'Ibtihal Abou el-Saad' Exposes Microsoft: Here Is How American Tech Giants Fuel the Gaza Genocide

"I saw no other moral choice," cried out Ibtihal Abou el-Saad, a Moroccan graduate of Harvard University and a programmer at the American tech giant Microsoft, as she exposed her company's complicity with the Israeli killing machine.

Her outcry, alongside that of her colleague, Vaniya Agrawal, directed at senior Microsoft officials during the company’s 50th anniversary celebration, appears to have succeeded in drawing renewed attention to the ongoing Zionist massacres in Gaza, all amid the world's deafening silence.

What Ibtihal did has sparked calls to expose and boycott American tech companies complicit in the Gaza occupation massacres, after she publicly pointed the finger at senior Microsoft officials for their role in Gaza’s genocide.

In just a few words, the courageous 26-year-old created a global impact, shaking the conscience of millions, and exposing the crime of Microsoft and other American companies complicit in the bloodshed in Gaza.

The competition among American tech companies has intensified, all vying for a share of Israeli/U.S. military spending.

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have all sought to offer special incentives to attract the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Yet, it was Microsoft that emerged victorious, securing multiple contracts to provide advanced technological solutions that have bolstered the crimes of military and intelligence operations.

‘Blood on Your Hands!’

On April 4, 2025, Microsoft celebrated its 50th anniversary in Washington, with Mustafa Suleyman, the company's AI CEO of Syrian-British origin, proudly showcasing the tech giant’s latest advanced product.

The AI assistant, Copilot, was being presented to an audience that included Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer, when Ibtihal seized the moment to shout at him and all company officials, accusing them of being criminals.

She shouted as she made her way toward the stage, "Mustafa, shame on you!" "You claim to care about using AI for good, yet Microsoft is selling AI weapons to the Israeli military."

"How dare you celebrate while Microsoft is killing children?" 

"Fifty thousand Palestinians have been killed, and Microsoft is funding this genocide in our region."

"You and all Microsoft employees have blood on your hands," she continued before throwing a Palestinian keffiyeh onto the stage, symbolizing her support for the Palestinian people, according to the Associated Press. 

The protest, which disrupted Microsoft’s 50th-anniversary celebration for a time and embarrassed the company’s leaders, was a powerful stand against the tech giant’s provision of AI technology to the Israeli military for the killing of Palestinians. In its wake, other employees began to join the protests.

One such employee, Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted a session attended by both current and former Microsoft CEOs, accusing the company of supporting Israeli military operations through its technologies.

"Shame on all of you… You are hypocrites," Agrawal shouted, launching a scathing critique of the company's leadership for providing technologies and intelligence used by the Israeli military in its operations against civilians in Gaza.

She accused Microsoft of complicity in violating human rights in Palestine by enabling advanced surveillance and targeting systems, utilizing Azure cloud services and AI technologies.

She pointed to a $133 million contract between Microsoft and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, claiming it had contributed to the genocide in Gaza.

Microsoft Complicity Exposed

Ibtihal did not stop with her public exposure of the company. She also sent an email to several mailing lists, reaching hundreds or even thousands of Microsoft employees, reiterating that her protest was motivated by her knowledge of the company’s support for the genocide in Palestine.

She highlighted that the Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim communities at Microsoft had been subjected to repression and harassment when attempting to voice their concerns on the matter, according to the letter published by The Verge on April 4, 2025.

"I Spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice," in her email to a large number of company employees, she wrote.

"For the past year and a half, our Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim community at Microsoft has been silenced, intimidated, harassed, and doxxed, with impunity from Microsoft. Attempts at speaking up at best fell on deaf ears, and at worst, led to the firing of two employees for simply holding a vigil. There was simply no other way to make our voices heard."

"When I moved to AI Platform, I was excited to contribute to cutting-edge AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity: accessibility products, translation services, and tools to ‘empower every human and organization to achieve more.’ I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government, with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families."

"If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians (source), I would not have joined this organization and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights."

"According to AP news, there is ‘a $133 million contract between Microsoft and Israel’s Ministry of Defense,’" Abou el-Saad wrote.

After being expelled from the hall, Ibtihal Abou el-Saad said, “They might come after me for what I said, but my fear of retaliation doesn’t even compare to my fear of contributing to technologies used to bomb innocent people.”

"To me, my greatest fear is waking up on an ordinary workday only to find out that the code I wrote might have played a part in killing children. That’s the haunting thought that consumed me more than anything else."

"That’s why I spoke out, fully aware there could be consequences. But yes, my fear of contributing to the genocide in Gaza is far greater. What truly worries me is Microsoft's complicity in this genocide. Honestly, nothing crosses that red line more clearly…"

Criticism of American tech companies grew over their military contracts with "Israel" and their provision of software that contributes to the killing of Palestinians, yet employees were silenced, with some even fired.

In February 2025, five Microsoft employees were expelled from an internal meeting with CEO Satya Nadella for protesting contracts that provided AI and cloud computing services to the Israeli military.

During a speech by CEO Satya Nadella on new products at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, employees wore t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan: "Does our code kill children, Satya?" They were promptly escorted out of the room and subsequently punished.

At the time, the employees voiced concerns over the use of Microsoft technologies in Israeli military operations, pointing to investigative reports that revealed Microsoft and Open AI models were being used in an Israeli military program to select bombing targets.

