USA: Palestinian Amazon engineer suspended after criticising the company's ties to Israel & silencing of pro-Palestinian employees
"Amazon suspends engineer who protested company’s work with Israeli government", 11 September 2025
[...]
Ahmed Shahrour, a Palestinian engineer who works for Amazon’s Whole Foods business ...was informed...that he was being suspended with pay “until further notice” after he posted messages on Slack criticizing the company’s ties to Israel.
“It has come to Amazon’s attention that a post you made in multiple internal company Slack channels may violate multiple policies,” an Amazon human resources representative wrote in a message, which was viewed by CNBC. The company said in the message that it’s investigating the incident.
Earlier...Shahrour posted messages across several internal Slack channels and sent a letter to Amazon executives, including CEO Andy Jassy, detailing his concerns.
Shahrour urged the company to drop Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google’s joint $1.2 billion cloud computing contract launched in 2021 to provide the Israeli government with artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other infrastructure.
“Every day I write code at Whole Foods, I remember my brothers and sisters in Gaza being starved by Israel’s man-made blockade,”...“I 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.”...
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser didn’t specifically address Shahrour’s situation.
“We don’t tolerate discrimination, harassment, or threatening behavior 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,” Glasser wrote in an email to CNBC.
The company didn’t respond to questions about its work with Israel or its policies for moderating employee posts on internal channels...
As part of the suspension, Amazon revoked Shahrour’s access to company email and tools, and removed his Slack posts...Shahrour said Amazon didn’t state what policies his posts violated.
The letter also alleges Amazon has taken steps to “silence” pro-Palestinian employees who have criticized the war in Gaza. Amazon recently issued a warning to an engineer who shared an article about American doctors volunteering in Gaza and it fired an employee in France who spoke out against Israel on social media, Shahrour said. CNBC confirmed the account with a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality.
The company has deleted posts in the “Arabs at Amazon” Slack channel that discussed the conflict in Gaza, while posts in other channels disparaging Palestinians weren’t removed, Shahrour said...