{"id":617379,"date":"2026-09-16T02:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/617379\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T02:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:14:09","slug":"cisco-faces-civil-rights-probe-over-alleged-pro-palestinian-worker-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/617379\/","title":{"rendered":"Cisco faces civil rights probe over alleged pro-Palestinian worker claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cisco Systems likely violated the civil rights of Palestinian<\/a>, Arab, and Muslim employees, a federal agency has found, after employees were subjected to harassing messages, some of them posted by employees in an internal forum called the Connected Jewish Network.<\/p>\n

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in June that there was \u201creasonable cause to believe\u201d Cisco subjected the employees to a hostile work environment<\/a> based on their national origin, religion, or association in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The determination follows media reports and an EEOC probe into an ugly climate at the tech company following the Oct. 7, 2023<\/a>, deadly attacks by Hamas on southern Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees called on the company to end its business dealings with Israel, while Jewish employees said the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EEOC case, however, turned in part on messages shared in the internal Connected Jewish Network forum. A complaint filed by Legal Aid at Work, which represented the Muslim and pro-Palestinian employees, said employees on the Jewish forum had \u201crepeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths\u201d and \u201clabeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent, terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a massive multinational corporation with all the resources in the world, and they couldn\u2019t get it right,\u201d Christopher Ho, a director at Legal Aid at Work, told The Guardian, which reported on the EEOC finding last month. \u201cThankfully the EEOC did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"InIn this photo illustration, a person holds a smartphone displaying the logo of Cisco Systems Inc. (credit: illustration by Cheng Xin\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Ho said Cisco had \u201cat best failed to take their harassment<\/a> seriously\u201d and through its inaction had sent \u201cthe implicit message that its pro-Palestinian employees were unworthy of protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Employees consider legal action after EEOC determination<\/p>\n

The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the EEOC has indicated it will not sue. The finding could nonetheless strengthen employees\u2019 cases if they pursue their own lawsuits. The employees are considering collective and individual litigation, according to media reports.<\/p>\n

The case examines the period after a group of mostly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees called Bridge to Humanity circulated an open letter urging Cisco to end its business dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the letter. The employees said they were subsequently subjected to racist and Islamophobic harassment.<\/p>\n

In August 2024, employees, including some concerned Jewish employees, filed a 76-page ethics complaint accusing more than a dozen colleagues of creating a hostile work environment through posts on the Connected Jewish Network, which was visible to all company employees, according to the Guardian.<\/p>\n

The episode was not one-sided. Wired magazine, in a 2024 investigation into the dispute, reported that some Jewish Cisco employees also believed the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. One former employee told the magazine that Cisco leadership could have done more to \u201creduce the mess across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cisco case comes amid broader EEOC workplace enforcement efforts<\/p>\n

Legal Aid at Work believes this is the first EEOC finding against a major tech company involving discrimination against workers engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the EEOC has made combating workplace antisemitism a major policy and enforcement priority, with scrutiny on academia and the private sector increasing under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Cisco has disputed the EEOC\u2019s determination, saying it had \u201cthoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.\u201d The company previously said it had removed some comments, issued discipline warnings, and provided coaching to multiple employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cisco Systems likely violated the civil rights of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim employees, a federal agency has found,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61057,1903,2116,14063,85,46,43,6608,2466,19053,58],"class_list":["post-617379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-civil-rights","tag-diaspora","tag-employment","tag-equality","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-palestinian","tag-pro-palestinian-groups","tag-pro-palestinian-protests","tag-the-october-7-massacre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}