“Microsoft Ignites” Protests for Collusion in Gaza Genocide

SAN FRANCISCO (11-19) – The annual Microsoft’s Ignite conference this year is taking place in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Center where for four days the company will showcase their latest cloud and AI developments to 15,000 attendees. While the conference will be of great interest to the tech crowd and investors, protesters from No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) outside the meeting halls have called for “no business as usual,” saying the company is not welcome here for its role in the Gaza “genocide-profiteering business” and are calling for a “Digital Arms Embargo.”

The morning’s keynote speech on November 18 by Judson Althoff, Microsoft CEO of Commercial Business, was interrupted by Patric Fort, a Microsoft Senior software engineer who according to activists shouted “Hey, Judson! The blood of the children of Gaza is on our hands, Judson! I worked at Microsoft for seven years and I resign today!” After which Fort followed through by sending out a mass resignation email to thousands of Microsoft employees, saying, “To do nothing is to be complicit ... Whatever your situation is, I encourage you to resist what is happening in the way that is best for you.”

While this was happening, actions against the company’s complicity in the Gaza genocide were also taking place in Redmond, Washington at the Redmond Technology Station near Microsoft Headquarters, and at company offices in Dublin, Ireland, where members of Your Tech Their Deaths called for the company to fully sever its sales and services to Israel.

Meanwhile activists at Yerba Buena Gardens, near the convention center held a rally promising to hold Microsoft accountable for their active role in the genocide by committing “…to escalate and mobilize until Microsoft cuts ALL ties with the Israeli military!” The company’s AI and Azure, its cloud computing platform that is hosted on data centers worldwide and offers more than 600 services to users, counts the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) as one of its customers. Azure was the subject of an August article in the Guardian, one of Britains oldest newspapers, that alleged the company’s programs were being used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) including Unit 8200, Israel’s Intelligence unit that has an active role in the Gaza genocide.

The Guardian article divulged that “…multiple individuals had reported…a unit of the Israeli Defense Forces” were using “Azure for the storage of data files of phone calls obtained through broad or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Microsoft responded to the article’s allegations by saying that its “…standard terms of service prohibit this type of usage. Based on our review, including both our internal assessments and external review, we have found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.”

Their patent denial holds no water with protesters who disputed the company’s claim in saying that, while the company had terminated some services to Unit 8200, it was “too little and too late.” Activists viewed their protest as sending a message to Microsoft and all tech company executives that “their protests will continue until all services to the Israeli military are cut and that they we will be there to protest and disrupt and escalate until their demands are met and Palestine is free.”

An article by +972 magazine and Local Call in April of this year revealed that for the first time the Israeli military has developed an artificial intelligence-based program using Microsoft AI capabilities to process massive amounts of data in uncovering “suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)” for assassination along with their families, despite that “the system makes what are regarded as ‘errors’ in approximately 10 percent of cases and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.”

Hossam, a former Microsoft employee who worked on Azure as a software engineer, told this reporter that he was fired by the company for “organizing a vigil on the Microsoft campus” in October during the annual company “Give Month.” The program allows employees to host events to raise funds for causes they care about. Hossam’s vigil to honor the martyrs of the-then yearlong genocide in Gaza was responded to by the company when he received a telephone call telling him that his “employment was terminated immediately.”

He went on to say that Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees at Microsoft are treated “one hundred percent differently that those who are not Muslim.” One example he cited was that he was investigated for three months by HR after making a statement that “Palestinians deserve dignity” and “freedom from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” For his statement he said he “had financial sanctions imposed against him, denied a promotion for a year and had his bonus and salary increase withheld for a year.” Although people called him “a member of Hamas,” anyone speaking in support of Israel with some saying “from the river to the sea Israel will always be” never faced any repercussions.

Because of this type of toxic workplace environment at Microsoft, workers have called on the company to “Ensure the safety of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and allied employees by protecting pro-Palestinian speech, actions, and fundraising initiatives on internal company platforms.”

After their rally, the group marched along the crowded sidewalks to the main hall at Moscone Center chanting, “Microsoft you can't hide, you sell tech for genocide,” while leafletting passersby along the way. All of this was happening while a billboard truck circled the streets around the convention center featuring the likeness of Microsoft’s $95-million-a-year chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, which was superimposed on $ signs, drones and flames, and boldly proclaiming that “Microsoft Ignites Genocide.”

After arriving at Moscone West, protesters were met by police barricades barring them from entering the building as they engaged in chanting and chalking messages on the sidewalk in continuing their protest as the Center blasted music to drown out their chants which could be heard inside the cavernous center.

One Microsoft employee urged workers and users of the company’s products, all of whom are complicit in the genocide, to “use our positions of power to actively boycott to continue to create change to a more ethical society. We all recognize that a “single drop of blood from our siblings in Gaza is worth way, way more than a paycheck from a ‘cushy’ tech job.”

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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