REDMOND, Wash. — This story was originally posted on MyNorthwest.com
Microsoft workers and community members are planning a protest outside the company’s headquarters Tuesday.
The group No Azure for Apartheid is calling on Microsoft to sever business with the Israeli military. Organizers argued that Microsoft’s technologies enable surveillance and war crimes.
“Microsoft continues to actively arm the ongoing genocide against Palestinians as Israel commits flagrant violations of the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, blocks and sabotages aid, and escalates ethnic cleansing in the West Bank,” No Azure for Apartheid stated. “Microsoft Ignite, the company’s premier conference with over 15,000 attendees, will be marketing Cloud & AI technologies — the same technologies Microsoft sells to the Israeli military to commit war crimes.”
The rally is set to begin at 11:30 a.m., while a similar protest will also take place in San Francisco. Other organizations involved in the protest in tandem with No Azure for Apartheid are Amazon Worker Intifada, Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return at University of Washington, and Seattle Against War.
The protest is at Microsoft’s headquarters, located at 3929 156th Ave N.E. in Redmond.
In September, Microsoft decided to terminate the Israeli military’s access to technology that the company used to collect millions of Palestinian civilian phone calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank, according to The Guardian.
For No Azure for Apartheid, that’s not enough.
“The decision to stop a small subset of services is wholly inadequate, as the vast majority of the services that Microsoft provides to Israel as tools of genocide remain intact,” the organization stated.
KIRO Newsradio has reached out to Microsoft for comment.
This is a developing story, check back for updates
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