A Palestinian software engineer at Amazon says he was suspended this week after he called on colleagues to protest the company’s role in the “Project Nimbus” contract with Israel.
It marks the spread of the Palestinian tech worker protest movement to Amazon, following weeks of demonstrations at Seattle-area tech giant Microsoft.
Employee Ahmed Shahrour told the Online Post that he was suspended with pay on Monday pending an investigation, after he emailed CEO Andy Jassy and other senior executives and posted in Slack channels protesting Amazon’s involvement in Project Nimbus.
Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion, multi-year cloud-building deal awarded to Google and Amazon in 2021 to provide cloud infrastructure, AI, and machine learning to the Israeli government. Google has said the project is primarily aimed at civilian ministries, but critics say the contract allows or supports military and surveillance uses.
In his shaky reporting, Shahrour equated Amazon’s role with supporting the violence in Gaza. He urged colleagues to join a new worker-led resistance group to end the deal—describing it as an “intifada,” a term historically associated with the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Amazon viewed this situation as a place for action, not a political talking point.
“We do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or any type of behavior or language in our workplace, and when any such conduct is reported, we investigate it and take appropriate action based on our findings,” Amazon spokesman Brad Glass said in a statement about Geekwire’s investigation.
Amazon deleted Shahrour’s statement from Slack channels, according to a press release issued on his behalf by Azure representatives to Apartheid, a group that has led a series of high-profile protests against Microsoft over its contracts with the Israeli government.
Shahrour wrote in Medium, “I live in a state of constant dissonance: preserving the tools that make these companies profitable while my people are burned and starved by the very same profits. I am left with no choice but to resist directly.”
Shahrour and others continued to distribute flyers outside Amazon buildings stating that he was facing harassment from some colleagues, and company security warned him when he went into the building’s lobby that he was trespassing and would be reported to the police if he did not leave.
