Friday, May 30, 2025 · 7:30 PM (Doors open at 6:30 PM)
First Unitarian Church · 1211 SW Main St, Portland, OR
For more information and tickets, go to https://www.jpao.org/events
Turmoil spreads at company over Israel’s extensive use of its AI and cloud computing services in Gaza war
or the second time in the last month, Microsoft employees disrupted high-level executives speaking at an event celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary on 4 April, in protest against the company’s role in Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza.
The AI executive Mustafa Suleyman was interrupted by the employees Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal. The two were fired within days. The Microsoft president, Brad Smith, and the former CEO Steve Ballmer were shouted down at Seattle’s Great Hall on 20 March by a current and former employee.
The March event was preceded by a rally outside that also included current and former employees of the tech giant. Protesters projected a sign on to the hall’s wall saying: “Microsoft powers genocide” – a reference to Israel’s extensive use of the company’s AI and cloud computing services since 7 October 2023, as “the IDF’s insatiable demand for bombs was matched by its need for greater access to cloud computing services,” the Guardian reported.
Read more at The Guardian
Read more at Al-Shabaka
What is happening is, quite simply, annihilation. Yet our politicians keep funding it and media outlets normalize it
Where do I even start? In recent weeks I’ve sat down to try and write about Gaza and, every time I steel myself to write about one atrocity, another atrocity is committed. Palestinian journalists have been burned alive, babies have frozen to death, medics have been executed and buried in mass graves, kids are being killed in their sleep. Meanwhile, in the US and Germany, speaking out about dead Palestinian babies can land you on a deportation list. Arguing that international human rights law should be respected can put you at risk of being snatched off the street and stuck in a detention centre.
I don’t know where to start and I don’t know what is really left to say at this point. After 18 months of endless carnage, it should be clear to everyone that this is not a war. That this is not self-defence. What is happening in Gaza is, quite simply, annihilation. A litany of genocide experts have stated this. Respected international organizations like Amnesty International have concluded that Israel is committing genocide – and yet our politicians are still funding this.
Read more on The Guardian
Rumeysa Ozturk, a visa holder, was snatched off the streets by Ice agents and sent to a detention center 1,000 miles away for opposing war crimes in Gaza
Rather, the point is that Trump administration’s promise to crack down on student protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza has the effect of articulating a new speech code for immigrants: no one who is not a United States citizen is entitled to the first amendment right to say that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, or that the lives of Palestinians are not disposable by virtue of their race.
It is up to those us who do have citizenship to speak the truth that the Trump administration is willing to kidnap people for saying: genocide is wrong, Israel is committing it against Palestinians in Gaza, and Palestinians, like all people, deserve not only the food and medicine that Israel is withholding from them, and not only an end to Israel’s relentless and largely indiscriminate bombing, but they deserve freedom, dignity and self-determination. This has become an unspeakable truth in Trump’s America. Soon, there will be other things we are not allowed to say, either. We owe it to one another to speak these urgent truths plainly, loudly and often – while we still can.
Read more on The Guardian
