Google executive dismissed following blog post confessing antisemitism

Google has parted ways with an executive on Thursday, following a LinkedIn blog he posted in June, where he confessed to being antisemitic in his past, news sites reported.

Amr Awadallah was VP of developer relations for Google Cloud. He joined the company in 2019. Google Cloud's Israeli VP of engineering and product Eyal Manor sent an email, viewed by CNBC, to employees on Thursday, stating that "today is Amr Awadallah’s last day at Google."

This is the second time in two months Google has dismissed employees due to an antisemitic past. Last month, Google's diversity head Kamau Bobb was fired after an antisemitic blog post he wrote in 2007 resurfaced.

In his 10,000 word blog titled "We Are One," Awadallah confessed to hating Jews, though he noted he no longer does. He also listed Jews he knows and describes as "good people," discussed the origins of his antisemitism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at length, Zionism, and his dream of a "United States of Jerusalem."

"I hated the Jewish people, all the Jewish people," Awadallah wrote. "Ever since I was young, the only narrative I heard from everybody around me was that the Jewish people are here to kill all of us," he added. Awadallah was born in Egypt, and explained that as a child, he absorbed his antisemitism from the "widespread anger over the many Palestinians slaughtered in the Nakba of 1948, and the many Egyptians killed during Israel's occupation of Sinai."

In Awadallah's blog, he mentioned how Mendel Rosenblum's, who was his research advisor for his PhD thesis, Jewish name made him "very cautious" about working with him. "Over the years, I came to know Mendel as the most humble, ethical, smart, and humanistic person that I have ever come across. He was my first Jewish angel," Awadallah wrote.

"Until recently, I was still an anti-Zionist. I believed Zionism was super evil," Awadallah wrote. "Zionism, as far as I understand it, is the need to have a safe home where Jewish people will no longer be persecuted like they were in the past. It is such a respectable goal – how can anyone, including myself, stand against that cause?," the Egyptian-American stated in his LinkedIn blog.

In his blog, Awadallah also claimed former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "twisted Zionism to the point of Fascism." 

"Zionism is such a pure goal, until it gets twisted to favor safety at the expense of humanity, which is what Benjamin Netanyahu is clearly doing," he claimed.

According to CNBC, Google employees confronted Awadallah on his blog post at a meeting on Wednesday, expressing their discomfort. When confronted, Awadallah doubled down on the message of his post, insisting they misunderstood him.

Daniel Golding, a Jewish employee at Google, said: "On one hand, I’m grateful that you no longer hate my children. On the other, this has made my job as one of your colleagues much harder," he wrote.

"The previous situation has made being a Jewish leader at Google tough. This has made it almost untenable," Golding added.

Amar Awadallah commented on his dismissal on Twitter, saying he is in "complete shock."