Microsoft Employees at HQ in Washington Set Up Temp Encampment to Protest Israel
“About an hour after the activists arrived, a Redmond police officer used his SUV speaker to warn they were trespassing and subject to arrest if they stayed.”
Is there something in the water at Microsoft?
Back in April, the company fired two engineers for making a spectacle of themselves by protesting Israel at their 50th anniversary event. This week, some employees set up a temporary, anti-Israel ‘encampment’ to protest.
From Bloomberg, via Yahoo News:
Microsoft Workers Protesting Israel Ties Rally at Company HQ
Microsoft Corp. employees rallied at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters in an effort to ratchet up pressure on the software maker to stop doing business with Israel over its war in Gaza.
Protesters started gathering Tuesday afternoon at a plaza at the center of a recently redeveloped portion of the company’s main campus, which extends over about 500 acres in the suburban town east of Seattle. They set up tents and declared the space a “liberated zone.”
Addressing “friends and colleagues” through a microphone, former Microsoft employee and protest leader Hossam Nasr said: “We are here because over 22 months of genocide, Israel — powered by Microsoft — has been killing, maiming Palestinian children every hour.”
About an hour after the activists arrived, a Redmond police officer used his SUV speaker to warn they were trespassing and subject to arrest if they stayed.
Soon after, the three dozen or so demonstrators packed up their tents, rolled up their banners and departed the plaza. They reassembled on a slice of sidewalk that organizers said was public property.
For more than a year, the Microsoft employee group, No Azure for Apartheid, has been pushing Microsoft to end its relationship with Israel, saying use of the company’s products is contributing to civilian deaths in Gaza. Azure, the company’s cloud-computing division, sells on-demand software and data storage to businesses and governments, including Israeli government and military agencies.
These are supposedly professional adults, acting no differently than progressive activists on a college campus. How do any of them still have their jobs? Take a look at this insanity below.
🚨 BREAKING: Microsoft employees and "community members" calling themselves the "Worker Intifada" have established a "liberated zone," also known as an encampment, on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. pic.twitter.com/X4hHO2DroA
— Stu (@thestustustudio) August 19, 2025
At the Microsoft encampment, the Redmond police officer looks like a unit. The protester looks like a teenager caught sneaking out.
“Hey, are you the organizer?…”
*long pause as chants fill the silence*
Finally: “I’m not here to talk to cops.”
The police officer replies… pic.twitter.com/akVKmQGVP0
— Stu (@thestustustudio) August 19, 2025
To avoid arrest, the Microsoft Liberated Zone marched off campus.
Now it’s on @Microsoft to clean up its ranks — starting by firing those involved. pic.twitter.com/OK24eSE4R5
— Stu (@thestustustudio) August 19, 2025
I am really beginning to wonder if this movement is a form of mass hysteria, not unlike the Salem witch trials. Once this ideology enters a person’s mind, they act out in a way that borders on psychotic rage.
None of it is rational, but it allows adherents to act out dramatically and claim an imagined form of moral superiority. The supporters cannot be reasoned with, and many of them are hysterical young women.
Am I off base for making such a comparison?
Featured image via Twitter/X video.
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a subculture of metrosexual wimps and addlepated, spoilt bimbos
So supposed actual Microsoft workers (at their own HQ) set up tents on the grass and walk around wearing bath towels on their heads and masks (to somehow hide their identities) to support Hamas. How about this, have the police or HQ security arrest those people, and if they are Microsoft employees, then they get fired immediately. Then they can support Hamas on their own.
No, Mike, you’re not off base with that comparison. When unfettered emotion leads to uncontrolled anger and poor judgment, things like this happen. They’re part of the “Looka me, looka me!” generation of overaged toddlers.
.
Liberals made a science out of tapping into this phenomenon.
“The supporters cannot be reasoned with, and many of them are hysterical young women” is spot on. Hysterical young women and a smidgen of beta male satellites foolishly believing their chosen orbits might get them laid.
Right. I suspect this is a maturity thing, not a mass hysteria thing.
