After Hamas’s atrocities in Israel and the state’s retaliation in the Gaza Strip, executives at companies including Goldman Sachs and Google emailed staff and made public statements expressing sympathy for victims. Other business leaders chose to say nothing at all.
Both responses risked a backlash. Some companies have been criticised for “picking a side”; others condemned for their silence.
Keniro Miller, a human resources professional at French luxury company Cartier, was among the executives protesting against their companies’ failure to make a comment. “Saying nothing is complicit,” he wrote on LinkedIn. Richemont, Cartier’s parent company, which has chosen not to publicly make a statement, did not respond to requests for comment.