Israel and Big Tech

In October 2024, the United Nations put out a call for submissions on the role that the private sector plays in supporting, upholding, and expanding Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine. Tech For Palestine completed and submitted the following report in November 2024.

Despite a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza as of this publication, Palestine is still occupied, and understanding how the occupation operates will play a vital role in bringing that occupation to an end. The work must continue until Palestine is free.

Introduction

Israel’s occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) has traditionally been supported through a partnership with the Israel lobby, an informal collection of political and civil society organizations who advocate for Israel’s right to occupy Palestine, along with allies in media and other industries.

A new member of this informal coalition is the technology sector. Large tech companies—including Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft—support Israel’s occupation in multiple ways:

• suppressing Palestinian content on social media
• supporting the Israeli economy
• providing technology to the Israeli military, especially cloud computing and AI technology used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Tech companies’ support for Israel is due to significant bias from tech leaders and employees in Israeli research and development centers, leading to biased policies, as well as contracts through which tech companies directly participate in Israel’s apartheid in the oPt and its genocide in Gaza. These employees and leadership are also disproportionately sourced from the Israeli military.

As a result of these policies and contracts, we believe that the tech industry—Big Tech^[1] in particular—should be considered a direct participant in the occupation in Palestine and the genocide in Gaza.^[2]

Controlling the Narrative

Suppression of content related to Palestine is prevalent across all major social media platforms. After October 7, 2023, Meta escalated its censorship of Palestinian or pro-Palestine content on both Facebook and Instagram by removing content at an unprecedented rate, suspending or permanently disabling accounts, and restricting users’ access to functions like “going live”, monetization, or even leaving comments. Elon Musk declared that “from the river to the sea” was a clear call for extreme violence and that anyone using that phrase would have their X account suspended. Even Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has reportedly suspended accounts for posting about Palestine.

Meta in particular has gone to extreme lengths to suppress Palestinian content, creating new policies that it has applied across its platforms to limit criticism of Israel. This is despite existing “flaws in Meta policies”, “inconsistent and opaque application of Meta policies”, and other known problems which cause suppression of Palestinian content.

In July 2024, Meta introduced a policy whereby criticism of Zionism—a political ideology distinct from Judaism—would be treated as a proxy for antisemitism, stating that the term Zionist “tends to be used to refer to Jews and Israelis with dehumanizing comparisons, calls for harm, or denials of existence.” Subsequently, a similar policy was adopted by TikTok and Amazon.

Meta also introduced a feature to limit the spread of political content. With this feature enabled, users are not suggested political content from accounts they do not follow, automatically limiting the reach of political content—including content about the genocide in Gaza. This change was turned on by default for all US users without notification in February 2024.

Each of these policy changes favors Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide by suppressing criticism of Israel and its growing list of violations of international law and human rights.

Significantly, content expressing support for Israel, including an abundance of content shared by Israeli soldiers themselves, has not been subject to the same degree of censorship, even when that content openly calls for violence against Palestinians.

Controlling the Internal Narrative

At Big Tech companies, significant internal suppression has been used against employees questioning pro-Israel policies or advocating against their employer’s connections to apartheid and genocide.

Employees who speak up about Palestine are often penalized or even fired for doing so. In April 2024, 50 Google employees who participated in peaceful protests against the company’s ties to Israel were terminated. Apple has been accused of firing employees of their retail stores for wearing Palestine-related items such as jewelry or pins. Meta has disproportionately censored discussions on company platforms that relate to Palestine, even posts in community channels expressing grief at the loss of family members in Gaza, though no such censorship is applied to pro-Israel posts. Meta has also fired employees who called attention to the company’s pro-Israel bias, including Palestinian-American individuals.

7amleh’s “Delete this Issue” report shares first-hand accounts of how Big Tech employees “have experienced varying levels of discipline, harassment, bullying, doxxing, silencing, suppression, and discrimination, and at amplified levels since October 7, 2023”.

