Microsoft is firing employees who organized a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza

Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas.

The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired in a phone call Thursday evening, hours after a lunchtime event they hosted at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington.

Both employees were members of an employee coalition called No Azure for Apartheid, which opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud computing technology to the Israeli government. But they argued Thursday’s event was similar to other Microsoft-sanctioned employee gift campaigns. in need

“There are so many members of the Microsoft community who have lost family, friends or loved ones,” said Abdelrahman Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist. “But Microsoft really didn’t find a place for us to come together and share our grief and honor the memory of people who can no longer speak for themselves.”

On Friday, Microsoft said it had “terminated certain individuals in accordance with internal policy,” but declined to provide details.

Mohamed, who is originally from Egypt, said he needed a new job within the next two months to transfer his work visa and avoid deportation.

Another fired employee, Hossam Nasr, said the purpose of the viche was to “honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and draw attention to Microsoft’s complicity in genocide” through the use of its technology by the Israeli military.

Nasr said his firing was announced on social media by the group Stop Anti-Semitism more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned of the firing.

The same group months earlier had publicly called for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr for his public stance on Israel.

Nasr, an Egyptian-raised 2021 graduate of Harvard University, is also a co-organizer of Harvard Alumni for Palestine.

Earlier this year, Google laid off more than 50 workers after protests against technology the company supplied to the Israeli government during the war in Gaza. The layoffs were sparked by internal turmoil and sit-ins at Google offices centered on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government.

Microsoft said in a statement Friday about the layoffs that it remains “committed to maintaining a professional and respectful work environment. For privacy and confidentiality reasons, we cannot provide specific details.”