Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
A Google employee has reportedly been fired after staging a protest during a keynote speech by an Israel executive earlier this week. During an event in New York on Monday promoting Israel’s tech industry, the unnamed Google Cloud engineer interrupted the managing director of Google Israel and declared, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.” According to CNBC, he was fired after the public protest, with a Google spokesperson saying he was dismissed for “interfering with an official company-sponsored event.” “This behavior is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies,” the spokesperson was quoted saying. In the run-up to the event, more than 600 Google staffers had signed a letter demanding the company cut its sponsorship of the event. The company’s employee message board was also reportedly shut down after a flurry of comments regarding Google’s military contracts with Israel, something a spokesperson described to CNBC as “divisive content that is disruptive to our workplace.”