what we send the storm troopers for. Food for thought.

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.

> Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies

That very much depends on which political voice it is. If it's within approved voices, which lies very heavily to the left, then you'll be likely celebrated. But if you take it too far left - or, horrible dictu, a little to the right - then you'd get the boot. It's been like this 10 years ago and is now, it's just now the incessant push to the left is temporarily diverging from what Google approves, and also the tolerance for physically disruptive actions seems to thin out - while the left seems to get more and more bold, graduating from writing letters to physically disrupting work. The combination of non-approved cause and physical disruption is a sure recipe to get the boot, indeed.

What is the generalizable evidence you base this opinion on? Surely you must have access to a database of the real reasons someone was fired across all of tech?

Is that a database you earnestly expect to be maintained? It sounds to me like you're just asking silly rhetoricals in bad faith, not a good look IMO.

It seems quite strange to attribute the actions of a group individuals to some nebulous force - "the left". It's weird to see such reductionism to a binary axis for something as complex as the intersection of politics, commerce and personal values.

What a difference a few years makes.

Top comment here : "Don’t do it at work."

Top comment a few years ago : "If you work at Google and you have participated in this protest: Thank you."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776276

The comments back then were very supportive of google employees protesting against china's censorship. While the top comments here seem to be against google employees protesting israeli war crimes.

Why? A bit of a head scratcher.

>Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company’s decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work.

>Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week...Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement.

> Why? A bit of a head scratcher.

It is because not everyone sees Israel as committing war crimes. I'm not looking in getting into a debate about it, I don't think this is the appropriate thread and do not want to run afoul of HN guidelines. But to treat your question as if it is serious and sincere (i.e. not a rhetorical question) the answer is because many do not see Israel as committing war crimes but basically everyone agreed China was censoring. I'd also add that censorship can be a particularly sensitive topic the tech community is largely more polarized against than the wider country, whereas weapons of war are viewed by some as valid defensive work. Basically, nerds care about censorship disproportionately. And of course, opinions on both China and Israel would be baked into this too.

Again, not looking to get into the actual substance of these points here, merely answering your question for why large amounts of people see these as different.

While true, i think this answer misses the hypocrisy of the situation.

1. The same people who were supportive of the previous protests, are today's people who suggest "don't do it at work". 2. Regardless of whether Israel is commiting war crimes or not, if one is to be consistent, they must advocate that both the China censorship and genocide protests be done outside of work. 3. The main takeaway here is the bias (justified or not), and disappoint and disturbing hypocrisy in the reaction to the aforementioned protest

Free moneytrain is over and google is going full IBM Dinosaur, at best. Oracle dinosaur towards worse.

Part of it is likely to be how the US government will react. If Google is seen as anti-China that is fine, if they are seen as anti-Israel they might lose important contracts.

I understand in the China case they didn't actually physically occupied workspace and prevented others from doing their work? They wrote a letter. I think there's a bit of a difference between writing a letter and barging into your bosses office and telling them you're not leaving until they do what you want.

Imagine if all these protesters did was to sign a letter. We could only wish, and get on with our jobs

If you look at it in terms of AI, I think it makes more sense.

Google the information enabler was a clear benefit to mankind. Pretty easy to be aspirational there. Happy fun liberal improve the world thinking. Expand participation and information awareness.

Google the surveillance tool and AI merchant for governments and corporations for leveraging total surveillance? .... Yeah. But that's where the bucks are.

Google has clearly moved very far into full enshittimonification of its information. It needs compliant obedient workers to shut up and make it money. Alphabet the big ideas has pretty much totally failed, the only thing succeeding is surveillance: Android and Search. Google doesn't need free, liberal, smart thinkers. It needs order takers.

This has nothing to do with "a few years", and has everything to do with Israel being perceived as a US ally and China being perceived as an enemy. Basically nothing has changed.

Googler protests in the past have typically been walk-outs and other outdoor gatherings. This protest took place within the offices. Some of the protestors occupied senior executives' offices for many hours, and had to be removed by the police. Some of the protestors also streamed their protest from within the offices of the notoriously confidentiality-obsessed company.

I don't buy the narrative that Google is cracking down on employee activism. It seems more like the activists in this instance went too far and were dealt with accordingly.

I think it's fair to say that Google is cracking down. They did tolerate activities like this previously, but came down like a hammer on this. It seems like they are setting a precedent and giving fair warning to anyone else thinking of doing something similar. Things like this can be viral, as seen with the college protests. And the more enabled they are, the worse they get, as seen with Columbia.

And to be fair there has been a big shift in the market for tech workers. There was a sort of indispensable aura that protected tech employees before that just isn't there any more. People who think this sort of thing wouldn't yield a rapid firing are living in the past.

There is a video from the participants-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiWHO71fOU&lc=

I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc.

As an aside, what is with the insane, anti-HN moderation in here? Rational, constructive comments are greyed out because someone's raging bias is countered.

> I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc.

Yeah. This is true "privilege" speaking -- they don't seem to realize how fortunate they were to be in their positions in the first place.

Companies employ you because it's a good deal for them. If you're lucky, you find a place where it is a good deal for you too. Protesting and disrupting work changes that calculus for the company. It's no longer a good deal for them, and the unsurprising result is that they don't want to employ such people or hire them back.

> This is true "privilege" speaking -- they don't seem to realize how fortunate they were to be in their positions in the first place.

This is an extreme assumption on your part.

> Companies employ you because it's a good deal for them. If you're lucky, you find a place where it is a good deal for you too. Protesting and disrupting work changes that calculus for the company. It's no longer a good deal for them, and the unsurprising result is that they won't want to hire such people back.

Everytime workers do something collectively there's a dozen people in these threads saying the same thing, as if it's some sort of revelation.

Sometimes people do things regardless of what's "expected" to be done to them, hoping for reason and empathy to prevail. That's not a sin and being snide about it isn't helpful.

How much reason and empathy were the protesters offering to the people whose offices they occupied?

An extremely reasonable amount, by all counts, what a strange question.

> This is an extreme assumption on your part.

It's not. As I said, that's what I take from a video where a string of people had some of the best paying jobs available to any kind of worker, and at one of the most significant companies in the world right now, but don't seem to appreciate how fortunate they were to be in that situation or that they are replaceable.

> hoping for reason and empathy to prevail

"Reason" is what will get them in trouble here. A reasonable company is unlikely to keep or re-hire disruptive employees when it has other options, and boy does it have other options right now in this tech labor market.

