Microsoft workers fired over Gaza vigil say company ‘crumbled under pressure’

Two Microsoft employees who were fired last week after organizing a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza say the company retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian activism.

The two, Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist, and Hossam Nasr, a software engineer, organized the event outside Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on 24 October. They were fired later that evening.

“Microsoft really crumbled under pressure, internally and externally, to fire me and to shut down and retaliate against our event, not because of policy violations, simply because we were daring to humanize Palestinians, and simply because we were daring to say that Microsoft should not be complicit with an army that is plausibly accused of genocide,” said Nasr, who has been criticized on social media and in internal Microsoft employee communication groups over his support for Palestine.

Both employees were members of No Azure for Apartheid, a group of Microsoft workers protesting the company’s sale of its cloud computing technology to Israel.

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