Google has fired 28 employees who participated in a 10-hour sit-in protest at its offices in New York and Sunnyvale against the company’s ties to the Israeli government. This was reported by The New York Post.

“They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” Rackow wrote in the memo obtained by The Post. “Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened.”

Fired employees from the pro-Palestinian group No Tech For Apartheid criticized Google’s response to the war between Israel and Hamas. They demanded that the company withdraw from the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract, under which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.

“This evening, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the workers said in the statement. “This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers — the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders.”

A New York City police spokesman said that about 50 people took part in the protest. Four arrests were made for breaking into the Google building.

The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety reported that there were about 80 participants in the protest, and five who refused to leave the office building were arrested.

Chris Rockow sent a general letter to all employees of the company, which can be found below:

“Googlers,
You may have seen reports of protests at some of our offices yesterday. Unfortunately, a number of employees brought the event into our buildings in New York and Sunnyvale. They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers. Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened. We placed employees involved under investigation and cut their access to our systems. Those who refused to leave were arrested by law enforcement and removed from our offices.

Following investigation, today we terminated the employment of twenty-eight employees found to be involved. We will continue to investigate and take action as needed.

Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to – including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns
We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior – up to and including termination.

You should expect to hear more from leaders about standards of behavior and discourse in the workplace.