Ex-Amazon employee criticizes silence on colleague’s Hamas capture, Amazon defends approach
Sasha Trufanov has been held hostage by Hamas since October 7. “Our focus remains on supporting all efforts to bring Sasha home safely, and continuing to ensure his family is supported during this difficult time,” Amazon said in response. “All of a sudden people rediscover ‘institutional neutrality’,” says former colleague Joshua Burgin.
A former Amazon employee who has expressed frustration at the company’s silence surrounding one of his former colleagues’ capture in Gaza by Hamas believes that “institutions have failed all of us.” Joshua Burgin was the former AWS Outposts General Manager at Amazon and one of its first 50 employees, but today serves as Chief Product Officer at Upwind, an Israeli cloud security company that raised $80 million in just 11 months.
It was a professional move he described as “the perfect marriage of Zionism” to become closer to Israel following October 7 and seeing the rising antisemitism in educational institutions and American industries.
“Companies and universities in America in 2015, they started speaking out on a wide variety of issues, and not just in the way that I think almost everybody agrees with,” Burgin told CTech. “In 2020 after some of the racial issues in America, there were lots of press releases… Amazon and other companies went out of their way to issue proclamations. And universities are all over this.”
According to Burgin, the actions of October 7 and the West’s reaction to the attack spurred a different response than what was historically expected. “Antisemitism explodes or a Jewish employee is held hostage, and all of a sudden people rediscover what we call ‘institutional neutrality’. That sits extremely poorly with me.”
It has been 283 days since 30-year-old Amazon employee Sasha Trufanov was abducted by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz alongside family members who have since been released. In the months since the attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, Amazon has faced increased criticism for failing to publicly acknowledge his ordeal or connection to the company. According to Burgin, it is Amazon's policy to typically remain quiet and risk “appearing misunderstood” while letting its business results speak for themselves - but this may not be good enough in the court of public opinion.
According to an op-ed by David Weissmann in the New York Post, “Amazon claims that bringing attention to Sasha’s plight would further endanger him.”
“On a human level, employees at AWS and the Jewish employees in America see that every other company that has a big employee presence in Israel, like Microsoft or Nvidia, has spoken out more,” Burgin explained. “They're not afraid to speak out but Amazon doesn't have that DNA. If your corporate communication style is to be silent when it comes to human issues, it just doesn't work.”
While Amazon has kept its presence in Israel following the attack, even hosting an AWS Summit in Tel Aviv earlier this month with photos of the hostages and calls to Bring Them Home, the statements have remained rare or entirely absent. Given the last few years of corporate pandering to social issues such as Black Lives Matter or month-long Pride celebrations, the very real issues surrounding Jews in Israel and the diaspora who today face threats to their safety have left Amazon facing “a blind spot” in how it handles public outcry.
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“The problem is that this is humanity and people hurting right now,” he said. “If they want to move back to a place where they don't comment on every issue, that's probably good. Most companies should do that separately. But if you have an employee who is held hostage under the worst possible conditions imaginable, to me that transcends politics.”
Internally within the company the situation is often discussed among workers. Other employees who chose to remain anonymous stated that in a few cases, emails are sent in the organization about Sasha and he is frequently mentioned at company events.
According to these employees, posters of Sasha are hanging in the offices and employees have volunteered on several occasions, making T-shirts with unique logos urging for his return. These logos were added to the emoji system that can be used on the company's official channels.
They also told CTech that Amazon officials are in continuous and close contact with the Trufanov family and events were held in the offices together with relatives Lena, Sapir, and Irena.
The overall corporate reaction to October 7 and the consequent attacks on Israel and Jews overseas spurred Burgin to leave his position in more corporate roles and enter the startup world. By Burgin's admission, his 20-year involvement with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish organizations, as well as his connection with Israel, were no longer sufficient for him. Upwind was founded by Amiram Shachar, CEO of Spot, which was sold to NetApp for $450 million, and who courted Burgin to join the company. It appeared to be the perfect way to contribute to Israel’s high-tech ecosystem and support the country in times of war while at the same time distancing himself from some of the problems facing America such as weak families, a declining birth rate, and “people who disagree with each other on fundamentally every social issue.”
“Startup Nation didn't just emerge because everyone here is a super genius and they know a lot about technology,” he said. “We as a nation in Israel need this innovation because we are beset on all sides by people who want us to fail. They want us to fail militarily, socially, and economically. And because there is such a strong kind of notion of family.”
He still lives in Seattle, Washington, but the new role allows him to reconnect in a way with Israeli society after feeling let down by institutions in the U.S. that he feels have different values today than in the past. Currently visiting Israel for a month, he is seeing first-hand some of the institutional differences between Israel and the West. “Patriotism, the love of the country, fundamentally is in everybody,” he concluded. “People don't write about that.”
Amazon told CTech in response: “Our focus remains on supporting all efforts to bring Sasha home safely, and continuing to ensure his family is supported during this difficult time. Our thoughts are with them and all those who continue to be impacted by the war.”