> being snide about it isn't helpful.

I'm not being snide. They have every right to stand up for what they believe in, and there is something noble in that regardless of whether you agree with their view. I'm just remarking on how these individuals don't seem to realize what they had and what they've likely lost.

> I'm just remarking on how these individuals don't seem to realize what they had and what they've likely lost.

Why do you keep doing this?

The person you are responding to has provide supporting arguments in their comment. If you have a response to those arguments, make it.

Thanks forum moderator, I appreciate you guiding us to the right way to make a discussion. Your input in this thread is invaluable.

> Sometimes people do things regardless of what's "expected" to be done to them, hoping for reason and empathy to prevail. That's not a sin and being snide about it isn't helpful.

Of course its not a sin, I think the point here is that people need to be really clear of the risks before taking such an aggressive moral stance. Depending on empathy and reason to prevail while protesting on personal opinion is a crap shoot, chances are the people on the other side could have different moral views or different goals to reason about.

That's absolutely not to say that people shouldn't protest, only that purposely protesting in a disruptive way should be expected to have a bad outcome and push back from the other side. When the other side is on the winning side of the power imbalance that likely means you lose. If the goal is to draw a line in the sand that can still be a win, but if the goal is to make a show out of it with no consequences, well that probably won't work out.

> I think the point here is that people need to be really clear of the risks before taking such an aggressive moral stance

Every thread like this, from now to the first time I visited HN so long ago, is filled with a hundred of the same comment that gets some weird satisfaction off presuming that people haven't thought out their actions. It's not unique, it's not interesting, it's not helpful, and frankly it's kind of insulting.

Its a reasonable assumption that the person in question here didn't think it through if they're filing complaints over the firing. If you disagree with the company you work for and choose to protest disruptively at the office, and know that could lead to being fired, why file a complaint when that happens? And when filing the complaint, is the goal really to get your job back?

At least for me, I can't speak for others here, its a combination of either not thinking it through or purposely making a spectacle out of themselves just to make a spectacle. For better or worse, I don't have much patience for people making a loud show of themselves and appearing to act irrationally (ex: protesting the company you work for, acknowledging you may get fired, getting fired, then filing a complaint presumably to get your job back?).

In the video I link at the base of this thread multiple participants declare that they did not expect to get fired.

They don't call their firing consequences, they call it retaliation. They end the video by declaring that they should all be reinstated because they did nothing wrong.

Loads of internet posters very strongly and emotionally declared that they all knew that they'd be fired, including in this thread. That they were professional martyrs who heroically gave extremely desirable jobs for a cause with eyes wide open, and of course they knew what would happen. But every bit of evidence from the actual participants betrays the opposite.

And we're going to see the same sort of rhetoric as college students start getting expelled, their academic careers ruined. You'll have the former students on one side crying and gnashing about how unfair and unearned the consequences are, and on the other side third-parties cheering on their self-sabotage as heroic.

I don't have any direct connection to Google to really know what happened, only going off what I've seen online. If some protesters were disrupting the office, and those just trying to do their jobs, they should have expected repercussions. Its on them if they believed themselves powerful enough to do that with no repercussions.

A huge challenge in general is that a vast majority of us, myself included, only get fed headlines online and assume we know the whole story. I try to caveat it with "if this is true, ..." to try and help control that unknown.

> They don't call their firing consequences, they call it retaliation.

Well, it is retaliation. The consequences were retaliation by Google. It's maybe just not prohibited retaliation under the law.

What's the difference in retaliation and consequences?

IMO it'd have to be something related to whether the response from Google could have reasonably been expected given the rules, employee agreement, etc. If the protests were disrupting others from getting their job done, that seems pretty reasonable to me personally. Otherwise I guess it would come down to how strict Google has historically been for people ducking out of work without notice (that's the best I could see Google claiming if it really was a peaceful protest / sit-in).

> Companies employ you because it's a good deal for them. If you're lucky, you find a place where it is a good deal for you too.

Toe the line for being underpaid, having bad healthcare, and working for overpaid execs... be grateful you get the chance!

Or it can be seen as an extension of the protest, continuing to lash out at Google for making sociopathic decisions (from their perspective) and using all the tools at their disposal to continue to make being evil less attractive.

The idea that live streaming the protests was going to leak corporate secrets is also laughable.

This idea that projects are "confidential" is a classic for keeping employees on their toes and preventing them from asking questions.

> I don't buy the narrative that Google is cracking down on employee activism.

Seriously? As somebody who's followed this stuff closely there's loads of historical precedent here for assuming exactly that. Including with NLRB and retaliation from other "good kinds of protests".

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-fo...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/02/google-la...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624631/alphabet-cognizan...

Either way, they're not coming back into the building, and Google would probably rather fight a law suit than dealing with these people personally ever again.

Why do you say that google would rather not deal with them personally?

Because they proved they are toxic. No company would like to deal with them again unless there’s something to be gained from the PR aspect.

The company is toxic, not the people.

Also, sucks for Google that future hires are gonna look a lot more like these "unacceptable people".

Toxic? How so?

Extremely unsurprising that they got fired and it seems somewhat far fetched. If your employer works as a military contractor for a state which actions you oppose so much that you engage in a protest, then obviously you can not work there.

If you vehemently oppose US military involvement in the world you should not work at Raytheon. It simply is an arrangement which can not work, neither you, nor your employer should be interested.

The story here isn't the people who were fired for protesting. That's fine. The story is the people fired for watching the protest or being vaguely associated with the people in the protest.

> I chatted with them for maybe four minutes, like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’

> That night, while at dinner, he got an email from Google saying he had been terminated.

That is almost like out of a Silicon Valley episode, but gone dark.

Anyone can sue or complain about anyone else. It doesn't mean that they will get anything out of it. In this particular case, I'm seeing many people who support their message speaking against what they did.

I had a similar moral conflict at a workplace and I dealt with it by resigning. Despite my outrage, I can't imagine occupying the office of my boss as an acceptable move. It's not illegal for my company to do business I disagree with, and if I don't like it, I leave. Simple.

Resigning under protest isn't really effective unless you are difficult to replace. Even in that scenario, you can almost certainly "protest" more effectively by speaking out and seeking targeted changes and then ultimately resigning or forcing them to fire you when they don't change. Protesting is at its core being an un-ignorable pain in the ass until a problem gets fixed. Resigning is pretty ignorable, especially if your reasons for doing so are not clear.

