An Amazon executive wore a necklace in a company video that featured a pendant in the shape of the map of Israel with a Palestinian flag imposed on top of it — sparking outrage on social media, with users vowing to cancel their Prime subscriptions and demanding that the executive be fired.
Ruba Borno, who holds the title of vice president of specialists and partners at cloud computing division Amazon Web Services, is seen in an official company video touting a company conference set to take place later in the fall in Las Vegas.
The map that was dangling from Borno’s necklace encompasses what is today Israel as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip — territories that the Palestinians have demanded as the basis for an independent state.
Amazon said it has taken down the video.
“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 spokesperson told The Post.
Several X accounts sympathetic to Israel took screenshots of the video and shared them with thousands of other users who accused Borno of seeking Israel’s destruction by establishing a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.”
“Vile. This is unacceptable and warrants immediate termination,” an X commenter, Alex Wilner, wrote. Wilner tagged Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who stepped down as CEO but remains the company’s largest shareholder.
Another X user, Michael Expand, wrote: “Canceling my subscription to prime video.”
A commenter posted: “thanks for supporting the genocide of Israelis. very comforting.”
Others also noted that an Israeli man employed by an Amazon subsidiary in Israel, Alexander Sasha Trupanov, is being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas terrorists took scores of Israelis captive after they carried out a massacre of 1,200 people on Oct. 7 last year.
Amazon has been criticized for not going public in demanding that Hamas free Trupanov.
Borno made her X posts private in response to the backlash.
Borno, 42, is a Palestinian whose family lived in Kuwait until Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded the country in 1990.
Prior to the Gulf War of 1990, Kuwait was home to a large Palestinian expat community that numbered more than 350,000 people.
But the Palestinians were kicked out of Kuwait after the late Yasser Arafat, who at the time was the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, supported Saddam’s invasion of the country.
Iraqi forces were ousted from Kuwait by a US-led coalition.
Since one of Borno’s sisters was born in the United States, she and her family were evacuated from Kuwait by the US Embassy.
Borno holds a PhD and a master of science in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan.
According to her LinkedIn account, Borno has worked at Boston Consulting Group as well as Cisco and Experian.
She was hired by Amazon Web Services in November 2021.
https://nypost.com/2024/10/14/business/amazon-exec-wears-necklace-with-palestinian-flag-imposed-on-israel/
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