Poised to Take Over TikTok, Oracle Is Accused of Clamping Down on Pro-Palestine Dissent
Larry Ellison has been at Donald Trump's side since he took office last month. The man Trump referred to as one of the most serious players in the world" was front row at the inauguration, and then watched as the president signed an executive order on artificial intelligence - a major business interest for tech giant Oracle.
And Ellison, Oracle's billionaire co-founder, was sitting next to Rupert Murdoch in early February when Trump created a fund to facilitate the purchase of TikTok. His presence was no accident.
Last month, after the Supreme Court upheld a law banning TikTok, Oracle emerged as a leader in the race to take control of the Chinese-owned short-form video platform.
While the campaign against TikTok was led by China hawks in Washington, it was the ire of pro-Israel activists that perhaps best explains why Oracle is such a natural choice to take over the social media app.
Related The TikTok Ban Is Also About Hiding Pro-Palestinian Content. Republicans Said So Themselves. The campaign to ban the app kicked into high gear after Hamas's October 7 attack against Israel. The timing spurred talk that the push for a ban wasn't just about American national security, but Israel's too. Politicians even tied their campaigns against TikTok to alleged Hamas propaganda being hosted on the platform.
Oracle, which had already taken control of some of TikTok's day-to-day operations, had taken a firm pro-Israel stance and, according to an Intercept investigation, clamped down on pro-Palestine activism inside the company.
Last November, Israeli American Oracle CEO Safra Catz told an Israeli business news outlet, For employees, it's clear: if you're not for America or Israel, don't work here-this is a free country."
Collaborations between the company and Israeli government agencies have been wide-ranging, encompassing everything from direct technology work with the military to software intended to help Israel with public relations - including, according to internal company messages, on social media platforms like TikTok.
Critics of Israel's war on Gaza exist within Oracle's 160,000 global staff, though they have faced repression and punishment related to their stances. The dissent and the backlash, half a dozen Oracle employees told The Intercept, was part of an internal crisis for pro-Palestinian staffers at the tech giant over its unwavering support of Israel.
Oracle employees who spoke with The Intercept described an environment of fear, and half a dozen said they were seeking to leave the company.
The environment is horrible, people are terrified to even mention Palestine," one employee, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, told The Intercept. I cannot stand it anymore."
People are terrified to even mention Palestine."
Sixty-eight Oracle employees signed an open letter last year criticizing the company's partnerships with Israel. Many have also raised alarms about what they said were biases in certain company programs, including the removal of avenues for staff to donate money to pro-Palestinian causes.
According to multiple Oracle staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their livelihoods, one employee was terminated for allegedly violating the company's branding and Slack policies after they created a combined Palestinian Oracle logo on a watermelon - a symbol of Palestinian solidarity - that was posted in a Slack channel and put on social media.
While companies such as Google and Amazon have been criticized for their work with the Israeli military and suppression of pro-Palestinian voices, employees and observers told The Intercept that Oracle stands out for its steadfast commitment to Israel.
We have been seeing a theme across the tech sector where pro-Palestinian voices inside companies have been targeted and repressed for their actions," said Eric Sype, U.S. national organizer for 7amleh, also known as the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement. This shows the influence that the right-wing Israeli government has on the tech sector in Silicon Valley."
Ties to IsraelOracle, a Texas-based tech giant that rose to prominence with software and services related to database management, has a rich history with Israel - one of several of the company's nation-state clients.
Both Catz and Ellison have close relationships with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Catz met with Netanyahu a few months before the war on Gaza began to discuss the expansion of Oracle's work in Israel. And Ellison, a Republican megadonor in the U.S., once offered Netanyahu a place on Oracle's board of directors and invited him to visit his private Hawaiian island.
Oracle's initial high-profile deal with the Israeli government came in 2021, when it became the first multinational tech company to offer cloud services in the country. The database giant established a $319 million data center in Jerusalem for the project.
Not all of Oracle's work in Israel, though, is publicized. Even as it announced its cloud computing deal, Oracle was working on a four-year highly confidential project with the Israeli Air Force called Project Menta," according to screenshots of Slack postings obtained by The Intercept. (Neither Oracle nor the Israeli Ministry of Defense responded to requests for comment.)
Project Menta, which was previously undisclosed, has allowed Israel's air force to do a bunch of important military stuff that we can't share with you," Shimon Levy, head of communications at Oracle Israel, wrote to colleagues on Slack in December 2021, according to three internal sources.Levy appended a sword emoji to his message.
In 2022, Levy also announced in the same channel that the Israeli military's Unit 81 - essentially a technology solutions division housed within the country's intelligence apparatus - was in the final stage of a three-year program with Oracle to expedite procurement by allowing every soldier to make their own military purchase requests.
That same year, Oracle hosted a hackathon with the Israeli military to develop technical solutions to acute social challenges."
Look at those faces!" Levy wrote in the post accompanied by a photo from the event. We're there to support the soldiers in their mission to make the world a better place, using Oracle's technology!"
Oracle of Authoritarians Oracle and the War on GazaImmediately after the attacks of October 7, 2023, Oracle publicly declared its support for Israel. Catz also demanded the inscription Oracle Stands with Israel" be displayed on all the company's screens, in more than 180 countries.
Throughout the war, company officials continued to tout their support for Israel - and discuss incipient and ongoing projects working with the Israeli government. At one point, in Slack, Levy remarked that the Israeli Ministry of Defense was a demanding customer with very high standards."
Related Israeli Group Claims It's Working With Big Tech Insiders to Censor Inflammatory" Wartime Content A month into the war, Levy took to the company Slack to laud the Oracle employees that were leading an important volunteering initiative to develop and operate a unique tool" for Israeli public relations on social media. The project, called Words of Iron," was developed in collaboration with Israeli ministries to help the country elevate pro-Israel content and counter critical narratives on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.
In February 2024, the Israeli military cyber department and Oracle collaborated on another hackathon to find tech solutions for rehabilitating Israeli settlements near Gaza using Oracle's technology," Levy wrote, according to internal Slack messages. Levy also announced that the company had donated bags with medical and environmental supplies to Israel Defense Forces soldiers, valued at half a million dollars.
Last summer, Catz attended a private lobbying meeting with U.S. senators to advocate for the continuation of weapon shipments to Israel. And, in the fall, Oracle announced it was partnering with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, one of Israel's largest defense companies, on an AI project to provide warfighters with quick, actionable insights in the battlespace."
What's pretty astounding to me is how flagrant the complicity is," said Marwa Fatafta, MENA policy and advocacy director at Access Now. They are definitely taking advantage of the impunity that Israel enjoys. There are no consequences."
By the time Catz returned to Israel in November for her second trip since the war broke out, some employees were feeling deeply uncomfortable in the workspace.
On LinkedIn, Hani Risheq, director of enterprise architecture at Oracle UK posted: Can any of the 155K+ worldwide Oracle employees with a different opinion than that of Catz's voice their opinion without being penalised or even shown the door?"
Cutting Help to PalestiniansMeanwhile, as Israel began its bombing and full-scale invasion of Gaza, some employees said that the company was restraining support for Palestinians.
Like many companies, Oracle operates a program to match employee donations to charitable causes. As the war raged, relief organizations like Medical Aid for Palestinians and UNRWA were taken off the internal giving page and no longer listed as accepting matching donations, four employees told The Intercept.
Oracle employees told The Intercept that the company chalked up the disappearance of the Palestinian-oriented charities to changes in policy that focused on education, environment, and health - though the Oracle employees pointed out some of the charities in question did focus on those areas. When they asked for the charities to be reinstated, they received no response.
In Catz's public statements to Israeli media, she referred to pro-Palestinian rights groups as brainwashing organizations," adding, They don't even know the facts."
Activists disagree with Oracle's blanket statements surrounding Israel's war on Gaza.
Right now, you have to be living under a rock to claim ignorance," said Fatafta of Access Now. There is no single big tech company, its CEOs or executive management, that can claim a lack of knowledge about what has happened in Gaza."
In the press, the company has had no compunction about clearly taking sides, dismissing the idea that its work with Israel amid the onslaught against Gaza could cause problems with clients in other parts of the world. Absolutely not," said Yael Har Even, deputy CEO of Oracle Israel, when asked about the possibility. Safra always says - the U.S. first, the second country is Israel, and after that the whole world."
The post Poised to Take Over TikTok, Oracle Is Accused of Clamping Down on Pro-Palestine Dissent appeared first on The Intercept.