Who said it was a resignation of protest?

The GP did it for themselves.

National Labor Relations Board, in case you're wondering. The author doesn't bother to define it until the 12th paragraph.

it's' in your interest to know that acronym, whether your a laborer or owner.

You assume everyone lives and works in the US. If you’re not then you have no idea that that is.

fair point! i do assume that. and i expect a US-based publisher to also assume that about their audience.

Given the NLRB's position on "Google's ideological echo chamber," - the likelihood that the NLBR would rule in their favor seems non-existent given their strong defense of corporate rights to punish speech at work.

(/s for those who need it)

I’m assuming at will employment makes this very unlikely to be successful.

At will employment doesn't matter here. Even with at-will employment it is illegal to fire employees for some reasons. For example, it's generally against the law to fire employees for discussing their work conditions.

I think the employees will have a difficult case here, but it is conceivable that some of them might. For example I could see the NLRB ruling in favor of an employee who was fired after for expressing concern about a project with Israel, but I think the employees who staged a sit-in probably don't have a case.

Well you can't fire people for political reasons. It's a protected category. So the crux of it will likely depend on if there's similar protests from opposing viewpoints that were not dealt with similarly. Eg. If there were any counter protestors at the same event that weren't also fired that's a reasonably clear cut case of firing a group for political views.

Political affiliation is not a protected class. California law does restrict employers from punishing employees for their political activities, but this generally applies to activities done outside of work.

If they're successful, I hope James Damore jumps in on this.

Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”.

I have yet to see organizations (at least on the ground, in major press releases) cite anything that represents hate against the Jewish population. Only rhetoric I have heard is those protesting the horrific actions of the Israeli government/military and the US governments enabling of those actions.

Horrific actions by the Israeli government so far (at least since the Hamas raid): indiscriminate bombing in Gaza, bombing of hospitals, many civilians impacted and from what I gather most are underage children.

Some American-Israelis at these protests (some even young adults in college) keep repeating the rhetoric by the media as well. Have seen some students say these protests are rampant with anti-Semitic rants and that these protests “want to get rid of them [Jewish students]”

Again, I have been to a few of these protests (especially the ones in TX) and have yet to see anything of this sort. I have unfortunately seen people sitting on lawns not resisting law enforcement get their faces smashed into the ground by state troopers.

Is the Israeli political machine just very effective? Or am I the delusional one ignoring the obvious?

If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such.

So far I have come up empty as far as credible sources.

> Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”.

Yes. The reason for this is that people who oppose the protests, and effectively support what officials at the UN are calling an ongoing genocide, cannot win any argument on its merits. So the only thing they can do is paint the protesters as antisemitic, even though many protesters are Jewish. It's pathetic but effective, for now.

This is how it always seems to go. A huge segment of Americans still refer to the George Floyd protests as "George Floyd Riots" that "burned down" cities. It's, obviously, a ridiculous characterization of an overwhelmingly peaceful nation-wide set of protests.

The Floyd riots did lead to several deaths and billions of dollars in damage, documentation of that is an internet search away. Completely different from the current round of protests against Israeli brutality (which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real)

> which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real

If you truly think the concept of systemic racism does not exist, your warped perspective is probably beyond saving. The term itself dates back to the 60s and has a long history of academic and real-world relevance.

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

With where political discourse in developed nations has gotten, I really shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still honestly a bit shocked that somebody with access to a computer and presumably an education compatible with working in technology and posting on HN actually doubts that systemic racism exists in a country that has centuries of slavery in its founding history and numerous statistically proven cases of disproportionate policing of certain races of individuals.

What an asinine comment! I don't think being this willfully ignorant is helping your cause here

> The term itself dates back to the 60s

Systemic racism did exist in the 60s, of course. (One good empirical test: during the era of Jim Crow, many black people tried to pass as white so as to gain access to the opportunities that were denied to black people. Does this still happen today, or is the reverse more likely?)

> statistically proven cases of disproportionate policing of certain races of individuals

Not when you look at the actual data: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1903856116

(Yes, the article is retracted. If you read the correction and rectraction, you will see that the authors stand by their results, and retracted only due to political pressure/politically incorrect people citing the study.)

Fine, I'll bite. Here's the retraction statement, which I read in full. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117

Some key quotes (emphasis added via italics)

> Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general. To be clear, our work does not speak to these issues and should not be used to support such statements. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original report, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research.

> While our data and statistical approach were appropriate for investigating whether officer characteristics are related to the race of civilians fatally shot by police, they are inadequate to address racial disparities in the probability of being shot. Given these issues and the continued use of our work in the public debate on this topic, we have decided to retract the article.

Here's a random hit I found on Google in less than 30 seconds: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/annual-report-shows-syst.... Note that this is PBS, not CNN or MSNBC or other "liberal" media sources.

Here's two recent-ish studies from Harvard, which were also published: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population-development/2019/11/...

Care to refute these, or do you just only believe data you've (mis-?)interpreted to match your existing world view?

It seems to me that, at a minimum, your assertion that "systemic racism doesn't exist" is a controversial one in conflict with the retraction statement above from that papers' authors, and by the general public at large. I also find it interesting that you've moved the goal post from "doesn't exist" to "doesn't exist anymore", and seem to have found one study to support your claim, which has been retracted and -- by the authors' own admission, is insufficient evidence for the claim you're asserting from their study.

I really don't agree with your assessment or disingenuous interpretation of the data on this issue. If you have any sort of scientific reason to convince me otherwise beyond "political correctness bad. you gotta read between the lines!", I'm all ears.

> Here's a random hit I found on Google in less than 30 seconds: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/annual-report-shows-syst...

> The index shows not only that median household income for Black people, at $43,862, is 37 precent less than that of white people, at $69,823. Black people also are less likely to benefit from home ownership, the engine of generational wealth in America. Census data shows Black couples are more than twice as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage or a home improvement loan, which leads to just 59 percent of the median home equity white households have, and just 13 percent of their wealth.

These numbers just show that racial disparities exist. Which they obviously do! But disparities are not proof of discrimination, there are many other potential causes.

> Here's two recent-ish studies from Harvard, which were also published: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population-development/2019/11/...

The two studies measured reported discrimination. Which is not proof of actual systemic discrimination.