Earlier, in October 2024, Microsoft fired two employees who organized a protest at the company’s headquarters to honor Palestinians killed in Gaza and criticized the use of Microsoft technologies in the killing of Palestinian civilians.

This support for Israeli military actions had already sparked protests among Microsoft employees, who condemned the use of their products in armed conflicts, especially after revelations of the company’s backing for Israeli military conferences.

Such as "I Love Mamram," which celebrates the Israeli Mamram unit responsible for the military's computing infrastructure, offering services for targeting locations for airstrikes.

Earlier, in April 2024, Google informed 28 of its employees that they were being fired after participating in protests organized by dozens of workers at the company’s offices in New York, Seattle, and Sunnyvale, California, against a contract the company had signed with "Israel" as part of the so-called Nimbus project.

Nimbus is a $1.2 billion contract between the Israeli government and Google and Amazon, focusing on artificial intelligence and cloud computing. 

The deal stipulates the creation of a secure system similar to Google Cloud on Israeli territory.

Employees at both Google and Amazon had previously launched a campaign titled "No Tech for Apartheid" to protest against the Nimbus project.

Microsoft Genocide Support

On January 23, 2025, leaked documents, as part of a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and platform Local Call, and partly based on documents obtained by Drop Site News, revealed how Microsoft supported the genocide.

The documents showed how Microsoft strengthened its ties with the Israeli occupation military during the war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, and its contribution to providing cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and technical consulting services to support the genocide.

These digital services provided to the occupation include, for example, facial recognition technology to identify Palestinians targeted for killing or arrest, as well as surveillance services tracking civilian activities in Gaza and their locations for airstrikes.

The documents revealed that Microsoft signed contracts worth $10 million with the Israeli military to provide technical support and consulting services, along with discounts and additional incentives to ensure the strengthening of its partnership with the Israeli military, surpassing competitors like Google and Amazon.

According to the documents, the Israeli military purchased around 19,000 hours of consulting services from Microsoft between October 2023 and June 2024, valued at $10 million, to enhance the efficiency of military and intelligence operations.

Israeli researcher Yuval Abraham states that, based on leaked commercial records from the Israeli Ministry of Defense and files from an Israeli subsidiary of Microsoft, he found that the parent company has "a footprint in all the major military infrastructures" in "Israel."

He confirmed that the Israeli military relied on the Azure cloud platform to support many of its intelligence units, including Unit 8200, which specializes in cyber espionage, Unit 9900, focused on image and geographic mapping analysis, and Unit 81, which develops advanced surveillance technologies.

The Ofek unit of the Israeli Air Force also used Azure services to manage the Target Bank database, which contained information on Palestinian targets during military operations. This database led to the bombing of hundreds of targets and the killing of thousands of civilians.

According to one of the documents, Unit 81, the technological arm of the Special Operations Division of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, which manufactures surveillance equipment for the Israeli intelligence community, also receives cloud services and support from Azure.

The documents further reveal that the "Rolling Stone" system, which manages the records of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, relies on Microsoft technologies. It is used to restrict the movement of Palestinians and enhance military surveillance over them.

Microsoft's support extended beyond providing technical tools; it also included direct field support. Company employees and engineers visited field sites to offer technical consultations to military units, alongside providing remote support.

According to the joint investigation, Microsoft supplied advanced technologies, including AI tools for big data analysis, real-time translation, and speech-to-text systems. Additionally, the company provided custom Air-Gapped Systems to ensure confidentiality in sensitive military operations.

The documents indicate that, as the war against Gaza intensified, the Israeli military’s consumption of Microsoft’s cloud technology and artificial intelligence saw a significant increase.

The use of Azure cloud services surged by 60% during the first six months of the conflict, compared to the period before the escalation.

The consumption of artificial intelligence also surged by 64 times between September 2023 and March 2024, with translation tools and text analysis being used intensively for intelligence and combat purposes.

Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI played a significant role in supporting Israeli military operations, as the company provided the Israeli military with tools like GPT-4, which were used for translation and big data analysis.

In January 2024, OpenAI lifted restrictions on the use of its products for military purposes, leading to a significant increase in the Israeli military’s consumption of these tools. 

By mid-2024, OpenAI services accounted for approximately 25% of the Israeli military’s artificial intelligence resources.

The documents corroborated what protesting Microsoft employees had claimed—that company staff were complicit in the genocide in Gaza, working closely with units in the Israeli military to develop products and systems.

"Tel Aviv" purchased dozens of expanded units and engineering services from Microsoft, to the extent that "Microsoft experts became an integral part of the 'client' team," according to the company’s website.

The documents describe, for example, how the Military Intelligence Directorate purchased exclusive development meetings and professional workshops, which were conducted by Microsoft experts for soldiers, at a cost of millions of dollars.

The documents revealed that Microsoft’s data centers supporting the Israeli military are not limited to "Israel" but extend to European countries under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

This means that, in light of the classification of the Israeli war against Gaza as a war crime or genocide, Microsoft could face legal repercussions for its involvement, with its technical infrastructure potentially implicated in supporting military operations and accused of war crimes.

"Google employees have worked to provide Israel's military with access to the company's latest artificial intelligence technology from the early weeks of the Israel-Gaza war, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post."