Microsoft has dismissed four employees for protesting against its ties to Israel, including two who staged a sit-in at the office of company president Brad Smith this week.
The protest group No Azure for Apartheid said on Wednesday that Anna Hattle and Riki Fameli received voicemails informing them they had been fired. It added a day later that Nisreen Jaradat and Julius Shan were also dismissed after joining demonstrations and encampments at Microsoft headquarters.
Microsoft said the terminations followed “serious breaches of company policies,” adding that recent on-site demonstrations had “created significant safety concerns.”
Hattle accused the company of complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza.
“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,” she said in a statement.
Hattle and Fameli were among seven protesters arrested on Tuesday after occupying Smith’s office. The other five were ex-employees or people unaffiliated with the firm.
Smith has insisted that Microsoft supports freedom of expression “as long as they do it lawfully.”
A recent investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call, revealed that Israel’s military surveillance agency was using Microsoft’s Azure software to store vast amounts of Palestinians’ phone call recordings from the West Bank and Gaza. In response, Microsoft said it had asked law firm Covington & Burling LLP to conduct a review.
The latest firings come after other Microsoft staff protested earlier this year. In April, two employees were dismissed after interrupting AI chief Mustafa Suleyman’s remarks at the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
Microsoft joins a growing list of firms and universities facing internal dissent and protests over ties to Israel as global outrage mounts over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israel’s offensive has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, displaced Gaza's entire population and left many facing hunger, according to humanitarian groups. Israel launched the campaign after Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and seized around 250 hostages in its 7 October 2023 assault.
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Australian counterterrorism authorities are examining the links of the co-pilot accused of attacking the captain and attempting to take control of a flydubai flight bound for Israel. Authorities in New Zealand have also said they are investigating reports the suspect had spent time in that country.
Russia's health watchdog said on Tuesday that no cases of plague had been detected among anyone who had come into contact with a Siberian plague institute laboratory worker who died last week, and locals said their lives had barely been disrupted.
A large Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow and the surrounding region has killed two people, damaged homes and sparked a major fire at a key fuel facility, according to Russian officials and military bloggers.
An Azerbaijani citizen died and another is missing after a cargo ship was attacked by a drone in the Black Sea, near the coast of Romania on Monday, 5 October, Baku's Foreign Ministry has said.
The German-Azerbaijani Connectivity Conference 2026 commenced on 6 October in Baku under the title “Mobilising Finance for Infrastructure, Transport, Logistics, Green Energy, and Digitalisation along the Middle Corridor.”
Russian strikes killed at least eight people across Ukraine early on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials have said. Flats, industrial plants and infrastructure were damaged in the incidents.
Kenya has confirmed its first case of Ebola after a Kenyan citizen who had travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) died in Nairobi, prompting health authorities to launch an urgent contact-tracing operation.
Kosovo's parliament has elected economist and academic Justina Shiroka Pula as the country's new president, concluding a dramatic political process just hours before a constitutional deadline that threatened to dissolve the legislature.
The U.S. military has tightened restrictions on its personnel in Okinawa following the arrest of a Marine on suspicion of murder, a case that has reignited long-standing tensions over the American military presence on the southern Japanese island.
The arrest of former German intelligence chief August Hanning on espionage-related charges has drawn renewed attention to his past connections with Israeli security figures and a controversial cross-border child custody case generating significant public scrutiny.
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