E-commerce giant Amazon has suspended a software engineer who spoke against the company\u2019s collaboration with the government of Israel. <\/p>\n
Ahmed Shahrour, a Palestinian <\/a>engineer based in Seattle working for Amazon\u2019s Whole Foods, was told on Monday morning that he had been suspended with pay \u201cuntil further notice\u201d after posting messages on Slack criticising the company\u2019s work with Israel, according to a report by CNBC.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has come to Amazon\u2019s <\/a>attention that a post you made in multiple internal company Slack channels may violate multiple policies,\u201d the report quoted an Amazon human resources representative’s message. The e-commerce major informed in a message that it\u2019s investigating the incident.<\/p>\n In an interview with CNBC, Shahrour, who has been working at Amazon for the past three years, said that the company revoked his access to the official email and tools and removed his Slack posts as part of the suspension. He claimed that Amazon <\/a>didn\u2019t state what policies his posts violated.<\/p>\n Also Read<\/strong> | Prince Harry pledges $500,000 to support children injured in Gaza and Ukraine<\/a>What did Shahrour write against Amazon?<\/p>\n Shahrour wrote messages in several internal Slack channels and sent a letter to Amazon executives, including CEO Andy Jassy<\/a>, on Monday, highlighting his concerns.<\/p>\n He asked Amazon to call off Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract launched in 2021 by Amazon and Google <\/a>to supply the Israeli government with artificial intelligence tools, data centres, and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery day I write code at Whole Foods, I remember my brothers and sisters in Gaza <\/a>being starved by Israel\u2019s man-made blockade,\u201d the report quoted Shahrour’s letter.\u201cI live in a state of constant dissonance: maintaining the tools that make this company profit, while my people are burned and starved with the help of that very profit. I am left with no choice but to resist directly,” he added.<\/p>\n Also Read<\/strong> | What does the Doha strike mean for Middle East peace?<\/a><\/p>\n It also claims that Amazon has taken steps to \u201csilence” employees who support Palestine and have criticised the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n The letter was previously reported by independent journalist Kali Hays. Livemint could not independently verify the report.<\/p>\n Details of Nimbus contract<\/p>\n Amazon has not commented on the Nimbus <\/a>contract beyond saying it supplies technology to customers \u201cwherever they are based”. Google has previously stated that it offers widely available cloud computing services to the Israeli government, which are not \u201cdirected at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads.\u201d<\/p>\n What did Amazon say?<\/p>\n Without directly referring to Shahrour’s letter, Amazon <\/a>spokesperson Brad Glasser wrote in an email to CNBC, \u201cWe don\u2019t tolerate discrimination, harassment, or threatening behaviour or language of any kind in our workplace, and when any conduct of that nature is reported, we investigate it and take appropriate action based on our findings.”<\/p>\n