Amazon, Google, Meta, others, give nod to genocide
Big tech names kinda fine with the worst of crimes
In a chilling and under-analyzed series of moves, tech giants Amazon, Google, Meta, Intel, Stripe, Siemens, and others have withdrawn from this year's Web Summit in Lisbon—in protest at its founder expressing revulsion at war crimes.1
At the time of writing, IBM—rekindling memories of their indispensable part in Hitler's extermination program2—is the latest big name to pull out of the annual event.
Along with several other performers, actress Gillian Anderson also withdrew, later clarifying—and awkwardly evoking the far-right’s rapier retort to BLM—that: “ALL lives are valuable”.3
Paddy Cosgrave set up the Web Summit, which has grown to be an international staple, in his native Ireland in 2009, when it drew mere hundreds.
Last year over 70,000 attended, with a similar number still expected next month—albeit without some of its biggest draws.
So far, none of Cosgrave's triggering tweets have been removed, but, with the summit’s very future seemingly at risk, he resigned as CEO last week.4
Notably, and perhaps fatally, Cosgrave did not appear to comment, at the time, on Hamas’s bloody Oct 7 offensive against Israel.
However, he was tweeting—but about business he was on in—uh-oh—Qatar, and without one rote renunciation of Hamas to be seen.
Though Cosgrave could not be reached for comment, his initial silence is quite understandable—if we dare peek, but for a moment, beyond our rabidly reductive political-media sphere.
For if one’s moral principles are to be at all consistent, it's hard to decry Hamas's reported violence while, at the same time, omitting Israel’s systematic fostering of that violence.5
Nevertheless, of course, that is what’s expected—nay, demanded—in mainstream Western discourse.
Because serious acknowledgement, let alone centering, of Palestinian suffering is a big no-no—or you're in deep doo-doo.
And that's precisely what's happened here.
So when Cosgrave had the audacity to then balk at Israel's open vows of outright, “textbook” genocide6—tweeting in horror at Israel’s candidly criminal pronouncements—he went too far.7
Nobody outside of Hamas or Israel’s opaque security state has a full picture of what happened on Oct 7.
But, while Hamas may well have committed heinous acts, they happen to have been clear about the purpose of their mobilization.
It’s not impossible to find what Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh had to say about the attack’s objectives.
And they entirely relate to Israel's continued colonial iniquities.
Never—as is so often attributed to Israel’s PR version of “Hamas”—demeaning or threatening to Jews or Jewry, this is strictly about Palestine and Palestinians:
“How many times have we warned them about the unjust blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, which has led to all this human suffering? Gaza, which has been under this blockade for almost 20 years, made worse by four or five [Israeli wars of aggression] that have seen tens of thousands martyred and wounded, and destroyed homes. Gaza, which is experiencing this humanitarian crisis in a giant … prison that locks up more than 2.2 million of our people and our families. In Gaza, at the heart of this blockade, which is only broken by a little [humanitarian] aid, a few authorisations [for imports] to throw sand in the [world’s] eyes. They believed that Gaza, its inhabitants and our people would swallow these blatant injustices and keep quiet in the face of this humanitarian crisis, and in the face of everything that is happening in [Jerusalem], Al-Aqsa, and the West Bank…
“Enough is enough! There was no choice but to embark on this strategic course … the battle for the liberation of our land, our holy places and our prisoners held in the jails of the Zionist occupation…
“Our objective is clear: we want to liberate our land, our holy sites, our Al-Aqsa mosque, our prisoners.”8
Sound reasoning for a colonized and dispossessed people subjected to ever-expanding apartheid, besiegement, ethnic cleansing, and occupation since 1947—and with no end remotely in sight.9
In contrast, and what aroused Cosgrave’s horror, is the widely reported, abjectly dehumanizing thuggery of Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant:
“We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”10
There’s no comparing the two statements, morally or politically.
Gallant—typifying Israel’s virulent popular elite—isn’t even speaking about imposing a fresh siege.
He speaks of an intensification of the long-running, well-documented blockade that Israel has imposed on every man, woman, and the million or so children of Gaza for nearly two decades.11
And that long-standing, wantonly sadistic closure was a core driver, in the first place, of Hamas’s allegedly ruthless assault.12
Since which Israel has—along with its imposition of even greater inhumane deprivations—been carrying out widespread mass murder and ethnic cleansing, all with the resolute backing of US and EU leaders.13
That some of the most powerful corporations in the world could, too, signal their approval for Israel's explicitly Nazi-style extermination front against Gaza’s citizenry should be a cause for grave concern and reflection.
But, no, it seems it’s just whatever if the biggest names in tech—who dominate every other moment of our waking lives, if not beyond—are pointedly cool with a mounting catalogue of horrific war crimes and stark naked genocide.14