Microsoft workers protest at company HQ against Israeli ties

Gaza war demonstrators set up tents and declared the space a 'liberated zone'

A demonstrator holds a Palestinian flag at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, on August 19

Microsoft employees rallied at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters to try to increase pressure on the company to stop doing business with Israel over its war in Gaza.

Protesters started gathering on Tuesday afternoon at a plaza at the centre of a recently redeveloped part of the company’s main base, which covers about 200 hectares in the suburban town. They set up tents and declared the space a “liberated zone".

Addressing “friends and colleagues” through a microphone, former Microsoft employee and protest leader Hossam Nasr said: “We are here because over 22 months of genocide, Israel — powered by Microsoft — has been killing, maiming Palestinian children every hour.”

About an hour after the activists arrived, a Redmond police officer used his SUV speaker to warn they were trespassing and subject to arrest if they stayed.

Soon after, the about three dozen demonstrators packed up their tents, rolled up their banners and departed the plaza. They reassembled on a slice of sidewalk that organisers said was public property.

For more than a year, the Microsoft employee group No Azure for Apartheid, has been pushing Microsoft to end its relationship with Israel, saying use of the company’s products is contributing to civilian deaths in Gaza.

Azure, the company’s cloud-computing division, sells on-demand software and data storage to businesses and governments, including Israeli government and military agencies.

A handful of No Azure for Apartheid organisers have been fired for holding what Microsoft said was an unauthorised event on campus and disrupting speeches by executives.

“Microsoft is the most complicit digital arms manufacturer in Israel’s genocide of Gaza,” Nisreen Jaradat, a Microsoft employee, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a blog post published in May, the company said it had “found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza".

But Microsoft said this month that it had enlisted the law firm Covington & Burling to conduct a further review after a report that Israel’s military surveillance agency intercepted millions of mobile phone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and stored them on Azure servers.

That trove helped the military choose bombing targets in Gaza, according to reporting by The Guardian newspaper and other outlets.

The activists took their inspiration from protests staged on at least 100 US university campuses since the war in Gaza began.

Students at schools such as Columbia University pitched tents and called for their colleges to divest financial holdings tied to Israel and US weapons makers, in many cases sparking disciplinary action from administrators.