Google Shareholders Hand Israel-Haters a Heavy Defeat
David Lange
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Back in October, I posted about a campaign by Israel-haters to get Google and Amazon to halt the Nimbus project, since they claimed it sold ‘dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government.’ As I wrote at the time, this was no grassroots, outpouring of emotion by concerned employees, but rather “a well-orchestrated campaign organized by Linda Sarsour’s Israel-hating organization MPower change, among others.”
Fast forward to now, and the campaign has suffered a severe setback.
Alphabet stockholders voted not to approve a stockholder proposal against Google’s work on Israel’s Nimbus Project, after Alphabet’s annual meeting of stockholders on June 1.
There were 544,653,039 votes against and 55,301,799 for the proposal for Alphabet’s board to issue a report reassessing its role in the $1.2 billion project to transfer Israeli government IT infastructure to cloud-based data centers. There were 3,825,111 abstentions. Each Class A common stock was worth one vote, and Class B common stock 10 votes.
The vote rejecting the proposal fell in line with the Alphabet board of directors’ recommendation to vote against it.
“Given our processes and principles governing our work with our customers and partners, including the government, and our transparency around these matters, our board does not believe that implementing this proposal would provide additional benefit to our stockholders, and, as such, recommends a vote against this proposal,” said Kathryn Hall, Google’s vice president, legal and head of corporate at the meeting.
To put that in perspective, over 90% of the voting shareholders rejected this BDS attempt.
Naturally, the haters played dirty, with the tried-and-tested tactic of “as-a-Jewing” on display:
“Palestinian families live every day under deeply intrusive surveillance and in fear of assault or being forced out of their homes,” Schubiner continued. “The Project Nimbus contract will further enable Israel’s oppressive tactics and discrimination against Palestinians. My Jewish heritage and history guides my belief that Palestinians deserve to live in peace and safety, as do all people.”
The timing of this vote could hardly be worse for the haters, with news this week that Unilever is being sued by a US shareholder who said the company mishandled the decision by its Ben & Jerry’s unit to stop selling ice cream in Judea and Samaria.
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David Lange
