‘Double Standards and Hypocrisy’: The Dissent at Cisco Over the War in Gaza

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins has acknowledged the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians .

But behind the scenes, eight current and one former employees allege, Cisco has marginalized its internal Palestinian advocacy groups and their hundreds of members.

Cisco ’s chief social impact and inclusion officer, Brian Tippens , refutes the accusations of marginalization and unequal treatment.

Members of the company’s Palestinian Network and an informal internal collective called Bridge to Humanity say what they perceive as the company's alleged silencing of them deepened in July and August .

For six weeks , they had been gathering signatures for a 33 -page internal petition calling for transparency on and potential cancellation of various contracts to provide servers and other gear to the Israeli government.

The petition had drawn over 1,700 signatures by that point, an image seen by WIRED shows.

The disputed photo with Katsoudas dates back to the company’s Inclusive Communities breakfast on August 28 at its annual GSX sales conference in Las Vegas .

Employees and a company-hired photographer took shots of her and Tippens alongside some Palestinian Network members who were wearing the T-shirts from the Lebanon trip with the map and “ Palestine ” written in Arabic .

On August 29 , an employee posted to LinkedIn one of the photos that a colleague had captured.