Those "overwhelmingly peaceful" protests caused an estimated $1-2B in property damage, making them the most destructive protests (from an insurance perspective) in the last 50 years: https://www.axios.com/2020/09/16/riots-cost-property-damage

"fiery but mostly peaceful"

Don’t you find it weird that one of these “riots” locations is “across 20 states”, and the remainder have an actual… y’know, single location? Why are we comparing things this way to exaggerate damages and undermine the overwhelming majority of people peacefully protesting?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/nearly-all-bla...

Add up all the riots of 1965 - 1968 and it is still less damage than 2020. That's not an exaggeration, it is what the numbers say.

If peaceful protestors find that fact undermining, they should take it up with the violent protestors who caused all this damage, rather than shooting the messenger.

There are 8. Vs 20 states. These are not comparable in scale whatsoever.

George Floyd Riots overwhelming peaceful? Not if we stick with facts.

"arson, vandalism, and looting that occurred between May 26 and June 8 caused approximately $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally, the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history, and surpassing the record set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots"

You’re comparing a nationwide set of protests against a single city. Is this number adjusted for inflation? Do you have any idea who caused this damage?

I was arrested in Brooklyn during the protests. I was slammed into the glass window of the Junior’s cheesecake in downtown Brooklyn by several police officers, cracking the window. Who do you figure was blamed for that damage?

We’re watching this scenario repeat right now. Some doofus students at Columbia broke a window, and the media’s losing its mind decrying the “violence”. Meanwhile, the NYPD is coming to the building with bulldozers, tanks, sledgehammers, and tear gas.

(I literally did nothing to get arrested. The charges were dropped before my court case. Shocker)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/nearly-all-bla...

> If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such.

The question is whether this is an unreasonably strong standard. Even Hamas themselves have not issued a clear official statement in support of their actions; their spokespeople variably claim that they did not commit any atrocities on October 7, or that the atrocities against civilians were collateral damage in a legitimate military operation.

These protests aren't about Hamas though. There are other protests about that, and surely those are valid. These protests are about Israel's campaign of what UN officials say is genocide. Most attempts to change the subject to Hamas are bad faith attempts to protect Israel from culpability.

UN officials don't say it's genocide and anyways they're not the arbiters of that claim. Changing the subject to Hamas is not bad faith. Hamas is the ruler of Gaza, was voted into power, and enjoys support of most Palestinians. It's impossible for Israel to "separate" its war on Hamas from the population within it resides. The ignoring of Hamas by the anti-Israel crowd is what's bad faith.

Do you separate the Russians from Putin? Should we boycott Ukraine from attacking Russians and not fighting directly with Putin? Do you have any other realistic examples that support your idea that somehow we can ignore the topic of Hamas here? Are the anti-Israel protesters being clear about their stance on Hamas and terrorism?

> Hamas is the ruler of Gaza, was voted into power, and enjoys support of most Palestinians.

Hamas was voted in 18 years ago with less than 45% of the vote on a platform of clean government and keeping peace with Israel based on the 1967 borders.

Hamas today is not the Hamas that was voted in, very few Palestinians alive today voted for them.

Re: your last point, the median age is around 18 so half the population wasn’t even born the last time there was an election. I cannot imagine what it must be like growing up with so little control over your life.

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

Hamas today is exactly the same Hamas that was voted in. If elections were to happen again, Hamas would still get voted in, that's why they haven't happened.

That's the reality which anti-Israelis are determined to ignore.

% of the popular vote doesn't matter. US presidents also get voted with less than 50% of the popular vote.

Their platform isn't and never was peace within the 1967 borders. Again that's the reality anti-Israelis are determined to ignore.

> If elections were to happen again, Hamas would still get voted in, that's why they haven't happened.

If Hamas believed they would win, wouldn't they be more inclined to hold elections in the territory they control?

Netanyahu and his administration actively worked to bolster Hamas and keep them in power: https://original.antiwar.com/connor_freeman/2023/10/26/netan...

So yes, let's go after all supporters of terrorism!

It is more nuanced than this. Netanyahu did take a divide and conquer strategy with Hamas and the PA. That much is true. But the Palestinians have agency here and we shouldn't take that away from them. I don't think saying "actively worked to bolster" is that accurate. It was along the lines of better the devil we know . Like many things in this story, it doesn't yield itself to simplistic observations. I don't have a lot of love for Netanyahu but he's certainly not a supporter of Hamas terrorism.

> It was along the lines of better the devil we know

Israel also "knew" the PA, but worked to marginalize them anyway.

Israelis freely and democratically elected Satanyahu (among other racist and genocidal maniacs who call for the genocide and destruction of all of Palestine), who is literally their longest serving PM, who literally brags about making any efforts about a Palestinian state fail, while Hamas was elected once 18 years ago and half of the population today weren't even alive then.

The reason the Palestinians don't have elections is that Hamas would get voted for again. It enjoys popular support. This 18 year ago and half the population thing is bullshit. Half the population doesn't get to vote anyways when half the population is under 18. That's how democracy works.

On the Israeli side the reason Netanyahu and most Israelis object to a Palestinian state is that it's clearly just going to become a base for launching attacks on Israel, just like Gaza. Palestinians don't want a two state solution, they want to destroy Israel. They say it explicitly in every survey. Go watch videos on YouTube of Palestinians in the west bank interviewed about this question prior to Oct 7th.

> Palestinians don't want a two state solution

This is a pretty generalizing statement about a whole nation that surely has varying opinions on the subject. I would even say a bit racist and dehumanizing.

Can you share the survey’s you claim exists which demonstrates this?

I think the parent meant Palestinian leadership. There were two offers for a Palestinian state which included east Jerusalem as the capitol. One by Barak rejected by Arafat and the other by Olmert rejected by Mahazen.

There were undoubtedly flaws in both offers. But that's how countries start. You form something, build trust and negotiate to improve conditions. Unfortunately, Palestinians have always suffered from bad leadership that keeps dragging them to conflict with Israel. They keep losing these conflicts and their situation in the aftermath is always worse. Unfortunately, this is no exception.

> Half the population doesn't get to vote anyways when half the population is under 18. That's how democracy works.

But the entire population gets to be blown up anyways by 2000-pound bombs. That's how mass murder works.

