NEW YORK/ANKARA 

Two former employees at Microsoft who were fired in 2024 for organizing a vigil in support of Palestinians have accused the company of being complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and systemic apartheid in the West Bank.

Hossam Nasr, a software engineer, and Abdo Mohamed, a data scientist, told Anadolu that Microsoft’s technological services, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), translation, and data storage, have become essential tools used by the Israeli military to intensify its operations against Palestinians.

Nasr said the “No Azure for Apartheid” campaign, which they co-founded, was inspired by earlier efforts at other tech companies.

“That campaign started as bombs were dropping on the heads of Palestinian children in Gaza in the wake of the Sheikh Jarrah events in 2021,” he said.

“We took inspiration from our colleagues at Google and Amazon… to launch our own campaign at Microsoft in 2024,” he stated.

Their core demand, he explained, is to sever Microsoft’s partnerships that support military operations.

“It is no longer sufficient to be in meetings with executives or writing emails,” Nasr said.

“It is imperative for us… to stop materially contributing and materially partnering to the genocide of our brothers and sisters in Palestine,” he emphasized.

Genocide at ‘unforeseen levels’

According to Nasr, Microsoft provides cloud services, AI capabilities, translation, and data storage to the Israeli military, and “they use Microsoft translation services to translate the data they collect on Palestinians from Arabic to Hebrew.”

“Then they feed that into a pipeline of AI targeting systems that help determine where to bomb in Gaza and help Israel classify innocent Palestinians as terrorists,” he said, citing reports showing a 200-fold increase in Israel’s use of Microsoft’s AI tools between October 2023 and March 2024.

“Their usage of cloud storage increased to 13.6 petabytes,” he added.

“Microsoft Azure also hosts the target bank for the Israeli military,” he said, noting: “It hosts the civil registry of the Palestinian population.”

“These systems allow Israel to accelerate and exacerbate its genocide in Gaza to unforeseen levels,” he said.

Nasr also claimed that Microsoft engineers became deeply embedded in Israeli military units, including Unit 8200, Israel’s military intelligence branch.

“Microsoft employees become so embedded… that they become described as soldiers, acting as soldiers within those units,” he said.

“This kind of deep partnership allows Israel to automate and remove any sort of human element to the Palestinians,” he added. “It turns the mass murder of Palestinians into essentially a video game.”

 Microsoft’s support for ‘apartheid and racial segregation system’

He said Microsoft’s technology is also used in the West Bank through applications such as Al-Munasik, which helps control Palestinian movement.

“Microsoft is enabling the apartheid system and the racial segregation system in the West Bank and the rest of Palestine,” he said.

Nasr also criticized Microsoft’s employee donation program, alleging, “They allow donations to illegal Israeli settlements and match them.”

“Meanwhile, UNRWA, the organization most capable of providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, is not available in the program,” he explained.

Mohamed echoed these concerns, telling Anadolu that the campaign had drawn significant support.

“More than 7,000 folks signed our own campaign petition,” he said. “And more than 270,000 letters were sent to Microsoft executives and CEOs… demanding Microsoft end its role in that apartheid and genocide.”

He also noted that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has recently named Microsoft a priority boycott target.

“We’re calling to boycott investment and sanction,” he said, urging people to “stop buying Microsoft products, but also rethink their institutional use of Microsoft technology.”

Despite being fired, Mohamed said they would not be silenced. “We will continue to fight for Palestinians and Palestinian rights here in the diaspora, here in the belly of the beast, even under this crackdown, under this authoritarianism,” he vowed.

Losing job, being deported, ‘cheapest price to pay’

Nasr reflected on the risks of activism, saying losing his job or being deported was a “cheap price to pay” compared to what Palestinians endure.

“A lot of the time I’m asked… Are you not scared of being fired? Of being deported?” he said. “And my response is always… Are you not scared of being complicit in the Holocaust of our time? Of what you’ll tell your children and grandchildren when they ask… Where were you when the genocide in Palestine and Gaza was happening?”

Nasr also confirmed that their campaign coordinated the April 4 protests during Microsoft’s 50th anniversary events.

“As soon as we became aware that Microsoft was planning a celebration… we made it clear that we will not allow Microsoft to celebrate while their hands are stained with Palestinian blood,” he said.

They organized both internal and external protests, and “we tried our best to get our members on the inside… and thankfully we were able to get two of our members, Ibtihal and Vania, on the inside.”

“That sort of collaboration really shows how Microsoft’s complicity with apartheid and genocide has become untenable—not just to its workers, but also to community members and consumers around the world.

“We have made a huge dent in this Microsoft castle,” Nasr concluded. “I do believe that Microsoft’s reputation has never been more tarnished because of its complicity in genocide,” he said.

The Israeli army renewed its assault on Gaza on March 18, shattering a Jan. 19 ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement.

More than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.