Internal communications leaked by a whistleblower reveal how employees of Amazon have been spreading pro-Hamas and anti-Israel messages at work. The revelation comes after the tech giant was itself accused of selling antisemitic materials online.
By leaking from one of the company’s internal Slack channels—an internal communications platform used by many businesses—an Amazon whistleblower has publicised messages that contain pro-Hamas sentiments and defamatory statements toward Israeli hostages captured by Hamas. Some employees shared posts accusing Israel of crimes, including organ theft, rape, and placing explosives in the belly of a child. Other posts claimed that Israeli hostages kidnapped by the Palestinian terrorist group on October 7th were treated well.
According to website Jewish Legal News, which documented some of these posts, pro-Palestinian flyers were disseminated in Amazon offices worldwide. These flyers were reportedly accompanied by calls of “from the river to the sea” on the Amazon Slack channel, a phrase often used by Hamas supporters to call for ethnically cleansing Jews from the Middle East. There were also reported attempts to fundraise for a Canadian affiliate of Islamic Relief Worldwide, an organisation banned by Israel because of its alleged financing of Hamas.
In response to the backlash from some Amazon employees against this messaging, another employee, Carl Hage, admitted to censoring the comments of five Israelis employed by Amazon. He justified his actions by stating that the Slack channel was intended to support Arab employees at Amazon.
But other employees at the company are feeling unsupported as the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, the New York Post recently wrote. “There’s a lot of hate growing in the Slack channels,” an employee told the paper.
The leaks may provide insight into why the company has still not acknowledged the kidnapping of one of its employees by Hamas. Russian-Israeli Sasha Trufanov, a 30-year-old engineer at Annapurna Labs, an Israeli microelectronics company purchased by Amazon, was taken hostage on October 7th along with his grandmother, his mother and his girlfriend. His father was killed on the day the terrorists massacred over 1,200 civilians in Israel.
While his mother, grandmother and partner have since been released by Hamas at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trufanov remains a hostage. But Amazon has yet to acknowledge that one of their employees has been kidnapped. His friends have tried to persuade Amazon to issue a statement about him, but to no avail.
An anonymous Amazon employee told the New York Post that the management of the company is wary of talking about Trufanov, as they “don’t want to hurt him.” The explanation was disputed by one of Trufanov’s friends, Neta Yesood Alon, who described telling to the newspaper that she had spoken to the former head of the Israeli security agency Mossad, who said there was no danger. “It’s not even hard to know he works for Amazon. You look up his name, you get a LinkedIn saying he works there. It’s not like a secret job,” she added.
The Jerusalem Post reports that another tech company, Nvidia, behaved differently when its own employee Avinatan Or was also taken hostage on October 7th. In an email sent to employees in October, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang mentioned Or and said that the company was in close contact with his family and was praying for his safe return.
Recently, Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos was criticised over the company allowing the sale of merchandise featuring the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” An Amazon spokesman said that the products “do not contravene our policies,” which prohibit the sale of products that “promote, incite, or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance.”
Charles D. Lavine, a member of the New York State Assembly, urged Bezos to use his position of authority to stop the sale or distribution of “these death-glorifying items.” He added: “You may as well sell clothing bearing the words ‘Kill all Jews.’”
