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Oct 15, 2024

In company video, Amazon exec wears necklace with a map of Israel with a Palestinian flag across it

The company has downplayed that one if its employees has been held hostage by Hamas for over one year Yasin Baturhan Ergin/Anadolu via Getty Images In this photo illustration, logo of 'Amazon' is

The company has downplayed that one if its employees has been held hostage by Hamas for over one year

Yasin Baturhan Ergin/Anadolu via Getty Images

In this photo illustration, logo of 'Amazon' is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of the logo of ''Meta'' in Ankara, Turkiye on November 14, 2023.

In a video promoting an upcoming AWS event in Las Vegas, Ruba Borno, AWS’ vice president of Global Specialists and Partner Organizations, wore a necklace with a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with a Palestinian flag across it.

News of the necklace worn by a high-ranking official comes as the company continues to downplay that an AWS employee, Sasha Troufanov, has been held hostage by Hamas for over a year.

Such erasure of Israel is common in Palestinian textbooks. It evokes the popular chant at anti-Israel protests “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” regarded by many as a call for genocide of the Jews in Israel.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to respond to a request for comment about the executive’s anti-Israel jewelry. By Monday, Amazon had deleted the post, but Jewish Insider retains screenshots of the original video.

Borno was born in Kuwait, where there was a sizable Palestinian refugee community between Israel’s War of Independence and the first Gulf War, and fled to the U.S. in 1990. Her parents are Palestinian.

Sasha Troufanov, 28, was an engineer for Amazon subsidiary Annapurna Labs in Tel Aviv. Hamas kidnapped him from his parents’ home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. His father, Vitaly, was murdered, and his mother, Lena, grandmother Irena Tati and girlfriend Sapir Cohen were abducted as well, but released in the November hostage deal.

While Troufanov’s co-workers in Israel have vocally campaigned for his return, Amazon executives in the U.S. have hesitated to acknowledge the situation publicly.

Friends of Troufanov rented a truck with screens displaying his information, which they drove around last year’s AWS conference in Las Vegas.

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who has been outspoken against antisemitism in the past year, defended Amazon, posting on X that “The first priority of every CEO is the health and safety of his/her employees. One of Amazon’s employees is being held hostage by Hamas. One would therefore assume that Amazon is doing everything it can to help … One must therefore conclude that Amazon does not believe it is advisable to say anything about the situation. It must believe that speaking publicly is harmful rather than helpful. That is the only conclusion that makes sense.”

Multiple Amazon employees told Jewish Insider last year that they were dismayed at the company’s silence about Troufanov, as well as Amazon turning a blind eye to messages in internal channels that they viewed as inciting and offensive.

One group in an internal messaging app called “I stand with Palestine” uses the “from the river to the sea” chant as its description. An employee posted a graphic of a bleeding map of Israel and the message “we will plant hatred in our children.”

Yet Arab employees of Amazon told The Washington Post last year that they are “scared to speak out.”

Amazon has over 1,000 employees in Israel, who were able to receive financial assistance in the first month after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel’s south.

JI senior Congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed to this report