Amazon: Listen to your workers and stop doing business with Israeli apartheid

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon Web Services SEO Adam Selipsky

Today, Amazon Web Services will hold its annual summit in New York City, bringing thousands of “cloud enthusiasts” to the Javits Center for a day of “learning, networking, and collaboration.”

But Amazon’s technology isn’t being used to bring people together—it’s forcing them apart. It’s enabling and entrenching apartheid, state violence, occupation, and land grabs through its billion dollar contract with the Israeli government and military.

For almost two years, Amazon and Google workers have organized against their employers’ contract, and today Amazon tech workers will join community members at the Javits Center in NYC to demand Amazon stop doing business with Israeli apartheid.

Violence against Palestinians that began with the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) 75 years ago —when Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and land by militias—continues to this day with the help of Amazon's technology.

Project Nimbus is a shadowy project that adds capacity and power to Israel's military and government. Palestinians are already harmed by Israeli military surveillance and repression, and by expanding public cloud computing capacity, Amazon is helping to make Israeli apartheid more efficient, more violent, and even deadlier for Palestinians.

We refuse to allow business as usual today, as long as Amazon continues to profit off of the violence and repression that Palestinians face daily.

That's where you come in: Add your name in solidarity with Amazon workers and community members showing up in New York City today to demand that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and AWS CEO Adam Selipsky end all ties with Israeli apartheid and cut the Project Nimbus contract.

Learn more about the #NoTechForApartheid campaign at notechforapartheid.com. Are you a Google or Amazon tech worker? Reach out to notech4apartheid@protonmail.com to get involved.

To: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon Web Services SEO Adam Selipsky
From: [Your Name]

I’m writing to you in solidarity with the rallying Amazon workers at the AWS Summit in New York City today – bravely calling for Amazon to pull out of the Project Nimbus contract and stop doing business with Israel's apartheid government & military.

Like the many workers of conscience that have come forward, I also believe that technology should bring our communities closer together and work for the common good—not power occupation and violence.

As over 1000 of Google and Amazon workers rightly pointed out in October 2021 in their op-ed at The Guardian, Amazon leadership has made commitments to upholding human rights and behaving ethically—and we expect you to live up to those commitments. Amazon asserts in its Leadership Principles that the company must "make better, do better, and be better" for the world at large.

This year marks 75 years since the expulsion of over 75% of Palestinians from their land (referred to by Palestinians as "the Nakba," or "catastrophe" in Arabic), and your workers remain unwavering in their organizing to ensure that Amazon stops enabling the injustice and violence that began with the Nakba and that Palestinians continue to face to this day.

By providing cloud technology to the Israel, Amazon is enabling the oppression of the Palestinian people. For example, Project Nimbus will likely expand the data capacity of the Israeli Land Authority (ILA), a government agency that uses discriminatory policies to expand segregated Jewish settlements while trapping Palestinians in densely populated areas and limiting the growth of their communities. Technology should be used to bring communities together, not enforce segregation and displacement.

Furthermore, growing numbers of the public, myself included, agree with your workers in opposing the Israeli government's violations of Palestinian human rights. In the wake of the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza in 2021 that resulted in the death of 250 people (including over 60 children), a Data for Progress poll showed increasing numbers of people in the U.S. oppose their government's complicity in human rights violations such as illegal settlement expansion onto Palestinian land and the Israeli military’s destruction of residential homes. There is overwhelming consensus among workers and ordinary people that Amazon must put people over profit.

Just as people of conscience demanded institutions cut ties with apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, the time is now to rise up in support of Palestinian human rights. We hope that you will take this opportunity to be on the right side of history as your own workers and communities across the globe come together to build a better world for all. End the Project Nimbus contract and re-establish your companies’ commitments to human rights.