Microsoft fires employees who organized anti-Israel rally on company campus

Microsoft has fired two of its employees who organized an anti-Israel event at the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters last week.

Hossam Nasr (Mabed) and Abdelrahman (Abdo) Mohamed were part of a coalition of the tech giant’s employees who called themselves "No Azure for Apartheid," protesting against the sale of the Microsoft cloud-computing technology to Israel despite one of Microsoft’s biggest research and development sites being located in the Jewish state. Several of the speakers proclaimed "Glory to our Martyrs!" during the event.

Nasr previously called his former employer "an evil Zionist corporation facilitating and empowering a genocide." Microsoft employees told The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI that Nasr was known throughout the company for his antisemitic vitriol and was previously the focus of investigations by Microsoft.

He is a well-known radical activist who was recently arrested for disrupting a meeting of the University of Washington’s Board of Regents. Jewish students, faculty, and the board had to be escorted out of the building by police after Mabed and his anti-Israel followers took over the meeting where community members had come to voice their concerns about antisemitism on campus.

In one of his Instagram posts, Nasr featured a US flag being burned at a pro-Hamas event and wrote that the flag "represents death, murder, destruction, pain. This flag represents genocide, mass murder, mass graves. This flag represents beheaded babies, torn limbs, scorched bodies. Death to the US empire and its killing machine. Free Palestine from the river to the sea."

Before coming to the Seattle area, Nasr co-founded Harvard Alumni for Palestine and was co-president of the university’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, an alternative name for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) which is linked to terrorism and the antisemitic Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement against the Jewish state. Nasr bragged to local media about his participation in local protests which included shutting down the light rail and the Gaza camp at the University of Washington.

The watchdog group Stop Antisemitism previously called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr.

The other man, Abdo Mohammad, posted on LinkedIn after his firing that he needs to find new employment in the next 60 days or face deportation.

Both men, originally from Egypt, told The Associated Press they were fired by phone Thursday after the anti-Israel event on Microsoft’s campus.

In a statement, Microsoft said it “ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy,” adding, that the tech giant remains “dedicated to maintaining a professional and respectful work environment. Due to privacy and confidentiality considerations, we cannot provide specific details.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been called an arm of Hamas in the US and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror trial in US history. This was quietly scrubbed from the Biden-Harris adminsitration's National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. CAIR demanded that Microsoft rehire the two former employees and apologize to antisemitic activists. CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad, who previously said the Oct 7 massacre of over 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of over 250 more made him "happy" said, "any other context, a corporation would celebrate its employees standing up for human rights and against genocide – ‘except for Palestine.’"