A woman cleans an Amazon store window after activists spray paint on the Amazon logo during protests on the first day of the 55th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2025.
Eve Herman | Reuters
Amazon fired a Palestinian engineer who was suspended last month for protesting the company’s work with the Israeli government.
Ahmed Shahroul, who worked as a software engineer at Amazon’s Whole Foods operation in Seattle, received an email Monday informing him of his termination. When Chaloul was suspended in September, Amazon said the decision was the result of a message he posted on Slack criticizing the company’s relationship with Israel.
Amazon said its investigation alleges that Mr. Chaloul violated the company’s standards of conduct, written communications policy, and terms of service, and “misused company resources, including posting numerous non-work-related messages regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
In a message to Sharrol obtained by CNBC, an Amazon human resources representative said, “You will receive an email within the next 24 hours with further information regarding your termination, including information regarding benefits and final salary.” “We appreciate your contributions to Amazon and wish you the best in your future endeavors.”
An employee organization affiliated with Mr. Chaloul issued a press release in the afternoon announcing that he was fired after a five-week suspension “for protesting Amazon’s $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, known as Project Nimbus,” which Mr. Chaloul said amounted to cooperation in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Mr. Chaloul had called on the company to terminate a contract under which Amazon would provide artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other infrastructure to the Israeli government. He also protested and handed out flyers at Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle.
In a statement to CNBC, Chaloul said his firing was “a blatant act of retaliation aimed at silencing Palestinian dissent in the Amazon and shielding Amazon’s cooperation in genocide from internal scrutiny.”
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told CNBC that the company does not tolerate “discriminatory, harassing, or threatening conduct or language of any kind in the workplace.”
“When such conduct is reported, we investigate and take appropriate action based on our findings,” Glasser said.
Shahrul’s firing came on the same day that the Palestinian militant group Hamas released its first seven surviving Israeli hostages, the first step in a cease-fire deal brokered with the support of US President Donald Trump. As part of the agreement, Israel was also scheduled to release nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners later that day.
The war began just over two years ago, with Hamas-led militants attacking southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages. Israel then carried out sustained attacks, killing more than 67,000 Palestinians, including thousands of civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Across the tech industry, workers have become more outspoken in criticizing their dealings with the Israeli military.
On Thursday, a Microsoft engineer resigned after 13 years at the software giant, insisting that the company continues to sell cloud services to the Israeli military and that executives will not discuss the Gaza war. “It is no longer acceptable to enable what we believe to be the worst atrocities of our time,” chief software engineer Scott Sutfin-Growsky told colleagues in a letter.
In his letter, he cited an Associated Press article from February that said the Israeli military had at least 635 Microsoft subscriptions, and claimed that the majority were still active.
In August, Microsoft fired two employees who participated in protests at its headquarters. Google fired 28 employees in April 2024 following a series of protests over working conditions and involvement in Project Nimbus.
Amazon does not acknowledge the Nimbus deal, saying only that it will provide technology to customers “wherever they are.” Google previously said it provides publicly available cloud computing services to the Israeli government that are “not intended for sensitive, sensitive, or military workloads.” Microsoft said in August that much of its work with the Israel Defense Forces involves the country’s cybersecurity, and that the company intends to provide technology in an ethical manner.
—CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.
WATCH: Is the ceasefire in Gaza sustainable?
