Yesterday, masses of @amazon and @google workers led protests in 4 cities, demanding both companies end their contracts with Israel.
These workers risked their jobs to stop Google and Amazon from profiting from Israeli apartheid and using workers’ labor to harm Palestinians. 🧵
Worker-led #NoTechForApartheid protests in SF, Seattle, Durham, and NYC drew crowds of up to 300, rallying community members who came out in solidarity with Palestinians and the workers themselves.
Workers don't want to build technology that powers Israeli apartheid.
So they bravely put their jobs and safety on the line to stop @google and @amazon from using their labor to help the Israeli government and military surveil, oppress, and inflict violence on Palestinians.
Workers make their companies run, so their growing, united opposition to @amazon and @google’s complicity in Israeli oppression and violence has serious power.
The action in Durham — where Google recently opened a new office — was a spontaneous, rapid-response mobilization led by workers who were inspired to be part of this exciting wave of direct actions.
It is the beginning of the school year in Masafer Yatta, and Israeli forces are already terrorizing Palestinian children and teachers. In the past two weeks alone, the Israeli military’s coordinated attacks create a timeline of horrifying events:
1 week before school starts in Masafer Yatta:
Israeli forces raid the village of Jinba, plastering the homes, schools, and clinics with notices of fines, penalties, and threats of interrogation. One of the two schoolhouses in the area is marked for demolition.
1 day before school starts in Masafer Yatta:
The Israeli military detains several teachers on the way to prepare for the first day of school. In a cruel display of power, the military confiscates one of the teacher’s vehicles as they are turned away.
Yesterday was the birthday of Leslie Feinberg Z”L, a trans lesbian Jew who stood in lifelong solidarity with Palestinians and viewed hir work for sexual and gender liberation and Palestinian liberation as deeply connected. 🧵
As Leslie noted in a speech to the Palestinian queer women’s group Aswat in 2007, nations from the US to Israel “use the experiences of women, of gays, of transgenders as pretexts for imperialist war” even as they support anti-LGBT policies and nations that serve their interests.
Leslie believed LGBT liberation should not be "in competition with the long struggle of the Palestinian people, including Palestinian LGBT people, for self-determination, the right to return to their homes, and the struggle against apartheid and the occupation of their lands.”
Pegasus sypware enables the Israeli dirty tech giant NSO full access to targeted devices and data without the user clicking any malware. The rise of dangerous technology like Pegasus spyware marks the exportation of Palestinian mass surveillance to global civil society.
Journalists and rights activists across the globe have all been targeted by Pegasus spyware. In response to the pilot of Pegasus spyware and its subsequent global expansion, Palestinians are calling for a ban on the trade of mass surveillance technology.
BREAKING: Anti-Zionist Jewish Google worker resigns over Google’s punishment of Palestinian and allied workers who speak up for Palestinian freedom.
Workers don't want their labor to enable Israeli violence against Palestinians — but Google is systematically silencing them. 🧵
Along with 100s of other workers, Ariel Koren has spent over a year organizing against Google’s $1.2B contract with the Israeli government and military, which helps them surveil Palestinians, expand illegal settlements, and inflict violence on Palestinians under occupation.
Google workers don’t want to be complicit in Israeli apartheid and human rights violations.
As @nytimes reports, one Palestinian worker said, “Project Nimbus makes me feel like I am making a living off my family’s oppression.”
URGENT: Khalil Awawdeh has been on hunger strike for almost 6 months to protest his illegal imprisonment by Israel without charge or trial.
He is on the brink of death. We demand his freedom NOW, as well as the end of Israel's practice of administrative detention.
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Staring down the barrel of “administrative detention,” or indefinite incarceration by Israel without due process, Khalil Awawdeh courageously decided to join a long legacy of Palestinian hunger strikers, many of whom successfully achieved their freedom.
For Palestinian prisoners, hunger strikes are the last and only form of resistance.
Though grueling and life-threatening, strikes are also a reclamation of control over their bodies, and a testament to Israel’s failure to break their will and suppress their struggle for freedom.
Yesterday, @instagram suspended the account of @palyouthmvmt an independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and in exile worldwide. PYM does essential community-based organizing, education, cultural work, solidarity work with other anti-colonial movements.
PYM have done an incredible job mobilizing thousands of Palestinians, Arabs, and people who want to see a free Palestine: if you’ve ever been to a rally for Palestine in the US or Canada, the odds are it was co-organized by PYM and promoted on their now-suspended Instagram page.
Palestinians are facing the daily violence of settler-colonialism, occupation, and apartheid — and a media landscape that is hostile, biased, and dishonest about what they are enduring.