I’m not sure what you mean by “bad faith” here. I think most defenders of Israel are pretty forthright about their belief that UN officials are wrong and Hamas is solely responsible for the suffering in Gaza. That doesn’t mean you have to agree - I personally am skeptical that trying to parse out who’s most responsible or most at fault makes sense - but most of the opponents you’re seeing genuinely feel that protests against Israel are protecting Hamas from culpability. (International relations in a violent region are hard!)

the Israeli PR and propaganda machine is very effective. But I think some of the more extreme behavior (as you point out, very quickly citing anti-semitism) is starting to be recognized, and the overton window is shifting towards more skepticism of israeli claims.

I suspect some of the most virulent statements being made by protesters are being made by what I call the professional protestor class- people who like to show up at protests and cause problems (my friend called them the "fuck shit up contingent") for fun.

>the Israeli PR and propaganda machine is very effective.

Vastly less effective than the competing one, IMO.

There are people that still, to this day, think that Al-Ahli hospital was bombed by Israel and that hundreds of people were killed. It seems to be a widespread belief that Israel is primarily European-descended wheras in fact more than half of Israeli jews are Mizrahi - they were refugees from places like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco. There are people that shout about globalizing the intifada without having any idea what those words mean.

Is there any evidence of the opposite, that it was bombed by Hamas, or do you simply choose the narrative that suits you?

Yes, actually. Lots of it, which has been in the open for more than 6 months. Thank you for demonstrating my point so clearly.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/26/gaza-findings-october-17...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/briefing/gaza-hospital-ex...

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-hos...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/24/...

I'd also like to point out that the online narrative in the first 24 hours was that the hospital was "destroyed" with "500 dead" but the pictures we eventually got showed a 6 inch deep dent in the parking lot about 2 feet across and a half dozen burnt cars, plus some blown out windows and shingles. Even setting aside attribution entirely, nearly every other aspect of what was initially reported was demonstratively false or implausible within a matter of hours.

Behold, the "destroyed" hospital where "471" people died, the day after the explosion

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b86e8d6d4133d481c4877d845a149...

Notably, the retractions and actual evidence never went as viral as the unsubstantiated claims.

Just one example:

"Eby’s remarks on the encampment came after he and other politicians denounced an earlier demonstration in Vancouver where protesters chanted “long live Oct. 7,” praising that day’s attacks by Hamas on Israel."

https://www.cheknews.ca/eby-deplores-most-hateful-speech-pra...

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/group-banned-in-germany-get...

I think Israel's PR machine is very ineffective. It's swamped by anti-Israeli PR. E.g. where do you get "bombing of hospitals"? How many hospitals in Gaza were bombed? Which hospitals specifically are they, what were the circumstances, what damage did they sustain?

> bombing of hospitals

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/01/middleeast/gaza-hosp...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-...

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/jordan-field-hospital-i...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/18/bloodbath-israel-k...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...

https://www.who.int/news/item/06-04-2024-six-months-of-war-l...

I briefly scanned through the links but they conflate "damaged", "crater near hospital close enough for fragments to hit hospital" and other unknowns.

the WHO link which we can maybe take as authoritative does not refer to any bombed hospital. We all know there was a huge battle in Al Shifa where the IDF killed an arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives (and has published videos from their interrogations and videos from the battles going on inside the hospital).

"A field hospital in the embattled Gaza Strip run by neighboring Jordan reportedly can no longer provide health care due to Israeli attacks and the disruption of access roads.

The hospital in Gaza is out of service due to damage inflicted by Israeli attacks, as well as Israeli bombing of surrounding areas and the disruption of access roads, as reported on Jordan's official television channel on Saturday."

from one of the articles does not mention the actual hospital was bombed. it says "damage due to attacks" (unclear) and "bombing of the surrounding areas" (which is not bombing a hospital).

From CNN's investigation (first link):

> Satellite imagery showed craters near 11 of the hospitals were consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs. The munitions were dropped near enough for the hospitals to be within the lethal fragmentation radius, which is up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet).

> Fourteen hospitals were directly hit. Several, including Al-Shifa and Al-Quds, appeared to have been attacked by Israel.

In the Vancouver demonstration referenced by “Eby”, I see the chants were from a group called “ Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”

Appears to be a known terrorist organization. Is this organization affiliated with ALL or most of the college campus organizers we see across the USA?

Something I’ll have to ask and bring up. Something smells odd.

In the second article, it references a group or network called “ Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network” which again appears to have links to PFLP. Maybe the fundraising and propaganda machine arm.

All sources indicate both orgs with ties to past violence but does that mean that these 2 orgs are tied to every college campus student org as well?

Nothing is quite clear here. Not enough information. Need some real journalists to clear the air.

I agree. These orgs and people are disgusting. But the gatherings and protests I have been to have not chanted anything of this sort. Not even a dog whistle as mentioned in some comments.

I’ll have to do more digging though. Thanks for providing some links though

I would have no problem with protests that clearly decouple themselves from the militant groups and clearly call for peace for everyone (ideally with some idea of how we actually get there). I would join those. My problem is I'm not seeing the decoupling and I'm not seeing calls for peace. I'm seeing calls to punish Israelis (from burn down Tel Aviv to divestment and boycott) which in my opinion does not help peace at all and definitely a militant tone associated with that.

Does this qualify?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ucb-police-seek-...

"The five people were part of a group of about 200 protesters, who on Feb. 26 broke down the door of Zellerbach Playhouse and smashed a window to prevent Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat from addressing a group of Jewish students. Danielle Sobkin, co-president of Bears for Israel, one of the campus groups who invited Bar-Yoshafat, said after the protest that members of the mob grabbed a student trying to attend the event, called him a “dirty Jew” and spat on him."

5 hateful racist people in a group of 200. That’s not unusual.

5 violent people out of 200 is very unusual. In fact violence in general is quite unusual and isn't widely tolerated, most violent people end up in jail.

"If you're at a rally with Nazi chants and the folks with those chants are not ejected, you're at a Nazi rally."

5 people acting in mob mentality doesn’t exactly fit the bill of a whole organization sponsoring the hate crime. Seems more like smooth brain assholes that want to fuck it up for everyone. Which honestly every protest has at least a few.

Are there are any orgs in UC Berkeley supporting these hateful actions? Are any of the 5 people leaders of the student orgs? Or local orgs in the area? So many unanswered questions. Too much speculation.

