Tech giant Microsoft has reportedly dismissed two staff members for hosting an “unauthorized” vigil at the company’s Redmond, Washington, site in memory of Palestinians slain in Gaza.
According to the Seattle Times, the two workers were fired over the phone late Thursday because they were both allegedly part of a group of workers known as “No Azure for Apartheid,” which is opposed to Microsoft selling its cloud computing technology to the Israeli government.
Microsoft said on Friday that it had “terminated the employment of certain individuals in compliance with internal policy,” but it gave no other information.
“We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” the newspaper quoted Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist who was fired, as saying.
“But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honor the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves,” he added.
Hossam Nasr, another employee who was fired, said that the vigil was held “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” due to the Israeli military’s use of its technology.
Nasr also raised issues about Microsoft’s dismissal procedure by pointing out that the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism had made the announcement of his termination on social media more than an hour before he received Microsoft’s formal notification.
Earlier, Google dismissed fifty workers in response to demonstrations against technology the company had provided to the Israeli government during the conflict in Gaza.