These are people who never did the hard work of growing up.
The draft was objectionable, but perhaps not having one is worse.
Microsoft should fire any of their employees who participated in the protest.
The employees should know they should never embarrass their employer.
Are we reaching the point where everything is labeled an “intifada” in order to attract attention to sophomoric demonstrations staged by malcontents of one variety or another? Intifada loses all its signficance in that case.
no
we appreciate their admission of guilt
I suspect that they aren’t going to like our intifada, because we know what one looks like.
I am very curious as to exactly how an employee of a company can be deemed to be trespassing on the employer’s property. I can see calling company security to have them removed, but why should the police respond to an internal problem like this?
Of course, my response as the employer would be, “You’re all fired as of right now, so remove yourself from the property. We’ll send your personal belongings to you, but for now since you’re no longer employed here, get off the company’s land.” THEN send for the police to remove trespassers if they don’t leave. As far as I can tell, that didn’t happen.
Maybe Milhouse can show up in the comments and do some lawsplainin’ for us.
“Maybe Milhouse can show up in the comments and do some lawsplainin’ for us.”
Why do you hate us so?
👎
How can Microsoft management pick out of a masked crowd who is or isn’t among the 50,000 employees?
Mr. S:
I’m sure that MicroSquish has a large number of security officers. Walk up to the perpetrators of this nonsense, tell them they’ve been terminated, then identify them. If their security can’t handle that simple task then they don’t deserve to keep their jobs, either. Every major company I’ve ever dealt with has some form of ID which MUST be presented when asked…it’s usually part of your employee agreement. If they don’t show the company ID then they are in criminal trespass, which means they can be instantly arrested and charged.
Any physical response from one of these idiots should be met with overwhelming force, with security dog-piling them after they’ve assaulted one of the officers. Stop messing around and get serious.
See how hard it is, when you actually DO something rather than standing around with your thumb up your bum and your mind in neutral? But to expect that from any corporate idiot these days is just expecting too much.
My understanding is that any private company can declare that you are unwanted on their property for any reason, employee or not. Being an employee grants you the presumption of access, but not the right of access.
As for why the police rather than private security, I believe the answer is in the use of force and arresting power. The security firm can deliver policy and inform the protesters that they have to leave. As company representatives, they can inform people/protesters of company decisions. But they can’t arrest. They can’t force the people out. They can’t enforce trespassing laws. If they get people who resist the company decision, they need to have the police come in and enforce the law.
If you get some time, hit YouTube and search for people getting kicked out of Universal Studios, Orlando. Private security are everywhere, but the police come in to actually remove people and make arrests.
That’s not true. As a property owner, you or your agent can use reasonable force to remove someone whom you’ve told to leave and refuses. But it’s often safer to call the police and let them handle it, so that’s what many companies prefer to do.
When the employees are protesting, they’re not there as “employees” (who are present to work), they’re there as private persons pursuing a personal agenda. They are not acting as employees, they do not get treated as employees. They get treated as trespassers.
Why not? It’s not their property. If the employer tells the person to leave, they have to leave. “I work here” is not grounds for remaining after being trespassed. Of course the answer could be “not any more, you don’t”, but it can equally be “Yes, you do work here, but not right here on this spot”, or “Yes, you do still work here despite this, but you are to vacate the premises at once”. What happens to their employment is simply irrelevant.
Thanks for the law-splainin’. I knew if I said your name three times while typing you’d show up.
Right after they are told to leave, they are trespassing.
Fire. Them. All.
I’m rooting for the terrorists on this one. I worked there for 10 years. I’ll put a longer reply later as to WHY I’m rooting for the terrorists here.
In short, MSFT is f****ing evil. Let the wicked face demons of their own creation.
So evil you worked there ten years.
They don’t show you the skeleton closet during the interview.
Most of the lower level VPs/GMs are good characters. I would characterize 70% them as good business people.
Brad Smith – spawn of satan. He’s the one who was pushing for tranny bathrooms in Washington schools.
Their head of HR- spawn of satan.
the cue ball indian CEO at the time I was there—- woke ass cousin.
