These employees succeeded in identifying the best way to raise awareness, achieving large media coverage and reaching a wider audience than if they had protested outside the workplace. They stuck to their values, even though it meant sacrificing their (I'm assuming) generous compensation.
I think there's some merit to that which would translate to success in other parts of your business, if you were to hire them.
</End devil's advocate>
EDIT: Huh--I guess I'm wrong then. I thought this was more well-known than it was.
Not saying I agree or disagree. Just saying that the protest succeeded in raising awareness.
Israel or the IDF can buy this anywhere, or even just build it in-house (and there's a huge cost to spending a long time on procurement if someone can get Google to cancel this, but unfortunately it doesn't matter for anyone in Gaza right now)
and while there are a lot of objections to this (why not spend it on something a lot more useful, feeding Google is bad, etc), awareness of this, or even cancelling this does nothing to move the needle on the actual very high-prio issue :/
so all this has a huge cost to them (they lost their jobs, emotional distress) and in the end ends up as performative as Twitter/Mastodon threads :(
You want to have a position on Israel vs. Palestine? That's fine; I think most of us do. You want to advocate for your position? Go for it.
You want to advocate for your position at work, in a way that disrupts work for others? No. Hard pass. I'm running a business, not a platform for your soapbox. And if you did it at your previous place, you're likely to do it at mine.