Kamau Bobb, global head of diversity strategy and research, Google, has been asked to step down after a 13-year old blog post of his resurfaced, wherein he has made some insensitive comments about Jews.
The post, which was titled ‘If I were a Jew’ suggests that Jews have “an instatiable appetite for war” and killing in self-defence. Posted in 2007, at a time when there was active conflict between Lebanon and Israel, his writing makes Jews out to be vengeful.
When excerpts from this blog post were published by the Beacon, there was widespread social media outrage and Jews demanded that he be terminated.
However, instead of firing him, Google chose to remove him from the diversity team and assign him a different role focussed on STEM. Google did issue an official statement condemning what Bobb had written in the past, and apologised for hurting the Jewish community.
Recently, about 250 concerned Jewish and allied Google employees signed a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO, asking the Company to offer relief to Palestinians bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crises that have emerged during the conflict between Israel and the militant group, Hamas, that doesn’t recognise Israel. The letter requests Google to acknowleges the violence and the harm done to Palestinians by Israeli military and gang violence. This signed letter was sent out in response to another Jewish group of employees who requested Google executives to lend their support to the sovereign state of Israel.
