7/14/2025

Seattle activists with Jewish Voice for Peace staged a sit-in at the Palantir offices in South Lake Union to demand that Washington state sever financial ties with Palantir, accusing the tech giant of profiting from human rights abuses. “We demand that the Washington state investment board and our elected officials divest from genocide by cutting ties with Palantir,” organizers declared at the demonstration.

Speakers said Palantir’s software directly aids Israeli military operations in Gaza. “Palantir is selling surveillance technology to corporations and government, fueling fascism at home and the genocide in Gaza,” one protester said. “Palantir profits off the genocide in Gaza by providing advanced training artificial intelligence to the Israeli Government and the Israeli occupation forces. This means Palantir provides the technology to kill people…individual citizens who are starving and standing in lines trying to get aid and food for their families. More aid workers have been killed during this genocide than in all the wars of the last 30 years.”

Hossam Nasr, a former Microsoft worker who said he was fired “for organizing a vigil on campus to honor the lives of Palestinians,” spoke out about how major tech companies have become “effectively…weapons manufacturers.” Nasr, now an organizer with No Azure for Apartheid, said, “These tech companies have deepened the relationship with the genocidal Israeli military. They saw an opportunity in death and destruction and killing of Palestinians to make profits.”

Nasr singled out Palantir as “leading the charge…the most brazenly, the most explicitly, the most violently.” He added, “Their CEO is publicly saying they’re happy and proud that their technology is killing Palestinians, that their technology is being used to track and detain and kidnap our neighbors.”

He detailed how Palantir built its business by embracing government defense contracts. “Palantir said to hell with that. We are evil and we’re proud, and we’re going to partner with the government because we want to dominate, because we want to kill, because we want to achieve the government’s aims of imperialism,” Nasr said. “Their first…contracts were actually with the US government and the DOD to help them with the war in Iraq. And since then, they have deepened their partnership.”

Protesters warned that these surveillance systems now reach beyond war zones. “Most people don’t know that Palantir is here, let alone that it profits from death and surveillance,” one speaker said. Nasr pointed to Palantir’s $30 million contract with ICE, which he said is creating “a centralized database across the IRS, ICE, other government agencies…to make it easy for us to track and surveil and target people. It’s completely heinous, dystopian, Orwellian, and it is happening with our tax dollars.”

He added, “For them to identify what they claim are immigrants or refugees or whatever, they have to surveil everyone. Your data is in that system, even if you’re a law-abiding legal citizen.”

For two hours, activists blocked entrances and left just before police arrived to arrest them. Protesters pledged to keep organizing. “For far too long, these tech companies have wreaked havoc upon the world. With unity, we must pay our tribute to the Palestinian people and to all victims of US imperialism, and say no more,” they said. “We will not rest until Palestine is free from the river to the sea.”