Microsoft employees allege that internal emails with 'Gaza,' 'Palestine' will not send

Microsoft employees are claiming that internal emails containing words like genocide, Gaza and Palestine and phrases related to anti-Israel activism by employees are not getting sent.

The No Azure for Apartheid campaign, which is calling for Microsoft to stop supplying its cloud computing platform Azure to the Israeli military, wrote on Medium Thursday that the emails, some of which also contained mentions of former employee and group organizer Vaniya Agrawal, took up to 24 or more hours to be delivered and that some were not delivered at all.

Emails with other politically related words or variations like “P4lestine” went through no issue, they said.

Microsoft says that emails about the issue were sent out en masse, leading to its countermeasures.

Microsoft Chief Communications Officer Frank Shaw told The Verge that “emailing large numbers of employees about any topic not related to work is not appropriate.”

“We have an established forum for employees who have opted in to political issues,” he said. “A number of politically focused emails have been sent to tens of thousands of employees across the company and we have taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in.”

The employee activists said on Medium that the delays and message cancellations are part of “Microsoft’s systematic censorship of speech related to Palestinian rights and discrimination against Palestinian workers and their allies.”

The email delays come after a since-fired employee, Joe Lopez, interrupted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s speech at the annual Microsoft Build conference Monday, yelling “Satya! How about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians? How about you show the Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure. As a Microsoft worker, I refuse to be complicit in this genocide. Free Palestine!”

A document seen by CNBC showed that Mr. Lopez was terminated for “misconduct resulting in the violation of both company policy and our expectations of a respectful workplace.” Ms. Agrawal was fired in April after she protested at Microsoft’s 50th anniversary party over Microsoft’s ties to Israel.

Mr. Lopez said in the No Azure for Apartheid release that “Workers have a duty to speak out when they notice that their labor is being used to harm people.”

“Restricting communication like this is an erosion of our ability as Microsoft workers to freely discuss company policy and strategy. It is extremely concerning that this is the route that leadership is taking,” he said.