Google’s attempts to silence workers who oppose the Israeli contract and the harassment of Palestinian, Muslim and Arab employees are a betrayal of the company’s founding values.

When employees held sit-ins at the company’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, last week to protest a $1.2 billion contract to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services, the company called the police. Then it fired them.

“This is certainly a U-turn from a few years ago when activist employees seemed to be gaining the upper hand,” said Jerry Davis, a professor of business administration and sociology at the University of Michigan.

“We want to be able to come to work in a place where not only are we told to bring our whole selves to work but we actually can,” Story said. “And part of my whole self and part of my Palestinian, Arab and Muslim co-workers’ whole self is speaking out about these horrible things happening to their families.”