Microsoft accused one of the workers in a termination letter Monday of “purpose to gain infamy and to the greatest extent possible to undermine the highly anticipated incident.” Microsoft said another worker had announced her resignation but ordered her to leave five days early on Monday.
The protests began Friday when Microsoft software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad went up to the stage of Microsoft AI Ambitions where executives announced new product features and long-term vision.
“You claim you care about the benefits of using AI, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military,” Aboussad yelled at Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI. “Fifty thousand people died, Microsoft has provided power for this genocide in our region.”
The protests forced Suleyman to stop his speech while broadcasting live on Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. Among the participants on Microsoft’s 50th anniversary are co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft said Suleiman calmly tried to reduce the situation. “Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” he said. Aboussad continued, Suleiman and “Microsoft Everyone” were covered in blood. Before being accompanied to quit the event, she also threw out a keffiyeh scarf, which has become a symbol of support for the Palestinian people.
Second protester, Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted the late stage of the event.
According to Aparttheid’s advocacy group No Azure, Toronto-based Microsoft Canada headquarters, was invited to call a HR representative and she was told she was fired immediately.
Earlier this year, AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI have been used as part of Israel’s military plan to select bombing targets in recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon, according to an Associated Press investigation. The story also contains details of the erroneous Israeli air strike in 2023, which struck a vehicle carrying members of the Lebanese family and killed three young girls and their grandmother.
Microsoft told Aboussad in the termination letter that she could have raised her concerns secretly to the manager. Instead, it said she made “hostile, unreasonable and highly inappropriate allegations” against Suleiman and the company, and her actions were “so aggressive and destructive that you had to accompany you out of the room by safely and safely.”
Agrawal has given her two weeks notice and is preparing to leave the company on April 11, but on Monday, a manager emailed Microsoft “decided to resign immediately today.”
This is the most public, but not the first protest about Microsoft’s cooperation with Israel. In February, a meeting with CEO Satya Nadella evacuated five Microsoft employees in protest of the contract.
“We offer many avenues to voice,” the company said on Friday. “It is important that we require that we do this in a way that does not cause business disruption. If this happens, we require participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring that our business practices maintain the highest standards.”
Microsoft declined to say whether further action is being taken Friday, but Aboussad and Agrawal hope it will appear after neither getting their work account will be available soon after the protests.
Dozens of Google workers were fired last year after internal protests with the Israeli government. Employees sit at Google offices in New York and Sunnyville, California, a $1.2 billion deal called the Nimbus project, providing AI technology to the Israeli government.
Google workers then filed a complaint with the National Labor and Industrial Relations Commission in an attempt to retrieve the job.