Despite global calls to end the genocide in Palestine and to hold Israel accountable for its innumerable violations of international law, tech companies have remained steadfast in their commitment to silencing both their employees and users of their platforms. This clear bias reinforces the dehumanization of Palestinians and emboldens Israel and its supporters to continue acting with impunity. By silencing Palestinians and pro-Palestine voices, tech companies are dampening criticism of Israel’s apartheid regime and its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. In so doing, these companies are active participants in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

Sources of Bias

Employee bias

Big Tech’s bias towards Israel is rooted in the bias of its employees and leadership. Throughout tech companies, pro-Israel employees have come together to dox, bully, attack, and otherwise silence pro-Palestinian voices through weaponized HR complaints, especially invoking claims of antisemitism against pro-Palestine employees. These complaints combine with policies of internal censorship driven by senior leadership to create an environment where any criticism of Israel is unacceptable while the dehumanization of Palestinians is normalized.

Many tech companies have significant research and development operations in Israel. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Intel, Nvidia, and IBM all have expansive offices in Tel Aviv.

A major conduit of pro-Israel employees into tech is from the Israeli military. A significant number of tech companies have subsidiaries in Israel, most of which came from acquisitions of Israeli startups. The Israeli startup ecosystem is famed for its connection to the military with a great many startups being founded and staffed by former soldiers. As Israeli VC Roi Carthy says: “Due to mandatory army service, the tech industry and the army in Israel are intertwined. They can’t be separated.”

Big Tech acquires a significant number of these startups, and a majority of foreign R&D centers in Israel come from acquisitions. Cisco, a company with almost 100,000 employees around the globe, has acquired more than 20 Israeli start-ups. Cisco’s latest acquisition was Robust Intelligence for $400 million USD in September 2024. Tech acquisitions also often give Israeli start-up founders high ranking positions in the tech industry. Robust Intelligence’s founder, Yaron Singer, a former officer in a special operations unit of the Israeli military, now serves as a senior executive at Cisco.

Another senior leader who was formerly in the Israeli military is Guy Rosen, Meta’s Chief Information Security Officer. Rosen has direct decision-making capabilities on content policy that determines what content is or is not allowed on Meta’s platforms, meaning that a former member of a military oppressing Palestinians is now playing a key role in further suppressing the voices of Palestinian people.

The Israeli military unit most commonly the source for technical candidates is Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s signal intelligence and cyber security unit. One of its primary functions is far-reaching surveillance, routinely violating the privacy of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yet Unit 8200 veterans are often hired in the name of cybersecurity and protecting users’ data. IBM, one of the oldest and largest tech companies in the world, partners with the Israeli military on a program specifically designed to place veterans of Unit 8200 in cyber and high-tech companies. Among other tech giants, there are at least 99 former Unit 8200 veterans working at Google and 166 employed at Microsoft, and those are just the employees who openly disclose their assignments within the Israeli military.

Senior Leadership bias

However, it is not only through the Israeli military that bias towards Israel is introduced. US leadership also significantly favors Israel. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, gave a significant donation to Zaka, an organization which created many of the false dehumanizing propaganda that was used to support the genocide against Palestinians, such as the “40 beheaded babies” claim. Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former COO and board member, has been criticized for creating a film that was part of a broad propaganda initiative to dehumanize Palestinians, and which repeats without proof Zaka’s evidence-free claims.

Some companies have even created positions specifically designed to uphold a pro-Israel bias. Meta, for example, has a Public Policy Director for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. The role is currently held by Jordana Cutler, an Israeli citizen who has previously been the Advisor for Diaspora Affairs for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the Senior Officer for Public Affairs at Israel’s embassy in Washington D.C. As the Public Policy Director for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, Cutler has routinely used Meta’s already biased policies to target student organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine. In a clear demonstration of its bias, Meta does not have a comparable role for the Palestinian community.

Enabling the Occupation

The tech sector also has significant financial motivation for working with Israel and supporting the occupation. Managing an illegal occupation requires infrastructure, and tech companies have profited greatly at the expense of Palestinian human rights.

Israel is able to uphold and expand its occupation of Palestine by compiling and storing data obtained through its expansive surveillance network. Google and Amazon are at the forefront in this regard, powering Israel’s cloud computing network as a part of Project Nimbus, though Microsoft has also built a cloud data center for Israel. With this cloud service, Israel is able to amass data on Palestinians in the oPt, as well as develop new software designed to advance Israel’s occupation.

