Seattle Jewish Activists Protest Palantir, The Company Profiting From The "AI-Powered" Genocide In Gaza

Monday morning, more than one hundred Jewish Seattleites and allies linked arms in front of the entrances at the Fairview Market Hall, a South Lake Union building hosts data-mining company Palantir’s Seattle office. Not only did the Jewish Voice For Peace (JVP) action disrupt business at usual, blocking several workers from entering the building, the activists demanded that Washington state divest from Palantir, which they accuse of profitting from the genocide of Palestinians and the Trump administration’s deportation machine. 

Palantir is a data mining company with strong ties to Israel. In fact, a recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese named Palantir one of 48 corporate actors aiding in Israel’s genocide, breaching international law. According to Al Jazeera, the report found “reasonable grounds” to believe Palantir provided “automatic predictive policing technology” to help Israel automate warfare decision-making and generate lists of Palestinians to target and kill. 

JVP draws a strong parallel between Palantir and technology from the time of Nazi Germany. 

"As a Jewish person working in tech, I’m painfully aware of how technologies can be weaponized against people under the guise of innovation or efficiency,” said JVP organizer Benjamin Lucking in a press release. “Palantir reminds me of IBM's complicity in the Holocaust —when IBM provided Nazi Germany with punch card systems that enabled the systematic identification, tracking, and extermination of millions of Jews.”

Palantir’s evils play out domestically as well. ICE and Palantir have been in kahoots since 2011, but they got even closer earlier this year when ICE decided to pay Palantir $30 million to develop a new surveillance program to give the agency “near real-time” data about immigrants’ movement. More recently, the Trump administration tapped Palantir to compile a “master database” for easy cross-reference of tax records, immigration records, and other sensitive data to grease the wheels of Trump’s mass deportation machine. 

Whatsmore, Washington State is invested in the success of Palantir’s war-profiteering — literally. The Washington State Investment Board (WSIB), a board charged with investing assets for retirement plans benefiting teachers, cops, and other public employees, has more than $73 million invested in Palantir as of last December. This tie means that public the asset the WSIB manages grow when Palantir’s stock price goes up, which means the bigger the genocide, the better the pension for Washignton public employees. Naturally, JVP organizers are calling on WSIB to divest from Palantir. 

"As a teacher, I believe every student, everywhere, deserves access to education and safety,” said JVP organizer Michael Grant in a press release. “That’s why I’m outraged that Washington’s GET prepaid tuition plan funds, meant to support learning, are invested in companies enabling the mass killing of children and bombing of schools in Gaza. My Jewish values call me to pursue justice — not fund violence.”

Overall, JVP seemed pleased with their event. They raised awareness of Palantir’s presence in Seattle, caused a little bit of confusion for workers at the office building that morning, and attracted a decent turnout. But their work is far from over. JVP organizers promised they will be back. As one of their many protest songs goes, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”