London Google staff honor Palestinian colleague killed by 'Israel'
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In a vigil held in honor of their colleague, Google staff condemns the company's deployment of technology to "Tel Aviv".
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Palestinians inspect the damage of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, 2023. (AP)
Google employees in London have condemned the company's deployment of technology to "Tel Aviv" during a vigil held in honor of a Palestinian colleague killed in an Israeli bombardment in Gaza.
Members from our UTAW branch at Google organised a vigil tonight to honour the memory of Mai Ubeid.
— CWU Members for Palestine (@CWUforPalestine) December 13, 2023
Mai was a software engineer in a Google backed internship, she was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza along with her whole family.
Proud of our members ✊🏾🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/THaHFkVXfi
The event was held to recognize software developer Mai Ubeid, a graduate of the Google-sponsored coding boot camp Gaza Sky Geeks and a member of the Google for Startups accelerator program.
On October 31, Ubeid and her entire family were killed in Gaza.
The No Tech For Apartheid group also took part in the vigil outside Google's headquarters near King's Cross station.
We’re holding a vigil tomorrow for @MaiUbeid, a fellow software engineer who was recently killed in an Israeli air strike.
— Noran Azmy (@noranazmy) December 12, 2023
Wednesday, 13 Dec, 5pm at Kings Cross
Please show up if you can and share onwards. pic.twitter.com/p17PWg8ytW
Google has been under pressure for its collaborations with Israeli companies with heavy criticism being levied at Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion deal between Google and Amazon to provide cloud and computer services to "Israel" and the occupation forces, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Google has denied providing any services for military purposes, but the Israeli Finance Ministry has previously declared both Amazon and Google would be servicing the occupation's military.
A number of Google employees have spent the last two years protesting the decision to aid the occupation.
In October, a group of 400 Amazon and Google employees signed an open letter urging their employers to cancel the $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and cease all ties with the country's military.
More than 300 Amazon and Google employees signed the petition anonymously, requesting the cancellation of Project Nimbus, whereby the two tech giants provide cloud services to the Israeli government and military.
"We condemn Amazon and Google’s decision to sign the Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli military and government and ask them to reject this contract and future contracts that will harm our users," the workers said in the letter published in The Guardian.
