Two activists disrupted the Amazon Web Services summit in Washington, DC on Wednesday to protest Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract between Amazon and Google with the Israeli government.
The protest, which interrupted a keynote speech by Dave Levy, vice president of worldwide public sector at AWS, was the latest in a series of recent protests targeting Project Nimbus.
The first activist seen in a video shared with WIRED is a young man, standing on a chair and waving a Palestinian flag, demanding an end to Project Nimbus.
“Dave Levy, why is Amazon contracting with a government that every mainstream human rights organization recognizes as an apartheid state?” he yelled. “Why is Amazon providing cloud services to a government that is committing the crimes of genocide and apartheid?”
The man was quickly taken away by security guards and two Washington Metropolitan Police officers, moments after a second activist, who appears to be a young woman in a video shared with WIRED, stood on a chair and waving a banner that read “Let Gaza Survive.”
“40,000 dead, Dave Levy!” she yelled. “You have blood on your hands from technology that promotes the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians! You can do good with technology, but your technology promotes genocide! How would you feel if you knew genocide was happening in the Amazon?”
The activist was also quickly taken away by security guards.
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say Israel is committing apartheid crimes. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 39,000 Palestinians, including more than 15,000 children, have been killed since Israel began its military operation in Gaza last fall. The Israeli military operation follows an October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed more than 1,100 Israelis.
Israel is currently being charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa. In May, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and two other senior Hamas officials on suspicion of war crimes. Israel has repeatedly denied the allegations of genocide and other crimes.
Both activists represent No Tech for Apartheid, a coalition formed in 2021 to protest Project Nimbus. The group is made up of tech workers and organizers from the Muslim grassroots group M Power Change and the anti-Zionist Jewish group Jewish Voice for Peace.
In a statement released after the protest, No Tech for Apartheid, which has been protesting Project Nimbus since 2021, said that Google and Amazon’s “continuing contracts in the midst of this genocide reaches a new level of horror.”
“We will be here to disrupt business as usual until they sever ties,” the statement said.
Amazon did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
No Tech for Apartheid has been at the forefront of several large-scale protests in recent months. In March, group member Eddie Hatfield, then a Google cloud engineer, interrupted Google Israel’s managing director at Mind the Tech, a Google-sponsored conference showcasing Israel’s tech industry. Hatfield was fired a few days later.
In April, Google employees joined the group in staging sit-ins at the company’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, as well as outdoor protests. In response, nine employees were arrested by police and more than 50 employees were fired in two separate firings. Some of the fired workers have filed unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, and the lawsuit is ongoing.
In recent weeks, as part of a separate “No Tech for Apartheid” movement, more than 1,100 university students from over 120 universities have signed a pledge vowing not to work or intern at Google or Amazon until they cancel Project Nimbus.
