Google’s head of diversity strategy has come under fire for having said in a 2007 blog post that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war and killing” and an “insensitivity to the suffering (of) others.”
The post also argued that Jews should have more “compassion” because of the Holocaust, reported the Daily Mail.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the statements were part of a longer piece of writing by Kamau Bobb that harshly criticized the IDF over actions in Gaza and Lebanon.
The post, written on November 30,2007 on his personal blog, was titled "If I Were A Jew.”
In it, he wrote about how he thought Jewish people should view the conflict in the Middle East.
“If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. 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 wrote.
He questioned the morality of Israel defending itself. “I don’t know how I would reconcile that identity with the behavior of fundamentalist Jewish extremists or of Israel as a nation. The details would confuse me. I wouldn’t understand those who suggest that bombing Lebanon, slaughtering Lebanese people and largely destroying Beirut in retaliation for the capture of a few soldiers is justified. I wouldn’t understand the notion of collective punishment, cutting off gas, electricity and water from residents in Gaza because they are attacking Israel who is fighting against them. 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 continued, “My faith would lead me to believe that Israel is the homeland of my people. My intellect would convince me that it cannot be that simple.”
He added, “The faith and reason of the Palestinians or of Muslims cannot simply be baseless. I would have to believe that the degree of animus, vengeance and violence that they now carry is not rooted in their identity, but rather in their experience; in the sordid nation shuffling and rebuilding that took place after World War II. It must be rooted in their hurt, in their sense of displacement, abandonment and hopelessness.”
He concluded, “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself,” he wrote. “Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.”
Bobb joined Google in September 2018 as the Global Lead for Diversity Strategy and Research at Google, according to his LinkedIn account. His website also lists him as the founding Senior Director of the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing at Georgia Tech.
After Bobb’s blog article was initially reported on by the Washington Free Beacon, voices on social media began urging Google to respond.
“@Google must fire this #antisemite #KamauBobb,” tweeted the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Michael Dickson, the executive director of StandWithUs, tweeted, “I searched for ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘hypocrisy.” Here’s what I found. Google Diversity Head @kamaubobb said Jews have ‘Insatiable Appetite for War.’”
He added, “Did @Google Google him? He’s not fit for this post.”
In a follow up tweet, Dickson said, “He also walks the line on terror with text that could be seen as giving a green light to it in his essay when mentioning Arab and Palestinian radicalism. He says ‘You cannot beat a people and demand that they not fight back in order to peacefully negotiate an end to the beating.’”