The world collides in the Amazon Spheres as a pro-Palestinian group protests Israeli contracts.
Carrying cow horns and signs depicting Amazon executives as war criminals, about two people protested outside Amazon Spheres in Seattle on Thursday evening, asking the company to stop providing technology to Israel for what they described as genocide in Gaza.
The protesters said they were trying to disrupt a gathering of Amazon executives, state and local leaders, US State Department officials and Australian government representatives on the top floor of the Spheres, the night before the World Cup match between the US and Australia.
Contacted on Friday, Amazon described the meeting differently. The company said the event going on during the protest was for members of the Seattle business and sports communities, members of the Australian parliament and Amazon employees celebrating the World Cup. A separate meeting was held before the protests began, the company said, without specifying who attended that meeting.
“We respect people’s rights to engage in peaceful protest,” said Montana MacLachlan, an Amazon spokeswoman, in response to a GeekWire inquiry. The company, he added, “is committed to being a responsible citizen of the Puget Sound region, the state of Washington, and the entire community we serve.”
The protest group, known as the Amazon Worker Intifada, described the protest as part of efforts to increase pressure on the company’s leaders over these issues. The activist group, No Azure for Apartheid, has been protesting Microsoft for more than a year over its work in Israel.
Protesters oppose Amazon’s work with Israel, including Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract Amazon and Google won in 2021 to provide cloud and AI services to the Israeli government, including the Israeli military and arms suppliers, according to leaked contract and procurement documents.
Demonstrators marched on Spheres just before 6pm on Thursday, marching around the outside of the glass-enclosed buildings with signs, drums, balloons, loudspeakers and Palestinian flags, chanting chants and chants such as, “Say it loud and clear – Amazon is helping with the war.”
Amazon employees and football fans passed by on the side of the road, some stopping to take in the scene. Small groups of people dressed in business attire marched in protest until they reached the Spheres gate.
A banner at the edge of the space reads “Amazon War Criminals Meeting Here.” Another painting shows Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and AWS CEO Matt Garman, with blood on their hands, hugging what appears to be a bomb. “We See Your Cases,” it read.
Members of what appeared to be a wedding group, including a woman wearing a white wedding dress and a man wearing a suit, appeared in one of the restaurants under Spheres and tried but failed to persuade the protesters to stop or move to another place.
In a press conference after the protest, the group said its demonstration forced Amazon to reroute attendees, and that the arriving Australian delegation had to use another gate to get around the protesters. The group also said that an attendee grabbed and shoved the protester’s camera.
After protesting for about an hour at the entrances at both ends of the courtyard between the Spheres and the Amazon’s Day One tower, the group moved to the Lenora Street side of the Spheres, where they released two helium balloons from strings with loud noises attached, trying to stop the loudmouths outside the windows where the event could be seen from inside.
One of the leaders of Thursday’s protest was Ahmed Shahrour, a Palestinian software engineer at Amazon’s Whole Foods unit in Seattle who was fired in October over Slack’s internal documents criticizing the company’s ties to Israel.
Amazon said at the time that he violated multiple company policies, saying he “abused company resources, including sending numerous non-work related messages regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Shahrour called it “an unconscionable act of retaliation designed to silence the dissent of Palestinian voices within Amazon and protect Amazon’s cooperation in genocide from internal scrutiny.”
On Friday, Amazon spokesperson MacLachlan said of the incident, “We do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or threatening behavior or language of any kind in our workplace, and when any such behavior is reported, we investigate and take appropriate action based on our findings.”
No Azure for Apartheid, which includes current and former Microsoft employees, has held repeated protests of its own, similarly calling on Microsoft to cut ties with Israel.
They set up camp on the Redmond campus last year, where 20 people were arrested for trespassing, and later they entered the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith. Microsoft has fired several employees for various protests and activities, citing violations of company policies.
After a Guardian investigation revealed that the Israeli military had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud to store millions of intercepted Palestinian telephone calls, the company cut off the service’s access and opened an update that recently led the company to announce it would strengthen its human rights controls in its work with national security agencies.