Theres other underlings who have been there from the start who are pure leftist evil.
Amy Hood- I’m not sure of but from the policies I saw in her org where DEI was REALLY REALLY getting pushed to the level of discrimination.
So when their leftist chickens come home to roost
I saw some really shady stuff on an individual level during my time at and prior when I was interacting (including embezzlement, kickbacks), out right extortion, but the stuff I saw in my final year was dead evil.
I quit with zero days notice.
This is the college campus seeping out to the real world, expecting the same self-centered attention to their finely honed higher education whining skills.
None of this surprises me given the nature and history of the Microsoft Corporation. First off, many of it’s products are junk. I avoid them all. In particular, Excel, which should never be used for statistical calculations. NIST tested a suite of products by running a set of standard problems with known answers. Excel came out at or near the bottom. Mathematica ran every problem correctly. My info on this is more than 10 years old, and Microsoft might have fixed Excel, although I doubt it. I also ran my own test cases, and again Excel was horribly bad. Microsoft (like many companies) uses H-1b programmers who don’t understand statistical computing which is a field within the discipline of statistics. They will go to a textbook and code up a theoretical expression which should not be used for numerical work. The management doesn’t seem to care. When a products gets a lot of complaints, they might fix it, but sometimes the fix causes new problems. My personal opinion: Bill Gates lies at the root of Microsoft poor products and other behavior.
So what does all this have to do with employees protesting Israel? Everything. It isn’t the water at Microsoft, it’s the management which sets the tone of a company. Management sets hiring policy. Hire junk and you get crazy activists. At least they fired the worst of them, but they never should have been hired in the first place.
“None of it is rational, but it allows adherents to act out dramatically and claim an imagined form of moral superiority.”
Correct. It’s a form of bullying, and it manifests itself in other arenas – particularly the KGBLTFU insanity.
I cited one example on X this morning about a wildlife biologist at Yosemite National Park who was fired after draping a huge ‘transgender pride’ flag from El Capitan last May.
It took 3 months to fire this mentally unwell employee for that trasspass/deface stunt on a national monument when it shouldn’t been done within 3 hours.
Now, the fired biologist has thrown down the victim card of persecution because she’s ‘non-binary.’
The only way to stop a bully is to punch ’em in the nose – metaphorically speaking, of course.
think of allll the data these anti american blmplo destroyers of western civilization have at their fingertips
trump 2028!!!
since they were in fact breaking the law
why were they given a warning ??
It’s much more effective, both in blood and treasure, to ask people to get in compliance with the law. As much fun as it would be to see a bunch of entitled whiners go kiss pavement, such activities are risky. Do you remember Eric Garner? The dude died while he was getting arrested for selling loose cigarettes. It would have been better for everyone if he received a warning, got in compliance with the law, and never did it again.
This encounter turned out pretty well. People were informed. People complied. Nobody got hurt, lawyers didn’t get involved. We’ll see if future behavior is in compliance.
not saying you are wrong but
( re: garner)
The arrest was supervised by a female African-American NYPD sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, who did not intercede.[48] Adonis was quoted in the original police report as stating, “The perpetrator’s condition did not seem serious and he did not appear to get worse.”[49]
so no matter what happens those who are treated ,,,when they shouldnt be,, with manners,,many times take that as weakness and proceed with illegal behavior
he was of course a repeat offender and knew how to play the system
THE OFFICER WAS WRONG to issue chock hold for so long
but he was responding to a know criminal and this “threat”
Garner is heard on the video saying the following:
Get away [garbled] for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner
Garner gave himself a heart attack by fighting. Someone in his physical condition should not have resisted anyone — not just a legitimate arrest by a policeman, he shouldn’t have resisted a mugging either. Just hand the wallet over, it isn’t worth your life when you’re that fragile.
