Amazon employees have been using its internal social media platform, Slack, to exchange offensive and virulently anti-Israel messages.
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to Amazon pointing out that these messages have caused a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli employees, which breaches the Equality Act 2010 as well as Amazon's internal guidelines.
The offensive messages have mostly been posted in the #Arabs channel, for the Arabs@Amazon affinity group. However it is accessible to anybody else at Amazon.
The posts include
- Calling the Israeli army the "Israeli occupation genocidal force" and "terrorists" and "a militia that deliberately murders innocent people"
- Making false claims of Israelis decapitating babies
- Calling the IDF "evil beings"
- Calling an Israel supporter a "bad person" who " shouldn't be considered a human"
- Referring to the whole of Israel's existence as "an act of terrorism that has been going for decades"
- Accusing Israel of "actually committing all the made-up atrocities"
- Denying mass rape on 7 October 2023 and calling it Israeli atrocity propaganda
- Accusing Israel of controlling the US media
- Accusing AIPAC of controlling the US Government
- Accusing the "Israel Lobby" of controlling the UK Labour Party
- Accusing Israel of torturing, executing and burying children alive
- Accusing Israelis of using sexual violence against women
These posts contain a visceral hatred of the Israeli state and its army and include obvious lies and twisted facts about the Gaza war, as well as antisemitic tropes.
These messages have created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for Amazon's Jewish and Israeli employees.
Amazon has failed to respond to UKLFI's letter, sent more than two weeks ago, which asked what action Amazon intended to take over these posts.
However, Amazon responded to a question from the Sunday Telegraph, commenting: "We don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind in the workplace. We investigate any such conduct that's reported and take action against any employee who is found to have violated our policies, up to and including termination."
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