'Woke' Google Fires 28 Employees Who Protested Gaza Genocide

BREAKING -- Google fires 28 workers in indiscriminate act of mass retaliationhttps://t.co/R8JwpufBTp pic.twitter.com/FZdaySmti1

— No Tech For Apartheid (@NoTechApartheid) April 18, 2024

Instant karma: @Google employees held a sit-in protest of the Big Tech company's business with Israel.

They were arrested and fired.

Life comes at you fast!pic.twitter.com/rJiysqtPsk

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) April 18, 2024

Google said on Thursday it had terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government. Employees staged sit-ins at their offices, some for more than eight hours.

The Alphabet unit said a small number of pro-Palestine employees entered and disrupted work at a few unspecified office locations. They occupied the office of the chief technology officer of Google Cloud and held posters reading "No cloud apartheid", "Googlers against genocide" and "Don't be evil, stop retaliation", a reference to Google's former corporate slogan.

New York police made four trespassing arrests in response to the protest while police in Sunnyvale, California made five, according to the New York Post. Roughly 50 protesters occupied Google's New York office; about 80 protested in Sunnyvale.

"Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," the company said in a statement.

Chris Rackow, Google's vice-president of global security, was more blunt in an email to employees, per CNBC: "If you're one of the few who are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again."