An employee from the Dublin branch of the Israeli software company Wix was fired this week after sharing posts on social media in which she called Israel a terrorist state, among other inflammatory statements.
According to the Irish Times, 26-year-old Courtney Carey was employed by Wix in the company’s Dublin offices for four and a half years prior to her dismissal.
In a post shared on her LinkedIn profile, Carey wrote that she was proud to be Irish and to “stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people against the Israeli apartheid.”
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas was triggered when some 2,500 Hamas terrorists carried out the deadliest massacre in Israeli history on October 7, killing 1,400 Israelis and capturing another 224 as hostages, most of them civilians.
In response, Israel vowed to eliminate the terror group, which rules the Gaza Strip, and to destroy its infrastructure in its entirety.
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Without acknowledging the massacre as the catalyst, Carey attributed the “root cause” of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war to “Zionist ideology which promotes an exclusivist state which denies Palestinian identity.”
“It is also an expansionary ideology, promoting illegal settlements on Palestinian land,” she continued. “Do not be fooled by establishment propaganda. You can oppose Zionism as a political ideology while standing firm against antisemitism which is also a form of racism.”
Faced with criticism for her statement as Israel entered its third week of fighting against Hamas and as thousands of rockets continue to be fired into Israel, Carey turned off commenting on her post and added an addendum.
“I would like to make it abundantly clear that although some may interpret my support for Palestinians as an act of support for Hamas. This is absolutely not the case. I condemn all forms of terrorism regardless of the perpetrator or victim,” she said.
“My criticism lies only on governing bodies who are putting their population at risk and not of the individuals who are victimized by their government’s actions, no life is worth more than another.”
Flowers stand on a coffin draped with the Israeli flag during the funeral of Dana Bachar and her son Carmel, victims of the October 7 Hamas massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri, at the cemetery in Kibbutz Gan Shlomo, near Rehovot, October 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Carey’s post caused significant backlash inside the company, leading Wix CEO Nir Zohar to decide to dismiss the employee, effective immediately.
In a statement posted online, Zohar wrote, “Our team members in Israel have been through so much since the horrible October 7 Hamas attack; they are in mourning, some lost their homes, others have lost friends and family members, many have been to multiple funerals in the span of the last 2 weeks…there is so much pain and personal trauma.
“In the midst of this, for all the Israelis to be called terrorists by someone they perceive as a teammate and a colleague is unfathomable, unexplainable and unacceptable.”
While Carey had initially been given a warning for a separate inflammatory post, she chose to post the statement to LinkedIn “that essentially points a blaming finger at the victims of horrific terrorism,” Zohar explained.
“Wix is a global company, it is an open and a liberal company. We would never try to limit anyone’s political views, we do however also hold a strong set of internal values about our team spirit, partnership and friendship,” he wrote.
“These accusations in such troubling times not only harm our Israeli team’s spirit, they also threaten the great connection between our Dublin offices with our 500 team members and their Israeli colleagues,” he added. “We therefore decided to part ways with this employee.”
Following her dismissal, Carey again posted on LinkedIn to announce that she had “decided to take some time away from social media.”
“These last few days have been tough,” she wrote, “but still in comparison a small price to pay. You haven’t heard the last of me!”
Wix currently employs some 500 people in its Dublin offices. In addition to its Israel and Ireland branches, the company has offices in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, the United States, Ukraine and Singapore.
Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Micheál Martin acknowledged Carey’s dismissal during a press conference on Tuesday.
The politician called Wix’s decision to terminate her employment “unacceptable,” and said he believed employees should be allowed to hold and express their own individual opinions.”
“We live in a democracy here, we tolerate debate, with freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, and people have different opinions on these issues,” he said. “People are entitled to have perspectives, once they don’t advocate for violence in the pursuit of those objectives.”