'Tech for Palestine' launched to help workers speak out for Gaza

A new group is helping those in the technology industry speak up for the Palestinian people, amid Israel's brutal war on Gaza.

Tech for Palestine is a loose coalition of more than 40 founders, engineers, community builders, investors, and others.

The group's launch comes amid the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which has killed more than 22,000 people in the Palestinian territory and has prompted a widespread outpouring of solidarity both online and in protests on the streets.

"'Stop bombing kids' shouldn't be a controversial statement," a press release about the new group said.

"And it certainly shouldn't cost people their jobs. Yet, this is the reality tech workers are facing when they oppose Israel's war on the people of Gaza."

Tech for Palestine launched alongside four tools, including a website listing Israeli tech firms and alternatives to them in the Middle East and North Africa, and internationally.

Another of the tools is a "continually updated" list of venture capital companies who allegedly "continue to support Israel's campaign against the people of Gaza".

"We are launching… open source projects, tools, and data to help tech people speak up for the Palestinian people and their humanity, and to highlight the inhumanity of investors and tech leaders making angry, vengeful, and genocidal claims about a civilian population," the press release said.

Tech for Palestine was brought about by software engineer Paul Biggar, connecting projects and people who contacted him following a viral blog post.

"I am in the startup ecosystem, where new companies are being created who are in constant need of investment. In that ecosystem, there are a lot of powerful investors who were very active in repeating what I could easily see were Israeli propaganda, at a time where there is a genocide happening," Biggar told The New Arab of the new coalition.

"That was my main motivation for writing my post, which coalesced into Tech For Palestine."

Volunteers and allies can sign up on the new coalition's website and collaborate through developer platform GitHub and on the chat app Discord.

It is not the first time technology has been discussed as an issue in connection with Palestine and Israel.

In 2021, the Israeli finance ministry said Amazon and Google had been chosen to deliver a cloud computing project.

Project Nimbus "is intended to provide the government, the defence establishment, and others with an all-encompassing cloud solution", the Haaretz newspaper quoted the ministry as saying at the time.

Workers at the companies said in a letter published in October 2021 that they "call on the leaders of Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus", condemning the firms' signing of the contract.

Amnesty International last year said Israel was employing a facial recognition system called Red Wolf at checkpoints in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The rights group said Israeli authorities were using Red Wolf to "track Palestinians and automate harsh restrictions on their freedom of movement".