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Google has terminated an additional 20 employees involved in recent protests against the company's cloud-computing deal with Israel, according to protest organizers, No Tech for Apartheid. This brings the total firings to 48.
This comes following a recent 28 employees were sacked over a pro-Israel protest as reported by RocketParrot.
No Tech for Apartheid, which organized demonstrations at Google offices last Tuesday, released a statement Monday denouncing the firings as "an aggressive and desperate act of retaliation."
They claim some of those fired were merely bystanders during sit-in protests in New York and Sunnyvale, California.
A Google spokesperson confirmed further dismissals on Tuesday, following an investigation into "physical disruption inside our buildings on April 16." However, they declined to specify the number.
"Our investigation into these events is now concluded, and we have terminated the employment of additional employees who were found to have been directly involved in disruptive activity," the spokesperson stated.
"To reiterate, every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this."
Protest organizers maintain that some fired workers did not cause disruptions.
"Google is throwing a tantrum because the company’s executives are embarrassed about the strength workers showed at last Tuesday’s historic sit-ins, as well as their botched response to them," the No Tech for Apartheid group said.
"Now the corporation is lashing out at any worker that was physically in the vicinity of the protest—including those who were not at all involved in the campaign."
The group vowed to continue activism, aiming to send a message: "We will not stop fighting, and we will not back down."
These protests stem from Google's cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government amidst the ongoing conflict with Hamas militants, which has resulted in significant casualties, mostly Gazan women and children.
Public opinion on the issue is deeply divided, with protests against U.S. support for Israel occurring nationwide.
Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai urged employees to avoid workplace political debates in a company-wide memo: "This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers... Don't fight over disruptive issues or debate politics" in the workplace.
