Anti-Israel protestors take over Microsoft president’s office

Police removed seven activists who accused the company of illegally aiding Israel in its war in Gaza.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Anti-Israel activists occupied the Microsoft president’s office in Washington Tuesday and had to be removed by the police after refusing to leave.

“Obviously, when seven folks do as they did today — storm a building, occupy an office, block other people out of the office, plant listening devices, even in crude form, in the form of telephones, cellphones hidden under couches and behind books — that’s not OK,” Brad Smith told reporters after the incident.

“When they’re asked to leave and they refuse, that’s not OK,” he said. Authorities were called in and “literally had to take them out of the building.”

The No Azure for Apartheid group, only two of whom were Microsoft employees, was protesting at the company’s headquarters over Israel’s alleged use of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform in its war in Gaza, which the activists call a “genocide.”

Over the past year, the group has disrupted several Microsoft events to demand the tech giant cut ties with the Israeli government and military, accusing it of enabling alleged war crimes with its services.

Last week, 20 people were arrested during a two-day protest on the campus, calling for a “worker intifada,” after they “resisted and became aggressive” when asked to leave, police said.

Sixteen of them had never worked for the company, Smith noted.

On Sunday, about a dozen pro-Palestinian demonstrators in kayaks approached waterfront homes of Smith and CEO Satya Nadella, chanting slogans, holding signs labeling them “war criminals” and accusing the company of profiteering from war.

It was unclear how many of them worked for Microsoft.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that, according to internal emails it reviewed, the company asked the FBI to investigate certain current or former employees connected to the protests.

When contacted, the FBI — without naming Microsoft — said it recognizes the inviolability of free speech but that criminal threats are another matter.

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that for years, Israeli intelligence has used a secure section of the Azure platform to store millions of Palestinian phone call recordings, which it can sift to identify suspected terrorists in Gaza or Judea and Samaria.

Microsoft responded to the report by saying that it would undertake “a full and urgent review” of the allegations, but noted a prior review “did not identify any usage by the IDF that violated the company’s terms of service.”

“We have found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza,” the company said.