Dozens of anti-Israel Microsoft staff, many sporting face masks and keffiyes, swarmed the corporate’s headquarters in Washington state to protest the Huge Tech large’s ties to Israel’s army.
The protesters arrange tents in a “liberated zone” on the Redmond campus, renaming it the “Martyred Palestinian Kids’s Plaza” — and toted indicators that urged co-workers to “Be a part of the employee intifada: no labor for genocide.” Different placards stated “cease ravenous Gaza.”
A bunch calling itself “No Azure For Apartheid” organized Tuesday’s sit-in after The Guardian reported that an Israeli army intelligence company was utilizing Microsoft’s Azure software program to amass recordings of cellphone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Financial institution.
“As soon as once more, the enablers of genocide and apartheid select to criminalize people who oppose the bombing of Palestinians, relatively than the warfare criminals ethnically cleaning and ravenous our individuals in Palestine,” the group — an offshoot of No Tech For Apartheid — wrote on X.
The group additionally revealed a prolonged manifesto calling for a “employee intifada” and stating that “it might not be cogs within the Israeli genocidal machine.”
“The group was requested to depart, and so they left,” a Microsoft spokesperson instructed The Publish on Wednesday.
About 50 present and former Microsoft employees took half within the sit-in, firm officers stated.
Microsoft had stated it was not conscious “of the surveillance of civilians or assortment of their cellphone conversations utilizing Microsoft’s providers” and would conduct a proper overview of the allegations.
The protest was the most recent signal of ongoing unrest at Microsoft over its contracts with Israel.
In Might, the corporate reportedly started barring staff from utilizing sure phrases in firm emails, together with “Palestine,” “Gaza” and “genocide.”
It additionally fired a software program engineer who interrupted a speech by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to protest the assistance given to the Israel’s army.
Elsewhere, Google fired greater than two dozen staff final yr for disruptive anti-Israel protests at its places of work.
As The Publish solely reported, Huge Tech staff had been among the many greatest particular person donors to New York Metropolis mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s marketing campaign.
the Demcratic socialist has confronted warmth in the course of the marketing campaign cycle over his refusal to again away from the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
