I think you've inadvertently made the case for cancelling the "activit talk".
If for example you had a talk in Google Israel that presented the discrimination against Israeli arabs in modern Israel, I suspect you'd get a decent turnout and positive response (especially as Tech is unusually left leaning).
If you had a talk that mentioned colonialism (like you do in your post) you'll just get people fruitlessly arguing with each other ("This is our land from 2,000 years ago, the arabs are the colonists", "This is our/your land thanks to a UN decision, settlements that go beyond the 1948/1967 borders are colonialism", "All you jews are colonists").
You'd just end up further dividing your employees into hostile groups, even if they were previously able to work together (by just being silently tolerant of each other's opinions).
> I also find it really strange that any criticism of Israel is labelled as anti-Semitic.
I think this one is a problem "on both sides".
There are some on the Israeli side that will try to silence criticism by equating it to antisemitism.
There are some antisemites that will express themselves in the form of "reasonable criticism".
There are some that will innocently make some criticism that seems reasonable to them, but due to ignorance of the situation or facts, lack of nuance or just the difficulty of communicating cross culturaly via a limited medium end up with sometimes that seems antisemitic when examined at depth by "the other side".
And no matter which way you go, it is very hard to tell where you are.
If for example you had a talk in Google Israel that presented the discrimination against Israeli arabs in modern Israel, I suspect you'd get a decent turnout and positive response (especially as Tech is unusually left leaning).
If you had a talk that mentioned colonialism (like you do in your post) you'll just get people fruitlessly arguing with each other ("This is our land from 2,000 years ago, the arabs are the colonists", "This is our/your land thanks to a UN decision, settlements that go beyond the 1948/1967 borders are colonialism", "All you jews are colonists").
You'd just end up further dividing your employees into hostile groups, even if they were previously able to work together (by just being silently tolerant of each other's opinions).
> I also find it really strange that any criticism of Israel is labelled as anti-Semitic.
I think this one is a problem "on both sides".
There are some on the Israeli side that will try to silence criticism by equating it to antisemitism.
There are some antisemites that will express themselves in the form of "reasonable criticism".
There are some that will innocently make some criticism that seems reasonable to them, but due to ignorance of the situation or facts, lack of nuance or just the difficulty of communicating cross culturaly via a limited medium end up with sometimes that seems antisemitic when examined at depth by "the other side".
And no matter which way you go, it is very hard to tell where you are.