Two Microsoft employees were sacked on Wednesday after staging a sit-in protest at the office of company president Brad Smith, demanding the tech giant end its business ties with Israel amid the Gaza war. A Microsoft spokesperson said the employees were terminated for “serious breaches of company policies and code of conduct” following what the firm described as “a break-in at the executive offices.” The two employees were part of a protest group, ‘No Azure for Apartheid’. Anna Hattle and Riki Fameli were informed of their dismissal through voicemail. Both were among seven protesters arrested on Tuesday during the office occupation. The remaining five were former Microsoft staffers and activists outside the company.“We are here because Microsoft continues to provide Israel with the tools it needs to commit genocide while gaslighting and misdirecting its own workers about this reality,” Hattle said in a statement on Wednesday, according to Reuters.No Azure for Apartheid, named after Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, has demanded that the company sever ties with Israel and pay reparations to Palestinians. The protests follow a joint investigation which reported that an Israeli military surveillance agency has been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud to store large volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls. The probe also claimed that Israel relied heavily on Microsoft’s technology for surveillance operations in Gaza and the West Bank.Microsoft said it was examining claims that Israel’s military has relied on its Azure cloud service to store vast amounts of phone data gathered through surveillance of Palestinians. This is not the first time Microsoft has faced employee dissent over the issue. In April, pro-Palestinian staff interrupted remarks by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman at the company’s 50th anniversary event. Two of those employees were subsequently dismissed.
