Fabio Manganiello on Nostr: Pro #Palestine protest in front of my office today. I've been stuck inside of the ...
Pro #Palestine protest in front of my office today.
I've been stuck inside of the office for a few hours together with my wife and kid, as they also came visiting today.
But I couldn't sympathize more with the protesters.
I've raised ethical questions many times about our choice of doing business with hotels and apartments that stand on stolen lands.
I asked the management several times why we are contributing to stealing revenue away from Palestinians and moving it to those who have been illegally occupying their lands for decades, in violation of many UN resolutions.
I asked several times why we severed our business links with Crimea after Russia illegally occupied it, but people on our website can still still book their holidays on occupied Palestinian territories.
I asked how can we say that we stand so much for diversity, inclusion and justice, while we remain horribly silent on what's happening in the Middle East - maybe gay people are a bit "more equal" than Palestinians, or maybe it's just because initiatives like the gay pride give much more visibility than standing with Muslim people who are dying under the Israeli bombs amid the deafening silence of the West?
All I got back was either silence, or answers along the lines of "the company won't change its position unless it affects its bottom line".
Well, I hope that a few dozens of angry protesters, and their calls for boycotting #Booking, will affect our bottom line and our public image much more than I could do.
For the first time, while we were all trapped inside of our office, I heard some of my colleagues discussing if what Israel is doing is fair - that's usually considered a highly political topic that should be avoided in professional settings. Did it really take a bunch of university students trapping us inside for a couple of hours to wake up and realize that there's a whole world out our shiny bubble, with great power comes great responsibility, that where and with whom we do business impacts the real world, and that when you're so big you can't afford to just leave politics out, because *everything* you do at large scale is political?
And I would also like to call out our management for the poor management of the issue.
They blocked all the doors of the office and let nobody got in nor out for hours.
I asked to walk out and stand in solidarity with the protesters, to no avail. I wrote on our social platform that we should be allowed to have a forum to discuss of these issues and bring our message, as employees, to the management, just for my comment to be removed and comments on the original post about the protest being blocked.
If you feel like boycotting Booking after this, I feel your point and I fully understand you. I'd do the same if I wasn't working for them. I wish we had better ways, as employees, to get even our own voices heard.
I've been stuck inside of the office for a few hours together with my wife and kid, as they also came visiting today.
But I couldn't sympathize more with the protesters.
I've raised ethical questions many times about our choice of doing business with hotels and apartments that stand on stolen lands.
I asked the management several times why we are contributing to stealing revenue away from Palestinians and moving it to those who have been illegally occupying their lands for decades, in violation of many UN resolutions.
I asked several times why we severed our business links with Crimea after Russia illegally occupied it, but people on our website can still still book their holidays on occupied Palestinian territories.
I asked how can we say that we stand so much for diversity, inclusion and justice, while we remain horribly silent on what's happening in the Middle East - maybe gay people are a bit "more equal" than Palestinians, or maybe it's just because initiatives like the gay pride give much more visibility than standing with Muslim people who are dying under the Israeli bombs amid the deafening silence of the West?
All I got back was either silence, or answers along the lines of "the company won't change its position unless it affects its bottom line".
Well, I hope that a few dozens of angry protesters, and their calls for boycotting #Booking, will affect our bottom line and our public image much more than I could do.
For the first time, while we were all trapped inside of our office, I heard some of my colleagues discussing if what Israel is doing is fair - that's usually considered a highly political topic that should be avoided in professional settings. Did it really take a bunch of university students trapping us inside for a couple of hours to wake up and realize that there's a whole world out our shiny bubble, with great power comes great responsibility, that where and with whom we do business impacts the real world, and that when you're so big you can't afford to just leave politics out, because *everything* you do at large scale is political?
And I would also like to call out our management for the poor management of the issue.
They blocked all the doors of the office and let nobody got in nor out for hours.
I asked to walk out and stand in solidarity with the protesters, to no avail. I wrote on our social platform that we should be allowed to have a forum to discuss of these issues and bring our message, as employees, to the management, just for my comment to be removed and comments on the original post about the protest being blocked.
If you feel like boycotting Booking after this, I feel your point and I fully understand you. I'd do the same if I wasn't working for them. I wish we had better ways, as employees, to get even our own voices heard.