Disturbing the Microsoft Employees Disturbed by a War-Profiteer: A Brief Report on the Microsoft Workforce

This week, protests are being held just days after Microsoft acknowledged its cloud and artificial intelligence contracts with Israel and said it had found no evidence that its tools were used to harm people in Gaza.

In April, Microsoft worker Ibtihal Aboussad disrupted a 50th-anniversary event by calling Microsoft CEO Mustafa Suleyman a war profiteer. The Microsoft event was disrupted by another employee. The acts of protest were organized by the No Azure for Apartheid group, which calls for Microsoft to terminate contracts with the Israeli government and endorse a permanent ceasefire, among other demands. Aboussad was fired from the company; the second protester, Vaniya Agrawal, was dismissed early after putting in her resignation.

Microsoft employees have discovered that any emails they send with the terms “Palestine” or “Gaza” are getting temporarily blocked from being sent to recipients inside and outside the company. Dozens of Microsoft workers cannot send emails with the words “Palestine”, “Gaza” and “Genocide” in the body of their messages because of the software giant’s stance on the issue.

“Emailing large numbers of employees about any topic not related to work is not appropriate. We have an established forum for employees who have opted in to political issues,” says Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw in a statement to The Verge. Over the past couple of days, a lot of politically focused emails have been sent to tens of thousands of employees across the company and we have taken measures to try and reduce the number of emails to those that haven’t opted in.