By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM/CAIRO/WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – U.S. tech giant Microsoft has fired two influential employees after they organized a vigil at the company’s headquarters in honor of “victims of the Palestinian genocide.”
The two men, originally from Egypt, told reporters they were dismissed after holding the observance at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Thursday.
Abdo Mohamed and Hossam Nasr were part of a coalition of Microsoft employees who called themselves “No Azure for Apartheid” in protest against the sale of the Microsoft cloud-computing technology to Israel’s government.
Microsoft said over the weekend that it remains “dedicated to maintaining a professional and respectful work environment. Due to privacy and confidentiality considerations, we can not provide specific details.”
Mohamed, a data scientist from Egypt, complained that Microsoft had “failed to have space for [employees] to come together and share [their] grief.”
He did not mention the “grief” of Israel, which was holding a national day of mourning for the roughly 1,200 people who were killed by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7 last year, triggering the war in Gaza.
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Mohamed said he needs to find new employment within two months, or he may face deportation, presumably to Egypt. It was not clear whether he would be prepared to start a new life in Gaza.
Despite his dismissal, Nasr defended the vigil, saying it was in honor of Palestinian victims in Gaza and to “call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” due to the use of its technology by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Israel has vehemently denied its involvement in genocide, saying nearly half of the reported killed Palestinians are “Hamas terrorists.”
The Hamas-run Health Ministry claims that about 43,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel in more than a year of urban warfare in Gaza, which has a population of roughly 2.5 million people.
Nasr was previously subject to internal investigations by Microsoft, including for posting antisemitic memes online on social media, Israeli sources said.
Writing on social media, Nasr called Microsoft “an evil Zionist corporation facilitating and empowering a genocide.”
He revealed that he learned of his termination an hour before receiving a call from Microsoft, as he saw the group Stop Antisemitism announce it on social media.
Stop Antisemitism had called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella months before to take action against Nasr, who co-founded Harvard Alumni for Palestine and was co-president of the Palestine Solidarity Committee at the university.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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