Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas.
The two employees told The Associated Press that they were fired by phone Thursday night, hours after the lunchtime event at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington.
The two were part of an employee coalition called “No Azure for Apartheid,” which has opposed the company selling its cloud computing technology to the Israeli government. But they noted that Thursday’s event was similar to other authorized donation campaigns for people in need.
“We have many members of the Microsoft community who have lost family members, who have lost friends or loved ones,” said Abdo Mohamed, researcher and data scientist. “But Microsoft really failed to give us a space where we can come together and share our pain and honor the memory of those who can no longer speak for themselves.”
Microsoft explained Friday that it “terminated the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy,” but declined to provide further details.
Mohamed, who is from Egypt, said he now needs to get a new job in the next two months to transfer his work visa and not be deported.
The other affected person, Hossam Nasr, indicated that the purpose of the vigil was both “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to draw attention to Microsoft’s complicity with the genocide” due to the Israeli army’s use of its technology. .
Nasr noted that his dismissal was announced on social media by the group Stop Antisemitism more than an hour before receiving the call from Microsoft. The group did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment about how it learned the news.
Months earlier, the same group had called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr for his public statements about Israel.
Nasr, raised in Egypt and a 2021 graduate of Harvard University, is a co-organizer of the group Harvard Alumni for Palestine. Earlier this year, Google fired more than 50 workers over protests over technology the company supplies to the Israeli government amid the war in Gaza. The layoffs were due to internal turmoil and sit-ins at Google offices over “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to Israel.
Microsoft noted in its Friday statement about the layoffs that it remains “dedicated to maintaining a professional and respectful work environment. For privacy and confidentiality reasons, we cannot provide specific details.”
