Internal Google documents reveal concerns about its cloud contract with Israel | Hacker News Reader

Internal Google documents reveal concerns about its cloud contract with Israel

theverge.com

22 pointsTomte6 comments

This has been a historical problem for many years. Tech companies that produce tech that could be used for military purposes. Microsoft had this with HoloLens and the U.S. government (https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/digital-transform...).

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

IBM didn't even have anti-BDS laws to follow at the time, they just willingly sold their product for the purposes of assisting a genocide.

We don't actually know what Google's stance is, but we do know it would be illegal for them to cut off support to Israel even if they discovered that their software was being used to kill children.

Related to this is the issue of imposing sanctions.

On the face of it it seems odd that South Africa is both pursuing a case of genocide against Israel while also supplying Israel with most of their coal.

What many people seem to be unaware of is that countries are not free to unilaterally impose sanctions. Yes, the US does this regularly and essentially with impunity, but, to quote Wikipedia:

> According to Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, only the UN Security Council has a mandate by the international community to apply sanctions (Article 41) that must be complied with by all UN member states (Article 2,2).

It seems you're misreading that quote. It doesn't say member countries aren't free to impose unilateral sanctions. Only that they have no power to compell other member countries to go along with them, unless they go through the Security Council.

While anti-BDS laws are a violation of US citizens rights, they don't cover this case. It's not "illegal" for Google to not do business with Israel. These are state level laws targeting US business that say they can't get state contracts if they oppose Israel.

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