Obviously not all protesters are anti-semitic but you must be willfully ignorant to honestly believe that none of them are. For example, here are some signs that have been found in protests (you can find examples on google):

- "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

- "keep the world clean" -> seems to imply some sort of "cleansing" of Jews

- "by any means necessary" -> seems to condone violence against Jews

I'm sure you can find other examples very easily.

I will admit that I didn't see anything overtly anti-semitic from the Google protesters specifically. Of course, it seems they were fired for violating workplace rules, not their actual viewpoint.

> "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

"From the river to the sea" has been used to mean many things. At one point it was a Zionist slogan. Hamas uses it to imply horrible things, and maybe it's not the smartest move for protesters to use the same phrase, but that doesn't mean their intentions are nefarious, no more than Hindus using the swastika makes them Nazi

It’s obviously being used in a very specific way. Your analogy is silly.

Is someone actually claiming that none of them are anti-semitic?

The pro-Hamas antisemites are in the tiny majority of the protesters.

You can read this into anything.

> - "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

The Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict is, for the Palestinians, about property rights. And both sides claim the full area between the Jordan river to the Sea. Plenty of groups say the same thing, whether it's the Chinese view on Taiwan ("one China!") or the ISIS view on the Middle East (and half of Europe and Asia..) being "one Ummah" and nobody calls it racist.

The funny part with that is that it's literally just a pun on the original Israeli Likud party slogan of "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty"[0]. The other day Netanyahu said the same thing with "West of the Jordan river."[1] Is that whatever the Palestinian equivalent of antisemitism is?

> - "keep the world clean" -> seems to imply some sort of "cleansing" of Jews

All the examples I've seen (as stupid as the phrase is, people seem to copy it as if it's witty) have included the Israeli flag. There are plenty of people that roast Turks and Turkey, but the addition of the crescent moon on their flag doesn't turn into a roast on all of Islam.

Israel has intentionally conflated being anti-Jewish with being anti-Israeli so that you can't target the latter, but somehow also rides the wave of Israeli actions can't be attributed to Jews in general. It's a strange take but if anything has led to a rise in actual antisemitism (as in the anti-Jewish variety) it has been that intentional muddying of the waters.

This also isn't to take away from your main point that there is plenty of real antisemitism out there. I'm sure there is, and it's probably underreported if anything. But the majority of the examples given by pro-Israeli groups (chosen only because they're most visible) are not it.

[0] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdFOIiRpr0

I wouldn’t say it’s “Israel” doing this, it’s a belief shared by many (of course not all!) Jews. When your entire ethnic group has only a single tiny country in the entire world that it can call home you tend to take threats against it very seriously. Especially since most Jews in Israel are from the Middle East and if Israel didn’t exist they would literally have no other country in the region they could live in.

> When your entire ethnic group has only a single tiny country in the entire world that it can call home

Are you implying that most of the Jews don't call where they live home?

I think this is actually a kind of narrative that actual anti-semite spread about jews in their home countries.

Most of Jews live outside Israel if you don't know that [1]

And no, most jews in Israel are not from Middle East. They are prominently Europeans [2]. And the arab jews lived in their countries for centuries before the zionist project kicked out and poisoned the whole region against them. They had troubles we have to admit but there is a reason why most of them actually migrate to US, Canada and Europe and not Israel.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel

Where in the link [2] does it say that most Israeli Jews are of European decent? Just over half are not Ashkenazi (mostly Jews from the Middle East, Western and central Asia and Ethiopia). Additionally about 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian. Less than 40% of the total population are Ashkenazi.

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 (~60%).

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...

If 44.9% (or more) of Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern descent, and 20% of Israel’s entire population are Palestinian Arabs (I.e. also of Middle Eastern descent) then more than 50% of the entire population of the country (Jews + non-Jews) are of Middle Eastern descent.

And the biggest ethnic grouping (if you choose to group them that way, as all such groupings are somewhat arbitrary) are Middle Eastern Jews.

And I’m sorry but it just sounds like you’ve never lived in Israel or even visited for an extended period of time. Aside from the relatively recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (starting from the 90s) Jews of all backgrounds speak primarily Hebrew, whether Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, or whatever. Aside from some ultra orthodox you will also not find anyone under 80 speaking Yiddish.

I see, however I was under the impression that Jews in Arabic countries (including Palestine) spoke primarily Arabic, and it was only after they migrated (or were otherwise absorbed into) Israel when they converted to Hebrew. And that the modern Hebrew language was a Zionist effort (a European colonial enterprise) to convert all immigrants to Israel to Hebrew speakers. So even though today most Israeli Jews speak Hebrew, the only reason for that is the colonial prospects of European settlers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Arabic_dialects#Present_...

It is hard to understand the point you're trying to make here. Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans". I don't know that trying to sort out whether Hebrew is European or not is an especially productive enterprise.

Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans."

I'd recommend you also start reading more carefully, please.

This (the idea that "MENA are European") is very clearly not what runarberg is saying. Nor are they even remotely suggesting that "Hebrew is European".

You're responding to a comment that opens up "it is hard to understand what point you're making". You can tell me what the point he's making is, if you're confident in it.

In turn, I'll be more careful about using quotation marks. That's an HN tic that I sometimes forget.

While I have both of your attention --- you all get that this is the same group of like 4-6 people talking to themselves, over and over, right? On HN, a 2-day-old threat is necrotic. As I've said elsewhere, I only really have two angles on this issue: (1) that Israelis aren't European and Gazans aren't Hamas, and (2) that none of this is ever going to get settled on HN.

The thing that sparked my interest here is a sidenote in one of the cited Wikipedia articles:

> Not all Jews immigrating to Israel from European countries are of Ashkenazi origin (the majority of French Jews are of Sephardic, and some Jews from the Asian Republics of the USSR are Mizrahi), and the Israeli government does not distinguish between Jewish communities in its census. [1]

That is how the Israeli government doesn’t track European vs. MENA ethnicity, instead leaving it up to studies to guess. And it took me on a rabbit hole of trying to figure out why that is. It feels very odd to separate between Arabs and Jews, but not allow Jews to identify as Arab-Jew in the population statistics.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews

What I’m trying to argue is that Israelis of middle east and north African ancestry are also victims of European colonization. That their cultural identity was erased and absorbed into the dominant European identity.

