Public outrage at Google’s diversity head, Kamau Bobb, called for his termination after an antisemitic blog post he wrote in November 2007 surfaced this week. The post, “If I were a Jew” details Bobb’s critique of Israel’s military actions during the Second Lebanon War and the Hamas takeover of Gaza.Bobb was removed from his role on Google’s diversity team and will focus on his STEM work at the company, according to a statement by Google.“If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented,” Bobb began his post.“I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired,” he continued.Bobb mentioned that if he were a Jew, he would recall the Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass, in which Nazis attacked Jews in Germany on the night of November 9th, 1938, smashing stores, synagogues, homes, and Jewish institutions. This event marked the turning point in a series of antisemitic acts that eventually became the prelude to the exportation of Jews to concentrations camps and the start of the Holocaust.He wrote that Jews who remembered the Holocaust and the human suffering endured or read the accounts of Jewish writers, “Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, or Chaim Potok,” should identify with “human compassion; closer to the instinct to offer healing to hurt, patience to anxiety and understanding to confusion.”“I don’t know how I would reconcile that identity with the behavior of fundamentalist Jewish extremists or of Israel as a nation,” Bobb continued, singling out Israel’s artillery, air, and naval attacks on Lebanon after two IDF soldiers were abducted – Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev – in the Second Lebanon War, as well as its decision to attack the Gaza Strip and restrict electricity, gas, and supplies after IDF soldier Gilad Schalit was abducted in 2006 and Hamas’s overthrew of Fatah in 2007.Bobb called Israel’s behavior “collective punishment.”“It would be unconscionable to me to watch Israeli tanks donning the Star of David rumbling through Ramallah destroying buildings and breaking the glass,” he added, paralleling how he depicted the Nazis destroying Jewish buildings during Kristallnacht.Bobb ended the post by saying, “It cannot be that the sum total of a history of suffering and slaughter places such a premium on my identity that I would be willing to damn others in defense of it. If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.”According to Algemeiner, Bobb apologized for his statements in an email to the “Jewgler” Employee Resource Group at Google, saying: “What I wrote crudely characterized the entire Jewish community. What was intended as a critique of particular military action fed into antisemitic tropes and prejudice.”Despite his apology, advocates for Israel were deeply concerned with Bob’s statements, especially as the head of Google’s diversity division, which boasts its commitment “to make diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do – from how we build our products to how we build our workforce.”Comments on Twitter expressed their shock that Google employed Bobb in his position and demanded he be fired from the job.“How is the obscene, antisemitic bigot still employed there?” tweeted Stop Antisemitism, an NGO established to expose antisemites and force them to take responsibility for their actions. Michael Dickson, the executive director of StandWithUs Israel, wrote that when he searched the terms “antisemitism” and “hypocrisy,” he found Bobb’s blog post.
“Did Google Google him? He’s not fit for this post,” he wrote.
The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jonathan Greenblat also shared his shock, posting that “any Google search on antisemitism can show that’s exactly what Bobb expresses in this blog. An explanation is needed here immediately.”
