IT giant Microsoft sacked two employees on call after they organised an unauthorised vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas, reported news agency Associated Press on Saturday.. Both the dismissed employees were from Egypt, and one was already called out by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism. The group even urged Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against him for his public stances on Israel.. The fired Microsoft employees, Abdo Mohamed and Hossam Nasr, were members of the coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid”. The group had opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology to the Israeli government.. According to Mohamed and Nasr, Thursday’s event at the Mircosoft office was not intended to oppose the company policy and was similar to other Microsoft-sanctioned employee-giving campaigns for people in need, reported AP.. “We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist, told AP. “But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honour the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves,” he added.. After the incident, the company on Friday said that the employees services were terminated based on Microsoft’s internal policies without providing any further details into the matter, according to AP.. Microsoft has “ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy”, AP quoted the tech giant.. Microsoft said in its statement Friday about the firings that it remains “dedicated to maintaining a professional and respectful work environment. Due to privacy and confidentiality considerations, we cannot provide specific details.”. Highlighting the purpose of the vigil, Nasr told AP, that the event intended to honour the victims of war in Gaza and to call “attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide.”. Nasr said the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism disclosed his firing on social media more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned about the firing.. The American tech firm received flak from many of its own employes for supplying technology to the Israeli government amid Gaza war. As a result, Microsoft fired more than fifty workers earlier in 2024 for taking part in such protests against the firm. Most of the sit-in protests at Google offices were centred on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
