‘Kiss the flag, Nazi’: The anti-Israel event at Microsoft

Over the past year, I have read far too many biased media accounts regarding what has been happening at “pro-Palestine” protests across the United States and the world. Until now, I was fortunate to not be a witness to the misconstrued events, however, my luck has turned. I’d like to set the story straight.

I am a software engineer working for Microsoft at their Redmond campus near Seattle. On Tuesday, October 22, I learned of plans for an event from a social media post that was shared with me.

Screenshot of announcement of the No Azure for Apartheid event posted on Instagram story of ‘monsoonflwr’

As I read the words “Let us honor our Palestinian martyrs,” my stomach began churning. Like many Jews/Israelis, I associate the word martyr with dead terrorists. The location only intensified my anxiety. The East Campus Plaza is only a building away from where I work. I, along with dozens of fellow Jewish coworkers, sent emails to security and HR, asking, hoping, praying that the event honoring our people’s murderers would not be allowed to proceed. Vexingly, all we heard back from security and HR were versions of “we are aware and working to address these concerns.” But asking what action is being taken to ensure our safety and getting a response of ‘action is being taken, fear not’ does not actually help us to ‘fear not.’

Eventually, late in the afternoon of Wednesday, October 23, we were informed that the event organizers had been notified they could not hold their event on campus and that they had to move it to a public space. Despite my and others’ doubts that this would indeed happen, there was no longer much that could be done as the business day had ended and our concerns had seemingly fallen on deaf ears.

The next day, I heard from a coworker that they had seen the protestors assembling exactly as they’d advertised on the East Campus Plaza. Putting aside my safety concerns, I decided to head down there and attempt to record some of the events and potential interactions that might take place and involve employees to hopefully make it easier to hold any organizers and instigators accountable after the fact.

Fortunately, the event was on the small side, with only about 30 to 40 people present. Despite claiming in every publication and in their press conference that the event was a vigil, they spoke only briefly of the dead and held two minutes of silence for them. The rest of the hour-long event was dedicated to the defamation of Microsoft, the company at which they perplexingly choose to continue working despite alleging that it profits from genocide and Israel.

The organizers claimed that the event was kind and peaceful, and posed no disturbance. But, at a bare minimum, a setup with loudspeakers in the middle of a work campus is already a disturbance. On top of that, while I was standing approximately 30 feet away and silently recording the event, one of the protestors chose to go out of her way to harass me. She followed me back and forth, shoving her Palestinian and Lebanese flags in my face, as I attempted to walk away from her, repeating “kiss the flag, b****” and “it’s not your land.”

She eventually got bored and walked away, only to come back. This time with “kiss the flag, Nazi,” and the flags thrust into my face yet again. To date, this footage has not been used and only two organizers were held accountable and fired.

To say my blood was boiling would be an understatement. Realizing that she had finally gotten under my skin, she proceeded to come up a few more times to call me a Nazi yet again. Meanwhile, a man who had been walking told me that “I should leave” given how angry I was and that “sometimes people say things.” Apparently, nowadays it’s not the person initiating the harassment and name-calling who should leave. Instead, it is the Jewish employee being harassed who is in the wrong for being angry about it.

I have since met with HR, both independently and in a group Q&A about the event, and the results have been rather disappointing. It appears that Microsoft’s primary goal was to ensure they didn’t get too much bad press and in their words, “become another Columbia University.” But the best way to avoid becoming like Columbia is to do what that university failed to do: assign consequences for actions. Firing just two employees when there were more people involved in the organization of the event and in defaming Microsoft is not enough. So far, it does not appear that the company has a plan to keep its Jewish and Israeli employees safe. Not physically. Not emotionally. Not mentally. And certainly not digitally, when Jewish and Israeli employees are being harassed and even doxxed on internal channels.

As disheartening as the No Azure for Apartheid event and the media coverage of it was, Microsoft’s response to it is far more upsetting. I hope this event is finally enough for Microsoft to take serious action to address antisemitism in the workplace. I love the company and would love to stay for years to come, and I only wish for them to consider the physical and mental safety of all their workers with equal weight.

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The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer.