A new lawsuit against the chip giant Intel for firing an Israeli software engineer after he reported that his manager had “liked” posts on social media that “cheered” the death of Israelis and glorified Hamas terrorists . According to the lawsuit, Intel ignored and even appointed Bader to be the direct manager of the Israeli engineer in the Manhattan office in January 2024.
According to the lawsuit, Alaa Bader, Intel’s vice president for customer satisfaction, “liked” a number of posts on the X network (formerly Twitter) praising the killing of IDF soldiers by Hamas. Among other things, an illustration of a member of the Palestinian terrorist organization stepping on the neck of An Israeli soldier lying on his face in the ground.
One of the posts that Badr “liked”, on December 29, 2023, read: “Praise God, the trampling is complete. May Allah preserve our Qassam!”, referring to Hamas’s military arm, the Az ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Other posts that received entertaining “likes” included a photo of an IDF soldier being choked by a hand with the word “Gaza”, and a post that used a fire emoji to encourage the bombing of a building that allegedly housed five “Zionist soldiers” who would be “sent to hell”.
The New York Post reported that Bader’s alleged support of violent anti-Israel rhetoric was “particularly troubling” for the Israeli engineer, a former IDF soldier whose family still lives in Israel and was almost fatally injured when a Hamas missile hit the building where they live in February. According to the lawsuit , Intel “turned an eye” on Bader’s disturbing activity on social networks after it was reported at the end of 2023, and even appointed Bader to be the direct manager of the Israeli engineer in the Manhattan office in January 2024.
“He was forced to report and communicate daily with a man he knew would be happy to murder, and even burn alive, his immediate family members,” reads the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the engineer – identified only as John Doe – by the law firm Wigdor LLP.
The American newspaper also reports that Bader, a Muslim of Egyptian origin, presented himself publicly as someone dedicated to “bridging gaps” and “promoting intercultural competence” between Muslims and non-Muslims, the lawsuit claims. However, his “carefully crafted persona” fell apart shortly after Israel launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip – following the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7.
The lawsuit claims that Bader “not only sympathized with the plight of innocent Gazans, trapped between Hamas and Israel,” but “openly supported and celebrated the murder of Israelis like the plaintiff and his family members.” It is also claimed that Bader “pressured” the anonymous engineer to tell him whether other Intel employees were Israeli and “to mock that there are ‘so many Israeli employees in our company’.”
According to the lawsuit, the engineer’s former manager at the startup, which was acquired by Intel, filed an internal complaint on behalf of the engineer last February, and sent the company screenshots of the violent posts that were allegedly “liked” by an entertainer. But Intel did not take disciplinary action against Bader, and instead fired the Israeli worker in April, citing a “need to cut costs,” despite a history of promotions and excellent performance reviews.
Now, the “New York Post” reports, the lawsuit demands that the engineer be reinstated and asks the court to order Intel, Bader and Jaber to pay him compensation for the alleged discrimination and “illegal retaliation”. The engineer is trying to conduct the case anonymously, claiming that he may be exposed to harassment and physical violence if he is identified in public as a former IDF soldier.
An Intel spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit, but told the New York Post: “As a company, we have a long-standing culture of diversity and inclusion and do not tolerate hate speech of any kind.” The newspaper noted that it was not possible to obtain Bader’s response.
The lawsuit harshly criticized Intel, whose revenues in 2023 amounted to $54.3 billion, for allegedly “doing nothing to protect its Israeli employees” despite its reliance on more than ten thousand Israeli employees around the world.
The lawsuit added and noted that Intel relied “heavily” on Israelis and Jews since its founding, and the first employee recruited in 1968 was Andy Grove, a Jew who survived the Nazi occupation and fled Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20.
Douglas Vigdor, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit, told the New York Post that “while the rise in anti-Semitism around the world is alarming, it is inexcusable that Intel not only allows such behavior but also took retaliatory actions against a former member of the IDF who complained about extremely disturbing stereotypes published on social media by his boss.”
He added: “Intel must be held accountable for allowing this to happen and we intend to do exactly that. It must stop.”
