Microsoft employees, activists protest tech giant over ties to Israel’s Gaza war

A group of demonstrators, including current and former Microsoft employees, staged a protest at the company’s Redmond headquarters in the US state of Washington against the tech giant over its ties to the Israeli army amid the ongoing Gaza war, according to media reports. The protest was organized by a group called No Azure for Apartheid, named after Microsoft’s flagship cloud computing service Azure. Protesters gathered inside the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith in Building 34, where they chanted slogans and held banners. One sign renamed the office the “Mai Ubeid Building,” honoring a Palestinian software engineer from Gaza killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023. Another banner called on Microsoft to “cut ties with Israel,” among other demands. […]