Microsoft fires workers who disrupted company’s 50th anniversary celebrations with anti-Israel protests

On Friday, software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad walked up toward a stage where Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman was announcing new product features and a long-term vision for the company’s AI goals. Aboussad shouted out blame at Suleyman for deaths in Gaza and cited Hamas’s inflated casualty counts, accusing Microsoft of powering “genocide.”

Suleyman was forced to pause his speech while it was being livestreamed from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. The 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding included co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer. Though Suleyman calmly tried to de-escalate the situation, Aboussad continued shouting at Suleyman, accusing “all of Microsoft” of having blood on their hands. She also threw a keffiyeh popularized by mass murdering terrorist Yasser Arafat onstage before being removed from the event.

A second anti-Israel activist employee, Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted a later part of the event using similar verbiage and repeating the same Hamas talking points.

Aboussad, who is based at Microsoft’s Canadian headquarters in Toronto, also sent a company-wide email filled with Hamas’s talking points. Aboussad and Agrawal claim to have lost access to their work accounts shortly after their outbursts.

Aboussad said that on Monday she was invited to a call with a human resources representative and was told she was being fired. According to the Associated Press, Microsoft told Aboussad in a termination letter that she could have raised her concerns to a manager but instead, made “hostile, unprovoked, and highly inappropriate accusations” against Suleyman and the company, adding that her “conduct was so aggressive and disruptive that you had to be escorted out of the room by security.”

Agrawal claimed she had already given her two weeks notice and was preparing to leave Microsoft on April 11. However, a manager emailed her on Monday informing her that Microsoft “has decided to make your resignation immediately effective today.”

Microsoft said in a statement, “We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” adding, “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.” The company added that the activists’ misconduct was “designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event.”

In February, five Microsoft employees were removed from a meeting with CEO Satya Nadella for protesting Israel during the speech. In October, Microsoft fired two of its employees who organized an pro-Hamas event at the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters during which the campus was vandalized.

Hossam Nasr (Mabed) and Abdelrahman (Abdo) Mohamed were part of the same coalition of the tech giant’s employees as Aboussad and Agrawal, who call 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 activists proclaimed "Glory to our Martyrs!" during the event, glorifying terrorists.

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

He is a well-known radical activist who was also arrested for occupying a building to disrupt a meeting of the University of Washington’s Board of Regents and in response, Jewish students, faculty, and the board had to be escorted out by police.

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 previously 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.

Abdo Mohammad claimed after his termination that he needed to find new employment in the next 60 days or face deportation.