The introduction of Modern Hebrew was unmistakably a Zionist enterprise (which it self is a breed of European colonialism). As I’m reading through the linked sources in the Wikipedia article I cited I see how much of a cultural pressure Arabic speaking immigrants were put into speaking Hebrew, not Arabic, in public. As if their language (and by extension their cultural identity) was dirty somehow:

> “I wanted people to speak Hebrew,” she said. “Kids who had Yiddish in their house felt the same. It was more so for those of us coming from the Islamic world, since Arabic was identified as the language of the enemy.” [1]

Now Yiddish speaker probably experienced something similar, but at least they had other aspects of their culture accepted:

> But the builders of the Israeli state faced a major ideological challenge with the Jewish population of the Middle East, who were encouraged to mass migrate to Palestine and used as cheap labour to build Zionist settlements. What the European colonisers found particularly “disturbing” about the Mizrahi Jews was their “Arab character”.

> As Israel’s first female prime minister, Golda Meir, declared: “Every loyal Jew must speak Yiddish, for he who does not know Yiddish is not a Jew.”

> That is, the only true Jewish identity was the one that the Ashkenazi elite had brought from Europe; the Jewishness of the Mizrahim (or Sephardim) was “impure”. Because of that, they were deemed susceptible to “Arab influence” and their loyalty questioned. Action had to be taken swiftly to control this “suspect” Jewish community which soon became half of the Israeli population. [2]

This kind of reminds me of modern day California, how many Latin American immigrants (first and second generation) don’t feel comfortable speaking Spanish in public, instead speaking the language of the dominant culture, and having a part of their cultural identity erased as a result.

1: https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/recovering-judeo-ar...

2: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/21/singing-in-euro...

I took this to #judaism on a Slack I'm on (I'm not Jewish; I'm Irish/Slavic Catholic) and got an earful about how complex the history is here:

* The people of the Old Yishuv spoke Yiddish and Ladino, European languages, as well as Israeli Arabic; European language influence long predates Zionism.

* The European character you're imputing to Modern Hebrew is its pronunciation, but Hebrew itself is the common character of all those languages, Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Arabic.

* Jewish people in the Middle Eastern diaspora generally spoke Hebrew-inflected dialects of the regional languages (as you noted with the Judeo-Arabic page).

* Israel is a melting pot of influences from the Jewish diaspora; for instance, Morrocan Jewish people determined the way Passover is celebrated (with Mimouna). Everything cuts in every direction.

I'm not doing all this stuff justice (in case anyone from that Slack is reading this comment); just to say, all of this stuff is super complicated.

What I'd like to understand better is: the comment you were responding to was defending the proposition that significant numbers (a plurality, I think?) of Israelis are indigenous MENA people. I get that there was probably cultural pressure to adopt Hebrew, and that modern Hebrew is associated with the Zionist cause. The Mizrahim generally arrived in Israel after the Nakba (in a series of counter-Nakbas), and were poorer, more rural, and less privileged than the Israelis who met them there. Sure, that rings true.

But what difference does that make to the point the parent commenter was making? I'm just trying to understand the argument.

(This I guess is a second reason I pop up on these threads: to get an excuse to get my head blown off with historical and linguistic facts from friends on Slacks).

I actually don’t think this is related. I entered this thread by misunderstanding my parent and getting the numbers wrong. Then I stated:

> What is also interesting to me is the lack of official statistics from the Israeli government about this ethnic brake down.

I saw this in one of the cited Wikipedia article (and my anti-colonial bells started ringing) which brought me down this rabbit hole (see other post).

Gotcha. This is like 80% me nerding out at this point.

Aside from the relatively recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (starting from the 90s) Jews of all backgrounds speak primarily Hebrew.

It sounds like you’ve never ...

You must not be reading the post above yours.

Because very clearly, the commenter wasn't saying that the Mizrahi don't currently speak Hebrew (some 60-70 years post-migration). Rather they were referring to loss of identity, de-facto forced assimilation and other unhappy circumstances they faced as a consequence of that migration.

You may not like where they're going with the "colonial" interpretation, and other ideological implications they're drawing on top of this (e.g. the erasure of Judeo-Arabic identity).

But that's no reason to start putting words into their mouth, and making them out to say something that they're plainly not.

But the Yiddish speaking culture of Ashkenazi Jews was also erased. At the founding of Israel the ideology was "we're all Israelis now, so speak Hebrew and forget your experience in the diaspora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golah). It was certainly harsh and from modern perspective wrong but it applied to everyone, not just Mizrahi Jews. My grandparents had their last name "Hebrew-ised" and spoke Hebrew at home rather than their native Romanian/Ukranian/Russian.

An excellent point + thanks for the golah/galut reference. I certainly didn't mean to imply that forced assimilation was an issue solely for the Mizrahi.

I'm necroposting here, but this has been stuck in my head for a week:

Israel participates in Eurovision because it's a member of the EBU. Several Arab states are also members of the EBU, including neighbor states Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, along with Libya and Morocco (which has in fact participated). The Arab states are boycotting Eurovision because of Israel's participation.

It seems pretty clear that whatever other factors you want to weigh here, you can't judge Israel's Europeanness by its inclusion in Eurovision.

The UEFA story is roughly the same, just slightly worse and Israel did not end up there by choice or some self-perception of European-ness.

I just used those of examples of how much Israel fancies it self as a European culture. There are more examples, which together makes a convincing argument that Israel is way more a European culture than it is Middle Eastern.

> Israel participates in Eurovision because it's a member of the EBU

No, that is not the reason, being a member of EBU is neither a necessity nor sufficient reason for entry. Morocco is the only non-European EBU member to ever participate, they did it once in 1980, came in second to last (above Finland) with Italy the only country to give them points. They have not participated since probably because of poor cultural fit.

On the flip side, Australia has participated multiple times without being an EBU member. The only reason Australia participates is because of the shared European culture.

> The Arab states are boycotting Eurovision because of Israel's participation.

The Arab states have not participated even in the years which Israel is not competing, which was the case in 1980. Turkey has participated multiple times along side Israel, even in 2011 a year after the Gaza flotilla raid.

That said the Arab states may be boycotting because of Israel’s participation, but that does not disproof the fact that Israel participates because it fancies it self as European.

> The UEFA story is roughly the same

Perhaps, but Israel applied to and were granted memberships to the UEFA based on their European cultural identity. Greenland was not given the same break and had to apply to CONCACAF (but Kazakhstan was; curiously). When South Africa was kicked out of CAF they did not ask to join UEFA or OFC, instead had to wait until they ended Apartheid and then rejoin CAF.

