Microsoft is accused of firing two software engineers who protested against the use of company AI to help the Israeli military bomb targets in Gaza.
Ibtihal Aboussad, a Harvard graduate and software engineer in the company’s AI division, was one of those who disrupted the 50th anniversary event on Friday.
“Fifty-thousand people have died”, Aboussad was heard on video while standing in front of the stage to directly call out Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “Shame on you, you are a war profiteer,” Aboussad continued. “Stop using AI for genocide Mustafa. Stop using AI for genocide in our region.
“You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands,” she shouted as she was escorted from the premises by security.
Aboussad, based at Microsoft’s Canadian headquarters in Toronto, was invited on Monday to a call with a human resources representative at which she was told she was being fired immediately, according to the advocacy group No Azure for Apartheid, which has protested the sale of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to Israel.
In its termination letter, Microsoft told Aboussad she could have raised her concerns confidentially to a manager. Instead, it said she made “hostile, unprovoked, and highly inappropriate accusations” against Suleyman and the company and that her “conduct was so aggressive and disruptive that you had to be escorted out of the room by security.”
According to documents seen by CNBC, Aboussad was fired for “just cause, wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty.”
Vaniya Agrawal, a second employee, spoke out at a separate Microsoft event with executives Friday, and interrupted a speech from CEO Satya Nadella.
Agrawal said she was planning to hand in her resignation on April 11, but Microsoft, reportedly axed her employment Monday, as per an internal memo seen by CNBC.
In the memo, Microsoft told Agrawal that it “decided to make your resignation immediately effective today.”
Agrawal was an employee at Microsoft for one year and eight months, and Aboussad for three years, according to their LinkedIn pages.
An investigation by The Associated Press revealed earlier this year that AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.
Microsoft and the Israeli forces reportedly struck at least $10 million in deals during the immediate offensive following the October 7 Hamas massacre, according to The Guardian.
The Independent has contacted Microsoft for comment following the firing reports.
“We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” said a statement from the company Friday. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”
Dozens of Google workers were fired last year after internal protests over a contract it also has with the Israeli government. Employee sit-ins at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California targeted a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus providing AI technology to the Israeli government.
The Google workers later filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in an attempt to get their jobs back.
The Associated Press contributed to this story
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