Microsoft has fired four employees following protests on its campuses over the company’s business relationship with Israel. They were the latest examples of increasing activism within U.S. corporations as the conflict in Gaza continues to grow.
Two of the workers who were dismissed, Anna Hattle and Riki Fameli, have received voicemails informing them that they were fired earlier this week, according to the protest group No Azure for Apartheid. The group said Microsoft had also fired two other workers, Nisreen Jaradat and Julius Shan, after they had participated in encampments at the company’s headquarters.
Microsoft acknowledged the firings, stating that they were made “after many months of warning to address concerns we had about violations of company policies.” The Company said in a statement that recent protests inside its offices posed “significant safety concerns.”
Hattle and Fameli were two of seven people arrested on Tuesday after refusing to leave the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith. The remaining five people arrested were all former employees or non-company workers with activist links to the company. Smith has said Microsoft supports freedom of expression but insisted that demonstrations must still be lawful.
The protest group has called for Microsoft to cancel its contracts with Israel and pay reparations to Palestinians. Hattle said the company “is arming Israel and forcing its employees to participate in genocide, all the while deceiving their own employees.
A joint media investigation published this month by The Guardian, 972 Magazine, and Local Call found that an Israeli military surveillance agency had been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud services.
The report said the system records large numbers of Palestinian mobile phone conversations from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and has brought criticism to the company over its role in Israeli surveillance. In a statement, Microsoft said it had retained the law firm Covington & Burling LLP to look into the claims.
It is not the first time the company has confronted protests. An employee disrupted AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s speech at Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event in early April with a pro-Palestinian protest. That employee and another demonstrator were subsequently fired.
Protests of a similar nature have broken out at universities and at corporations across the U.S. and Europe, where Israel’s onslaught against Gaza has been met with growing global condemnation.
The war was launched in October 2023 when Hamas orchestrated a lethal assault on Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing some 250 hostages. Israel’s military response has since killed tens of thousands in Gaza, displaced almost the entirety of the Strip’s population, and drawn indictments of genocide and war crimes—allegations Israel has denied.
