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Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza
- bediger4000 2y agoWould this happen to fall under the "cancel culture" rubric?
- slau 2y agoI’m not certain why this was flagged, however I think this is a better source: https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-palestinians-gaza-72de6fe1f35db9398e3b6785203c6bbf https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-pa...
- thisislife2 2y agoSomebody posted that link too on HN and it was flagged too. :/
- IWeldMelons 2y agoI wonder if there was an "unauthorised" vigil for Ukranians on ms premises would the employee be fired too.
- tsol 2y agoIncredibly shocking how quickly Americans adapted to their government enabling the systematic deaths of thousands. Surely this will leave a lasting impact on those of us who cannot ignore it
- scarecrowbob 2y agoNot really shocking- I live in the desert southwest and can see the remnants of the genocide of natives here. There are plenty of folks who are at peace with the "historical necessity" of that mass murder, so it doesn't ever surprise me when the ancestors of those folks are at peace with similar violent efforts to take a space. I can't ignore it, but the more I look at this place the less it seems like anything truely new- it feels like a product of the kinds of governments that rule the world at the moment.
- jiggawatts 2y ago[flagged]
- cempaka 2y agoThe parent's criticism was of the American government. Also, Israel is certainly not acting more restrained in Gaza; civilian deaths are well over 100K at this point.
- jiggawatts 2y ago[flagged]
- wefewhf 2y agoBoth Dick Cheney and Bill Gates endorse the Democrats, who (by their actions) endorse the current events.
- nirav72 2y agoBill Gates is no longer at Microsoft. Neither of the Cheneys hold any political office. I look forward to Trump’s action after January,19,2025 as the president of the United States. None of this wishy washy treatment that Israel, a U.S ally has received from the current administration.
- FireBeyond 2y agoWhat did Trump do to hold Israel accountable between 2016 and 2020?
- mindslight 2y agoTrump couldn't do anything because he was being held at a deep state black site. The person you saw in the Oval Office was a body double hired off the dark web, who was deliberately making bad decisions to ruin Trump's good reputation and steal the election, probably.
- rightbyte 2y agoYou are telling it like some kind of joke but both Trump and Obama were publicly castrated in office. The power of the president seems greatly exaggerated.
- mindslight 2y agoBut yet they both did actually do a bunch of other things, especially exercising the power of the bully pulpit. Or alternatively if we do take it for granted that presidents are quite constrained in what they themself can do (aka "separation of powers"), then why is the original comment talking as if there would be some massive sea change next time when there wasn't one last time? This seems like another bit of Schrödinger's Trump. Like how he's both the most powerful most successful person, and also just an unfortunate victim that other people are always doing mean things to.
- lolinder 2y ago> “We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” said Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist. "But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honor the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves." Grief is hard and what's happening in Gaza is tragic, but this is not what the workplace is for. Why is it Microsoft's job to provide the described space? Maybe this is less of a thing on the coasts, but where I live people have families, friends, churches, bars, clubs, and many other outlets that are designed for this kind of personal reflection and mourning. We don't expect our workplace to provide it for us because we don't live at work. We go into work to earn money to provide means for us to live our lives outside of work. To the extent that we want our coworkers to be involved in those spaces, we invite them to be. More than anything else what I'm getting from this is that the death of the third space on the West Coast must be well and truly complete, if this kind of line sounds reasonable there.
- bbqfog 2y agoThe issue is that Microsoft does active business with Israel. It's not just completely non sequitur.
- lolinder 2y agoThat is a different complaint and not the one they're fronting. They are framing this event as a personal mourning space, not a protest against company policy. If they need their personal mourning space to be provided by their employer, that's indicative of a major gap in their non-work support networks. If they're camouflaging a protest against company policy as personal mourning space, then they're abusing people's support of emotional wellness to justify hosting a protest on private property.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI think it can still be both; Lack of outside life and internal protest. >Hossam Nasr, said the purpose of the vigil was both “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” because of the use of its technology by the Israeli military.
- jajko 2y ago[flagged]
- bbqfog 2y agoDoing business with Israel is mixing profession and politics.
- latexr 2y ago> Keeping politics out of your job is a sign of professionalism I guess Microsoft as a whole is an unprofessional organisation, then. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/public-policy-engagement https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/pub... > Microsoft actively engages with governments, policy makers, and civil society partners across the world (…) > In the US, the Microsoft Corporation Stakeholders Voluntary Political Action Committee (MSVPAC) (…)
- bubblesnort 2y agoFine. But they'll never fire their halloween execs.
- science4sail 2y agoFrom the cold blooded business perspective, MSFT is probably doing the right thing for its here. The FTC is currently looking to break up Google; the military industrial complex would have likely discouraged the FTC from this course of action if Google had crushed the Project Maven employee protests a few years ago.
- zhengiszen 2y agoUS IT sector is too linked to the US and Israeli military. One more reason for Europeans, for example, to create their own sovereign independent IT sector. They lack the will but by following blindly they will again pay the price like we see with dutch ASML now and Nokia before it.
- ngcazz 2y ago[flagged] Consent manufactured.
- churchill 2y agoWhy is this flagged? @dang
- sitkack 2y agoAnyone with sufficient karma can flag and unflag. I did not flag this, and cannot unflag, but stories that are likely to turn into flamewars get flagged. I have also noticed that anything critical of Israel in anyway is also highly likely to get flagged.
- churchill 2y agoDitto on the point about Israel. I noticed the same: anything critical of Israel gets flagged right away. And I'm not surprised: they have a large IT ecosystem and have engaged in similar behavior before. Paul Graham complained about this [0] after it came out that Israeli VCs, tech entrepreneurs, etc. had groups for coordinating attacks on anyone questioning the Israeli narrative on social media. Like, they mentioned PG by name in their briefings. [0] https://x.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465 https://x.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465
- latexr 2y ago@mentions don’t work. If you want to contact dang, use the email at the bottom of the page: hn@ycombinator.com
- zhengiszen 2y agoSome lives are more valuable than other.
- 6stringronin 2y ago60,000 more
- buildj48 2y ago[flagged]
- cholantesh 2y ago'''Context''' from yet another body that deliberately conflates anti-Zionism with anti-semitism? No thanks.
- buildj48 2y ago[flagged]
- thisislife2 2y ago> Nasr said his firing was disclosed on social media by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned about the firing ... The same group had months earlier called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr for his public stances on Israel. ( https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-palestinians-gaza-72de6fe1f35db9398e3b6785203c6bbf https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-pa... ) Ah, just another example of "cancel culture" in the US getting rid of the "politically undesirable". (It's news to me that speaking for human rights and freedom of Palestinians colonised by Israel, is now "antisemitism"). I hope Americans recognize that to an outsider like me, the slogan of "land of the free and the home of the brave" is increasingly sounding so hollow. This sad current political trajectory of "you better not have any political beliefs that offend those in power" is certain to lead the US to its downfall.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThere is nothing new about this. Do you think you could call your boss an active participant in genocide and keep working 20 years ago? You would be shown the do them too.
- avazhi 2y ago[flagged]
- bbqfog 2y agoTell it to Microsoft: https://www.timesofisrael.com/microsoft-launches-ai-platform-to-preserve-october-7-testimonies/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/microsoft-launches-ai-platform...
- avazhi 2y ago[flagged]
- bbqfog 2y agoThis is literally the subtitle of that article: > Microsoft Israel engineers develop advanced AI tools to assist users around the world in creating personalized memorial ceremonies or events based on Oct. 7 survivor testimonies Same thing this person was fired for, only instead of Palestinians they want to memorialize Oct. 7th Israelis.