This is typical of police response to non-violent trespass in which other factors (like vandalism and theft) are not present. People are asked to leave. If they don’t, they’re threatened with “trespass,” which is an order that would restrain them from being on the property at all (which is often a commercial establishment, like a grocery store, which they would otherwise be able to patronize when not disrupting business). If they don’t leave after being threatened with trespass, that’s when they’re physically removed and trespassed.
yes
agree
… as appears to have been the case with the Rhode Island Assistant Attorney General, covered at length on LI.
Is this the Babylon Bee again ?
A real city would have delt with this before it was a thing.
“I am really beginning to wonder if this movement is a form of mass hysteria, not unlike the Salem witch trials.”
I’ve been reading up on the SWT (I have an ancestor who was one of the men hanged – Only in Europe were witches burned.)
The SWT were rational. To them, the Devil was real and present in everyday life. When something out of the ordinary and bad happened, and there was a disagreeable person around, easy to blame it on that person. These folks are irrationally hysterical.
No, they weren’t rational even by the standards of their own time. If you seriously believe witches exist, and must be found and executed, you have to be extremely careful to make sure the people you accuse really are witches. Being sloppy and hanging innocent people not only makes you a murderer, it also means the real witches get away.
That’s why in the 1950s the USSR’s anti-anti-communist fellow travelers compared the hunt for communists to the witch trials. Not only because they wanted to pretend that just as we know there weren’t really any witches at all in Salem, we also “knew” that there weren’t really any communists in positions of influence, which we now know was never true. But also because they wanted to convince even those on our side that our own people were behaving like the Salem inquisitors, and accusing innocent people. They thus managed to turn conservatives against McCarthy, whom we now know to have been 100% correct.
Palestine is a fictional construct of mooslim conquest wars
Annihilate Hamas
So their jobs are less important than their contrived hysteria. Make it so.
“The supporters cannot be reasoned with, and many of them are hysterical young women.”
Once again I recommend reading “This Is Your Brain On Birth Control” by Sarah Hill (especially the chapter on cortisol). Or watching Jordan Peterson’s interview of her.
20-something years ago, I visited a friend who worked for Microsoft. As I drove through the campus, I was sure that I was on a college campus — middle of the afternoon, t-shirt and shorts wearing employees outside playing hacky sack, volleyball, shooting hoops. Back in my real corporate world, we were expected to be working and dressing up at the office.
Apparently Microsoft hasn’t quite grown up yet. For most major corporations, a protest like that would have been met with police removal from the campus and any employee involved terminated on the spot. And by the way, if you want to wear a mask at work, you better show an approved ADA accommodation for whatever imagined potential for illness that you have.
Tell ’em … “If you’re not back at your desk and working within 10 minutes you’re fired.”
I’d tell ’em “since you are NOT at you desk and working you ARE fired, as of right now. Wait here for an escort who will accompany you to your work station, where you will gather your personal belongings, then be escorted to your car to leave. Your paycheck will be in the post.
I would refuse to employ anyone who supports what Hamas did to their captives. It was a warcrime just as evil as anything the Nazis did.
Me too. But remember that the next time you hear someone complain about “cancel culture”, or feel tempted to do so yourself, because this is cancel culture too. There’s a big difference, but it’s not value-neutral. We get upset when they cancel someone over a cause that we don’t agree with, or don’t think matters that much, but we feel free to cancel people when it’s a cause we care about. Because we’re right and they’re wrong, but that only works on us; we can’t use it to argue with them because they disagree with the premise.
OK so they complied and took their “protest” to the sidewalk public easement, and they aren’t technically trespassing. They might be allowed to pace about on the sidewalk with their flags and take selfies for social media.
But MS also has language in employment contracts that allows MS to terminate employment for damaging the public perception of the company or damaging the brand in the marketplace.
Mandatory Dismissal! Then Immediate repatriation to their native homelands. America! Love it or Leave it!
Maybe I’m just old, but I remember being taught to not defecate whetre I eat as a kid, and it still applies.
As a code, I have adopted the traditions of a well known group in my general behavior. If push comes to shove, I have no opinions on certain issues and certain associations are not to be introduced into public (and/or private) controversies. Down the road, if she is lucky, a certain AG from RI might also learn that it is best to abide by this code. Just sayin.