Since October 7, 2023, the horrific implications of that capability have been put on full display when +972 Magazine and Local Call broke the story on Lavender, Israel’s new AI tool designed to mass-generate targets within the Gaza Strip. Lavender, together with another AI tool called Where’s Daddy, placed unprecedented numbers of Palestinians on Israel’s target list and then targeted them and their families in their homes, resulting in significant acceleration of the genocide in Gaza. By partnering with Israel on Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon directly participated in the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Palestinians.

The occupation of Palestine also requires massive amounts of hardware, from equipment for each checkpoint to the massive camera network required to monitor the movement of Palestinians in the oPt. Companies like Motorola Solutions provide this kind of infrastructure, along with providing essential services to Israel’s illegal settlements. Motorola has also been awarded contracts to provide services for Israeli government installations in Betar Illit, Ariel, Modi’in Ilit, Kiryat Arba, Efrat, and other settlements in the West Bank. In total, Motorola has garnered more than $5 billion USD by partnering with Israel to uphold and expand its occupation.

IBM developed the Israeli Population Registry’s computing system and has operated it since 2019, which includes information on all Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. This system is integral to controlling the approval of all permits to Palestinians for work, travel, etc., a system that Israel weaponizes to strip Palestinians of their freedom of movement. IBM’s contract for these services extends until 2035. All told, IBM has made at least $50 billion USD by doing business with Israel.

IBM is not the only global name actively equipping Israel’s occupation. Hewlett Packard (later Hewlett Packard Enterprises, or HPE) has administered, operated, and maintained the Israeli navy’s IT infrastructure since 2006. By powering the Israeli navy, HPE has directly contributed to the ongoing siege of Gaza that began in 2009, the killing of peace activists and aid workers, and the ongoing monitoring of Palestinian activity along the coast of the Gaza Strip.

HPE is also one of the forces behind Israel’s ongoing development of a biometric database, a project specifically designed to collect data on and monitor Palestinians inside Israel, in the West Bank, and in the Gaza strip, a grievous threat to their freedom of movement and their privacy. Google has also allowed Israel to train its facial recognition software using Google Photos, despite its obvious violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Tech also contributes significantly to the Israel budget. Tech employs 12% of the Israeli workforce but contributed 20% of the Israeli GDP (US$91B) in 2023 and 36% of income tax in 2021 (24% of all tax revenue). Without tech’s R&D centers, the financial support for the apartheid and genocide would be significantly more difficult.

Summary

Tech is a direct participant in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza. This participation comes in the form of suppressing Palestinian content on social media, creating cloud computing and other technology contracts, and through their support of the Israeli economy. This support comes due to significantly biased employees of these tech companies, many of whom previously were in the Israeli military.

Recommended Actions

Taking into account the ways in which the tech industry supports Israel’s apartheid and genocide:

• suppressing Palestinian content on social media,
• supporting the Israeli economy,
• providing technology to the Israeli military, especially cloud computing and AI technology used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza,

we make the following recommendations:

For all tech companies:

• Cease the practice of acquiring Israeli start-ups, including any founded or led by former members of the Israeli military.
• Immediately shut down all fully owned subsidiaries based in Israel.
• Remove Israeli citizens and former members of the Israeli military from the internal decision-making process as it pertains to cloud contracts with Israel.
• End all contracts with Israeli companies, and ensure Israeli companies are ineligible for future contracts.
• Immediately end all contracts with the Israeli military.

Additionally, for social media companies^[3]:

• Cease partnerships with the pro-Israel ADL to define policies regarding antisemitism.
• Reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) working definition of antisemitism, which dangerously conflates Judaism with the State of Israel, in favor of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.
• Remove former members of the Israeli military from positions of influence, particularly those that make or impact content policy or “Trust and Safety”.
• Create firm, transparent standards by which requests to remove content submitted by the State of Israel or other Israel-affiliated organizations are vetted by non-Israeli citizens to ensure that the content in question is held to the same standard as all other requests.

If you know of any other reports that were submitted in this call and would like Tech for Palestine to help distribute it widely, email media@techforpalestine.org and let us know!

[1] We use Big Tech to refer both to the largest tech companies—Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft—but also to other very large tech companies with similar practices, as appropriate.

[2] The venture capital industry’s role in occupation and genocide is documented in a separate report created by the Institute of Ethical Venture Capital.

[3] Or any company with a “Trust and Safety” or “Content Policy” function