Microsoft Employees Rename HQ ‘Martyred Palestinian Children’s Plaza’

Dozens of Microsoft workers, many wearing face masks and keffiyehs, staged a protest at the company’s Washington state headquarters, targeting the tech giant’s ties to Israel’s military, according to the New York Post.

The group pitched tents in a self-declared “liberated zone” on the Redmond campus, renaming it “Martyred Palestinian Children’s Plaza.” Protesters carried signs urging colleagues to “Join the worker intifada: no labor for genocide,” while others demanded to “stop starving Gaza.”

The demonstration was organized by “No Azure For Apartheid,” which held the sit-in after a Guardian report alleged that Israel’s military intelligence agency was using Microsoft’s Azure cloud system to collect Palestinian phone call recordings in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Once again, the enablers of genocide and apartheid choose to criminalize those that oppose the bombing of Palestinians, rather than the war criminals ethnically cleansing and starving our people in Palestine,” the group, linked to the activist network No Tech For Apartheid, posted on X.

The activists also published a manifesto declaring support for a “worker intifada” and pledging not to be “cogs in the Israeli genocidal machine.”

A Microsoft spokesperson told The Post that “the group was asked to leave, and they left.” Company officials said about 50 current and former employees participated in the protest.

The company added that it had no prior knowledge of any civilian surveillance or call monitoring being conducted through its services and said it would launch a review into the claims.

The Redmond protest marked the latest flare-up over Microsoft’s contracts with Israel. In May, the company reportedly banned staff from using words such as “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “genocide” in internal emails. Around the same time, a software engineer was fired after interrupting CEO Satya Nadella during a speech to protest the company’s Israeli military work.

Similar unrest has hit other tech firms. Google, for example, dismissed more than two dozen employees last year after disruptive anti-Israel demonstrations at its offices.

As The Post previously reported, Big Tech employees have also emerged as some of the largest individual donors to New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who has faced criticism for repeatedly using the phrase “globalize the intifada.”