Contact:
Connease Warren, Abolitionist Law Center, 713-304-8990, connease@alcenter.org

PHILADELPHIA  –  The Abolitionist Law Center published its submission  to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, responding to the Special Rapporteur’s call for input on the involvement of the private sector in the commission of international crimes connected to Israel’s genocide, unlawful occupation, racial segregation and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory. The submission details the roles of Amazon.com, Inc., and Google LLC, especially each company’s respective cloud division (Amazon Web Services, or AWS, and Google Cloud), in aiding and abetting the Israeli government’s crimes.

Pursuant to a $1.2 billion contract known as “Project Nimbus,” AWS and Google Cloud provide cloud computing and other advanced technological services that the Israeli government and military have relied upon to kill, segregate, and immiserate Palestinians. Surveillance data stored on Amazon servers is utilized in the scorched-earth targeting of civilians and civilian property in the Gaza Strip; Google provides cloud computing consultation to the Ministry of Defense, whose recent leader has just been indicted by the International Criminal Court. Both companies also provide services that facilitate Israel’s illegal confiscation of Palestinian land and resources in furtherance of a longstanding apartheid regime.

“What has become abundantly clear, especially over this last year, is private actors’ intimate involvement in facilitating Israel’s genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people,” said Sadaf Doost, Abolitionist Law Center’s International Human Rights Program Manager and Staff Attorney. “As journalists, organizers, and human and civil rights organizations continue to investigate the degree of Big Tech’s involvement in Israel’s crimes more generally – what we do know is that Amazon and Google have, and continue to, equip the Israeli government and military with the infrastructure to target and kill Palestinians in Gaza, and further advance Israel’s military occupation and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory in violation of customary international law.”

Abolitionist Law Center builds on the investigative work and organizing of No Tech for Apartheid, a collective of Amazon and Google workers who have protested Project Nimbus since its rollout in 2021. Rather than heeding the calls of their workers, Amazon and Google have suppressed dissent, discouraged human rights due diligence investigations, and doubled down on their substantial assistance to Israel. Each company’s actions violate their duty to prevent, mitigate, and remediate human rights violations under the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and open them to liability as aiders and abettors.

“Amazon and Google are enabling the world’s first AI-powered genocide via Project Nimbus. Despite overwhelming evidence supporting this claim, Google executives continue to lie to us, the company’s own workers, about the true nature of the Project Nimbus contract,” said Google and Amazon workers with the No Tech for Apartheid Campaign. “We welcome legal organizations’ efforts in pursuing the available international human rights levers to ensure that the Google and Amazon technology being provided to Israel is considered what it is: a form of weaponry and explicit complicity in genocide. We will not stop organizing our coworkers until Amazon and Google drop the Nimbus contract, and we call all Google and Amazon workers of conscience to join us in ensuring our labor does not power genocide and state violence.” 

The submission sets out a list of seven recommendations to the UN Special Rapporteur, including, among others, requesting AWS and Google provide information regarding their  efforts to (1) investigate their respective roles in causing or contributing to Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people, and (2) abide by their duties to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts linked to their operations, programs, products, or services.

Amazon and Google continue to reap immense profit from knowingly assisting Israel as it carries out massive, compound crimes against humanity, including genocide and apartheid. Forbes ranks Amazon and Alphabet, Inc., Google’s parent company, as the sixth and tenth largest companies in the world respectively. The cloud divisions of each of these companies generate enormous profits; in 2023 alone, Amazon Web Services (AWS) netted over $90 billion, and Google Cloud netted over $33 billion. In contrast, 31.1% of the Palestinian population lived in poverty in 2022; since the outbreak of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this figure is projected to rise to 74.3%. The richest corporations in the world are profiteering from Israel’s onslaught against one of the most vulnerable populations on the planet. Amazon and Google are providing assistance to the gravest of crimes under international law, and are on notice of the legal implications.

For more information, read the Abolitionist Law Center’s Submission to UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Palestine, here.

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Abolitionist Law Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization and community organizing project fighting to dismantle state and corporate violence through legal action, organizing and advocacy on the local, state, national, and international levels, and research and public education. For more information, visit abolitionistlawcenter.org.