Anonymous Palestinian Googler:

I’ve been a Googler for nearly a decade. For a long time, I felt like I could bring my whole self to work. All that ended in May 2021. As a Palestinian, I was deeply impacted by the Israeli assault on Gaza. Seeing people who look and sound like my family being killed, injured, and losing their homes took a massive toll on my mental health. At work, I heard leaders giving condolences to Israelis with no mention of how Palestinian googlers might be impacted (despite the majority of the death toll being Palestinian, including 66 Palestinian children killed). This experience made me feel my identity was being erased at work. My feelings of marginalization only grew when I began seeing my coworkers getting accused of antisemitism and called into meetings with HR for voicing pro-Palestinian sentiments. Many of them were issued warnings, just for having empathy for Palestinians. It’s clear Google has a financial interest in Israel, and internally that’s translated into systemic policies that weaponize antisemitism against anyone who criticizes Israel or raises concern about Palestinian human rights.

In one instance, I attended a diversity meeting hosted by someone reporting to Melonie Parker, our Chief Diversity Officer. During this meeting, Google DEI announced a series of new formal partnerships with nonprofit organizations. The team said these partnerships were intended to promote religious tolerance at Google. Two out of three of the organizations mentioned have content on their website explicitly linking support of Palestine to antisemitism. This sort of partnership is another example of Google explicitly endorsing and funding groups and efforts that harm Palestinians, and weaponizing the notion of “DEI” to do so. I tried to raise to the DEI Team that this harms me, but I was repeatedly brushed off and ignored by them.