- ‘I wanted the word to get out that Alex Karp, who is the CEO of Palantir, is responsible for the bloodshed of so many Palestinians,’ says Mobarak
- ‘There are people who don’t know about these companies so they need to become aware … People also need to be called out for their complicity,’ says Mobarak
WASHINGTON
Israel’s devastating war on the Gaza Strip regularly dominates headlines, from the mass starvation repeatedly inflicted upon the Palestinian territory’s 2.2 million residents, to the continued atrocities that have led to the deaths of nearly 53,000 people, including almost 15,000 children.
Less noticed, however, is the role that some major tech firms have played in facilitating the humanitarian catastrophe.
On April 30, one demonstrator sought to highlight the function of one company that has provided Israel’s military with critical artificial intelligence support since October 2023.
In a now viral social media video, Sumer Mobarak can be heard chiding Palantir CEO Alex Karp, shouting as he seeks to address the Hill & Valley Forum: “You’re getting wealthy off of killing Palestinians. Palantir kills Palestinians with their AI and technology. You’re killing my family in Palestine.”
Karp responded to Mobarak by saying, “The primary source of death in Palestine is the fact that Hamas has realized that there are millions and millions of useful idiots.”
Videos of the exchange have been reposted by several major news outlets and social media accounts, and have been viewed at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of times.
Speaking about why she staged the demonstration, Mobarak maintained that it was to draw attention to the firm’s little-noticed role in supporting Israel’s war effort.
“I was hoping to try to expose them,” Mobarak said as she spoke with Anadolu across the street from Palantir’s Washington headquarters.
“Palantir has been using their software, their technology for AI, to target Palestinians, especially in this genocide that’s going on, and not actually too many people know about it. So, I wanted the word to get out that Alex Karp, who is the CEO of Palantir, is responsible for the blood shed of so many Palestinians.”
‘There to speak out against the genocide’
Palantir inked an expanded contract with Israel in January 2024, in the midst of Tel Aviv’s devastating campaign against Gaza, to provide the Israeli military with critical artificial intelligence models to aid the campaign.
Precise details on the contract remain scarce, but an April 2024 report from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre nonprofit said the data mining company is supplying Israel with advanced targeting capabilities that it has likely used to carry out devastating strikes in Gaza and perhaps beyond.
Palantir acknowledged in a statement published by the nonprofit that it provides the Israeli military with what it called “scaled, critical target identification and kinetic workflows.”
Karp said during his exchange with Mobarak that his technology kills “mostly terrorists” and sought to cast the Palestinian American demonstrator as one of the “useful idiots” he said Hamas relies upon.
“She believes I’m evil, and I believe she’s an unwitting product of an evil force, Hamas. She’s unwittingly part of their strategy. She’s a product,” he charged.
Asked about his remarks against her, Mobarak maintained that the tech CEO “is responsible for the blood shed of so many Palestinians,” and said Karp is the one who is “an unwitting product of evil.”
“I am a product of humanity. That is what I am, and I am there to speak out against the genocide that’s going on. I am pro-humanity. I am not for any one particular person, but I am totally 100% against the genocide,” she asserted.
“Any time the media or people like Alex Karp want to portray me as something awful and evil, they use Hamas. They use whatever it is that sounds terrible to other people to try to portray me as this big, bad wolf. If speaking out for humanity and not wanting the slaughter of children is something bad, then there’s something wrong in this world.”
‘Without hope, what are we all doing?’
The protest Mobarak staged is just one of several public demonstrations that have taken place at major American tech firms in recent months, including an April 4 disruption that derailed Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event, and an employee sit-in at Google on April 16.
The protests have repeatedly led to employees being fired from their jobs, with the companies publicly showing little openness to changing course.
For his part, Karp has acknowledged that his decision to not only remain in lockstep with Israel, but to expand his company’s assistance for its war on Gaza, has led to employees resigning in protest, but brushed aside any concern that might pose.
“We’ve lost employees. I’m sure we’ll lose employees,” Karp said in an interview with the MSNBC television network in March 2024. “If you have a position that does not cost you ever to lose an employee, it’s not a position.”
Despite the lack of public change from major companies like Palantir, Mobarak said she is hopeful that reform will come.
“If I didn’t feel hopeful, I probably wouldn’t have done what I did. I have to feel hopeful, because without hope, then what are we all doing?” she said.
“There are people who don’t know about these companies so they need to become aware. I feel like what I did, or Ibtihal (Aboussad) from Microsoft, what she did, this is bringing awareness to people, and people also need to be called out for their complicity.”
