Google has fired a software engineer who disrupted a company-sponsored Israeli tech event in New York City, according to media reports and a campaign group.

A spokesperson for Google told the Middle East Eye website that the employee – who disrupted a keynote address by the head of Google Israel, Barak Regev, on Monday – was terminated for “interfering with an official company-sponsored event”.

Videos of the incident showed the employee speaking out against Google’s Project Nimbus, the company’s $1.2bn cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. He was heard shouting “I refuse to build technology that empowers genocide” and “Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger.”

No Tech for Apartheid, a campaign group, accused Google of engaging in a “clear cut act of retaliation”. It said the dismissed worker was “proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide”.