By Ole Braatelien October 17, 2024 at 9:15am
Amazon faces a boycott after one of its executives casually sported an anti-Israel necklace in a company video.
The controversy began when Ruba Borno appeared in a short clip discussing an upcoming conference in Las Vegas, the New York Post reported. Borno is the vice president of specialists and partners at cloud computing division Amazon Web Services.
Wow. Amazon sure was quick to remove an official company video of its senior VP Ruba Borno — wearing a “From the river to the sea” necklace.👇
But more than a year later and Amazon still hasn’t acknowledged its employee — Sasha Trufanov — was taken hostage and remains captive. pic.twitter.com/kFhisqLqsN
— dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ (@DahliaKurtz) October 14, 2024
The segment seemed innocuous enough, until viewers homed in on something the executive was wearing: a necklace depicting an outline of Israel with a Palestinian flag emblazoned across it.
The political statement caused an uproar on social media, prompting some to call for a boycott.
Boycott Amazon. https://t.co/MjAzQRYlMd
— Talia 🎗 (@Taliatypes) October 13, 2024
Time to boycott Amazon https://t.co/vMkOEULmM2
— Natalie Cook (@Australia_Nat) October 13, 2024
Do you consider jewelry like this to be hateful?
I’ve enjoyed using Amazon,but that necklace she was wearing is a shot over the bow🤬🤬🤬
Our boycott’s are working so let’s all do this🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸Amazon hit by spiraling boycott after sharing video of executive wearing controversial necklace https://t.co/M0JFZL34UW via…
— Chris Wrenn🇺🇸 ( TURKEY) (@ChrisWrenn4) October 14, 2024
Amazon has since removed the video, and Borno appears to have made her X account private.
“The video shot was not meant to be a political statement, but we’ve taken down the video and will repost a new one in the coming days,” an Amazon spokesman told the Post.
The executive’s choice of jewelry is particularly offensive to some, due to one of Amazon’s own employees being abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
Amazon senior VP at AWS, Ruba Borno, wore a Palestine map necklace in an official company video inviting people for a conference.
Does @rubaborno know that the map means “from the river to the sea” and calls for the killing of all the Jews of Israel?
Does she know that Amazon… pic.twitter.com/5bn0XUGYRx
— Hamas Atrocities (@HamasAtrocities) October 13, 2024
Sasha Troufanov, 28, and three family members were kidnapped, while his father was murdered during the attack, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported.
Troufanov, an Israeli hardware engineer at an Amazon-owned subsidiary in Tel Aviv, is still a hostage to Hamas.
Ole Braatelien has written for The Western Journal since 2022. He earned his bachelor’s from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
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