On Monday, October 13th, Amazon unjustly fired Ahmed Shahrour, a Palestinian worker and member of the Amazon Worker Intifada campaign, for sending a statement to executives and workers detailing his grave concerns regarding Amazon’s $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud services to the Israeli military and government, Project Nimbus. Ahmed included in his statement a scathing critique of the double standard in Amazon’s inaction towards hateful remarks made by employees in support of Israel, while quickly and harshly reacting to and censoring pro-Palestinian voices within the company. His firing follows a five-week suspension that started on Sep 8th, when he sent the letter to Amazon executives and workers.

On September 25, the @noazureforapartheid campaign successfully forced Microsoft to drop one of its contracts with the Israeli military, ending some services for the IOF’s intelligence and surveillance unit, Unit 8200. The contract provided Unit 8200 with storage services for more than 8,000 terabytes of Palestinian phone call data. Unit 8200 feeds the vast amounts of surveillance data it collects on Palestinians into the algorithms that make up its “mass assassination factory,” a system that automatically generates thousands of names and locations for daily airstrikes.

In a sobering demonstration of the tech industry’s relentless prioritization of profits over morals, the data previously stored on Microsoft Azure was transferred to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This transfer was seamless due to Amazon’s well-established collaboration with Israel, dating back at least as far the announcement of Project Nimbus in April 2021. Through Project Nimbus, AWS and Google continue to provide “unlimited storage and processing servers at the click of a button” to the Israeli military, and from Nimbus, Amazon conceived multiple Israeli data centers.

Among the 33 customers of the Project Nimbus contract is the Hityashvut Division, the executive arm for expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank. The list also includes the IOF, Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI), and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems — the latter two being Israeli arms manufacturers that build the bombs used to indiscriminately murder Palestinians in Gaza. For example, IAI manufactures the Heron TP killer, a drone IAI CEO’s admitted in November 2023 “played a pivotal role” in the genocidal attacks on Gaza. Similarly, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems manufactures a drone system called the Spike Firefly, which it promoted with a video showing the system tracking and murdering a Palestinian in Gaza.

Now, Amazon plans to invest an additional $7.2 billion in Israel to add roughly $13.9 billion to Israel’s GDP through 2037, with data centers launched in Tel Aviv. This infrastructure provides the Israeli military with the computational power for the world’s first AI-powered genocide. It directly empowers systems like “Lavender,” “The Gospel,” and “Where’s Daddy?” — the Israeli AI models that identify Palestinians for assassination in their homes with brutal efficiency.

The UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, in the report “From a War Economy to an Economy of Genocide,” calls out corporations and executives profiting from this genocide. The report states: “Individual executives can be held criminally liable for the actions of their corporate entities, including before the International Criminal Court.” i.e Amazon executives are war criminals.

Amazon is not only violating international law; it’s violating its own policies

1. AWS Responsible AI Policy states that customers like the Israeli military “may not use, or facilitate or allow others to use, the AI/ML Services” to:

• “Violate the privacy rights of others, including unlawful tracking, monitoring, and identification.”
• “Perform a lethal function in a weapon without human authorization or control.”

         2.  AWS Acceptable Use Policy states “You may not use, or facilitate or allow others to use, the Services or the AWS Site”:

• “For any illegal or fraudulent activity.”
• “To violate the rights of others.”
• “To threaten, incite, promote, or actively encourage violence, terrorism, or other serious harm.”

As Amazon workers, we have the right to demand that our labor and our employer do not power a genocide. Many of us in AWS work without knowing our labor directly contributes to this atrocity. Many more of us support the corporate structure — in Whole Foods, Alexa, and other divisions — that allows Amazon to generate profit, money which is then funneled back into AWS to fuel this genocide.

Ahmed’s call to Amazon’s executives — CEO Andy Jassy, AWS CEO Matt Garman, and other complicit VPs — to drop Project Nimbus was a necessary moral action intended to expose Amazon’s collaboration in genocide to every worker. When one day we look back, no one can claim they did not know. Every signature, every dollar, and every line of code fuels Amazon’s machinery of genocide and profits from the murder of Palestinians. We must take ownership of our labor and its consequences.

OUR DEMANDS

1. IOF off AWS
   
Immediately end the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract and all partnerships with the Israeli military, government, and arms manufacturers. Our labor will not power the AI systems and data infrastructure used in the genocide of Palestinians. Amazon must cease being the technological backbone for Israeli AI models “Lavender,” “The Gospel,” and “Where’s Daddy” and the Israeli genocide machine.
   
   
2. Disclose All Ties

   Publicly disclose all contracts, data centers, and financial ties to the Israeli state, military, and tech industry. Submit these ties to a transparent, independent audit to assess compliance with Amazon’s own AWS Responsible AI Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, and international law, including the Genocide Convention.
   
   
3. Protect Pro-Palestinian Speech
   
Eliminate the racist double standard in the enforcement of Amazon’s policies. We demand an end to the harassment of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and allied employees and the immediate protection of pro-Palestinian speech, organizing, and flyering. The weaponization of “contentious matters” and “good judgment” to silence dissent must stop.

In addition, Amazon Worker Intifada demands that Amazon:

1. Immediately reinstate Ahmed Shahrour with a formal, public apology for his unjust firing and the harassment he endured
   
   
2. Launch an immediate, independent investigation into the illegal storage of 8,000 terabytes of Palestinian phone call data from Unit 8200 that was transferred to AWS, and Amazon’s subsequent failure to uphold international human rights law.
   
   
3. Conduct a full, transparent audit of its HR department to root out its ideological bias in favor of Zionist rhetoric, and end the systemic suppression of pro-Palestinian speech and the harassment of Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab workers.