Dozens of protesters set up an unauthorized encampment at Microsoft’s Washington headquarters Tuesday, calling on executives to terminate all business ties with Israel over the war in Gaza.
Around 50 current and former Microsoft employees, along with community activists, gathered at the company’s East Campus plaza in Redmond and pitched tents in what they dubbed a “liberated zone.” Organizers renamed the space “The Martyred Palestinian Children’s Plaza” and set up a negotiations table with a banner reading “Microsoft Execs, Come to the Table.”
Demonstrators also filled the plaza with shrouds symbolizing Gaza deaths and displayed a large plate reading “Stop Starving Gaza.” But once Redmond police threatened arrests for trespassing, the illegal encampment was dismantled and the protest moved to the sidewalk.
Microsoft has yet to comment on the protest, but in past statements has stressed that its technology cannot be used for unlawful surveillance or human rights violations.
The demonstration came two weeks after investigations by The Guardian alleged that Israel’s military intelligence Unit 8200 has been storing intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. According to the reports, 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data — equivalent to roughly 200 million hours of audio — were being stored on Microsoft servers in the Netherlands by July.
In a statement regarding the allegations, Microsoft maintains it provides standard commercial cloud services to Israel’s Ministry of Defense but “found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.” However the company acknowledged providing “limited emergency support to the Israeli government in the weeks following October 7, 2023, to help rescue hostages.”
It’s not the first time that Microsoft has been targeted by anti-Israel protesters. In April the company terminated two software engineers who disrupted Microsoft’s 50th anniversary speech by shouting: “Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”
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