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StringersHubflipped into StringersHub VideosUS: Fired Microsoft employees accuse company of enabling Israel’s attacks on Gaza
UNITED STATES - RECENT APRIL, 2025: Two former employees at Microsoft who were fired in 2024 for organizing a vigil in support of Palestinians have accused the company of being complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and systemic apartheid in the West Bank. Hossam Nasr, a software engineer, and Abdo Mohamed, a data scientist, told Anadolu that Microsoft’s technological services, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), translation, and data storage, have become essential tools used by the Israeli military to intensify its operations against Palestinians. Nasr said the “No Azure for Apartheid” campaign, which they co-founded, was inspired by earlier efforts at other tech companies. “That campaign started as bombs were dropping on the heads of Palestinian children in Gaza in the wake of the Sheikh Jarrah events in 2021,” he said. “We took inspiration from our colleagues at Google and Amazon… to launch our own campaign at Microsoft in 2024,” he stated. Their core demand, he explained, is to sever Microsoft’s partnerships that support military operations. “It is no longer sufficient to be in meetings with executives or writing emails,” Nasr said. “It is imperative for us… to stop materially contributing and materially partnering to the genocide of our brothers and sisters in Palestine,” he emphasized. - Genocide at ‘unforeseen levels’ According to Nasr, Microsoft provides cloud services, AI capabilities, translation, and data storage to the Israeli military, and “they use Microsoft translation services to translate the data they collect on Palestinians from Arabic to Hebrew.” “Then they feed that into a pipeline of AI targeting systems that help determine where to bomb in Gaza and help Israel classify innocent Palestinians as terrorists,” he said, citing reports showing a 200-fold increase in Israel’s use of Microsoft’s AI tools between October 2023 and March 2024. “Their usage of cloud storage increased to 13.6 petabytes,” he added. “Microsoft Azure also hosts the target bank for the Israeli military,” he said, noting: “It hosts the civil registry of the Palestinian population.” “These systems allow Israel to accelerate and exacerbate its genocide in Gaza to unforeseen levels,” he said. Nasr also claimed that Microsoft engineers became deeply embedded in Israeli military units, including Unit 8200, Israel’s military intelligence branch. “Microsoft employees become so embedded… that they become described as soldiers, acting as soldiers within …
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