Israel is way more a European culture than it is Middle Eastern.

This really is not a productive line of thinking, you know. As the Palestinians keep saying -- it make no difference to them where the settlers came from, or what their culture is.

If anything it seems to indicate an unusual fixation on (what you perceive as) the essential traits of Israelis. Which in turn feeds into the right-wing propaganda that all serious criticism of Israeli policy and/or Zionism is fundamentally dishonest and driven by you-know-what. It's like candy to them, in fact.

The only reason Australia participates is because of the shared European culture.

Then start a campaign to have Australia booted out of Eurovision. Go ahead and shout down their performers every time they take the stage, whatever you gotta do. But if that's the only substantive point you have against Israel's participation -- it's an awfully weak one. And again, suggests a weird and lopsided fixation with the topic.

[Morocco has] not participated since probably because of poor cultural fit.

Their music is infinitely better than almost anything that makes it to the perennial Schlockfest that is Eurovision, for starters. But we digress here.

I agree, this is a weird fixation, I regret going down this rabbit hole. I’m personally a little obsessed with European colonialism, and I don’t think people give European colonialism enough credit for the horrors it caused. It really ought to be like slavery is to the US, but rather it is something people think of as inevitable and some people are even proud of.

That said, I don’t care if Australia participates in Eurovision, even though it is yucky to think of it being a product of European settler colonialism (plus their songs usually suck), the current day Australian culture and politics is kind of divorced from that history of horrors now. I do want Israel booted of Eurovision though, not because they are not European enough for me, but because they engage in gross human rights violations. A country doing that has no business participating in international cultural events.

> Their music is infinitely better than almost anything that makes it the perennial Schlockfest that is Eurovision

Ohh, I deffinetly agree. Eurovision would benefit tremendously if Morocco would participate. I advocated for Bashar Murad this year actually (but couldn’t vote since I don’t live in Iceland any more). Even Greenland could help make Eurovision infinity better, regrettably Eurovision is too much of a colonialfest to ever allow Greenland to participate except via Denmark or Iceland.

I did not watch Eurovision this year—the first time in my life—because of Israel’s participation. Despite the songs usually being very bad, I find the whole show to be enjoyable, ironically one of my favorite songs is Israel’s 1987 song. This year however, there was no joy to be found. And it pains me to say it, but I don’t think I will watch Eurovision ever again unless they start taking a firm stance against human rights abuses of participating countries.

It's worse, for sure. For example, when it comes to clubs in illegal settlements by Israel, UEFA and FIFA are not enforcing their own rules : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/fifa-kick-isra....

Israel was also allowed to participate in Eurovision a couple of times while KAN was violating EBU rules about publicly funded news broadcasting.

I’m also not sure about the EBU rules, but I find it curious that Russia was prohibited from participating in Eurovision because of their government’s use of state media to spread disinformation, but at the same time, EBU does not issue the same suspension to Israel (especially now when Al Jazeera is banned).

Have you been to New York or Boca?

(asking in jest as a jew)

A lot of people are spreading a false equivalence between being antisemitic and protesting the slaughter of civilians and children.

Does that count?

This is very true.

Still, I’m terribly disappointed how reticent that side is to strongly condemn Hamas and 10/7.

Their message is not clean.

The Onion really isn't satire.

https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-usi...

Israel doesn't slaughter civilians. In fact, asymmetric tactics and terror attacks against civilians is constantly perpetrated by hamas (as evidenced on 10/7)

Look up settlement activities, with armed settlers activity removing family often with the blessing of the IDF.

> Israel doesn't slaughter civilians

It’s hard to square this statement against the 13-to-25,000 estimated (Assoc Press vs Al Jazeera) dead women and children in the last 6 months though. Just objectively speaking, that is a shocking number of civilian deaths even at the low end.

What? No, it's quite easy to 'square' it actually. Civilian casualties are inevitable when hamas embeds itself into the civilian populace and forces them to stay in the positions they operate from.

Did you have similar outrage when the Russian air force was dropping 1000lb dumb bombs on similarly densely populated cities in Syria from 2015-2017? I guarantee you a lot more civilians died needlessly in places like aleppo and palmyra than Israel has ever 'slaughtered'.

There are confirmed accounts from inside the Israeli army that they select their targets algorithmically without confirmation, wait for their target to enter a residential building, and then bomb the building, accepting up to tens of civilian collateral damage to kill one "suspected Hamas operative".

Remember that Hamas operates most government functions within Gaza, so anyone seen doing organizing work to help Palestinians survive could be categorized as a "Hamas operative" by the IDF.

Over 34000 dead Palestinians, most of whom were women and children, including in the west bank where Hamas doesn't operate disagree with you. Also they're starving Palestinians, and preventing aid from entering, which would be used by starving malnourished children and critically injured people (including children too).

https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zazcVU_rNyQ (NSFW: Language)

Mob mentality really brings out the worst in us.

Still seems like mini groups of assholes lashing out on whoever with reckless abandon.

The dog whistles were definitely fucked up.

Although, what’s the deal with “Zionism”? Seems like the exact opposite of the extreme pro-Palestinian groups (ie, PLFP).

The loudest ones in these videos tend to be associated with either extreme and polar opposites. But I don’t believe most Jewish and Palestinian people would fall into either of these groups.

Just as the far right and far left in USA get all the attention on the news networks, social media, vods, your uncle that death scrolls on FB too long. In reality that doesn’t represent the true make up of America.

It seems 99% of the protesters are there because of the 13-to-25,000 dead children and women, but the 1% that condone Hamas’s October attack make the news.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/unicef-says-over-1...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/1/more-than-25000-wome...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/nyregion/college-protests...

A fairly credible source discussing just this question. A pretty blatant example is a linked video of protestors intimidating three Jewish students while claiming that they are “zionists” without any evidence except the students’ Jewishness.

Were these protestors the ones that were arrested holding a Passover seder in New York?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/24/not-like-other...

Or were these student protestors at Columbia?

https://zeteo.com/p/i-am-a-jewish-student-at-columbia

I wonder, would there be a difference if the employees had to kill women en children themselves and if so, how many steps of automation would make it?

With everyone so hung up on if to call the slaughter of woman, old people and children genocide or not the question seems fair.

There seems to be a desire to transform a rather obvious reality into something that doesn't sound so bad.

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