Microsoft filters emails containing ‘Palestine,’ ‘Gaza,’ and ‘genocide’ amid employee protests

Microsoft has reportedly started restricting internal emails containing certain terms, preventing them from being sent to both internal and external recipients. According to a report by The Verge, the terms “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “genocide” are among those being filtered.

The issue was raised by the protest group No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA), which claims that “dozens of Microsoft workers” have been unable to send emails with these words in the subject line or body of the message.

NOAA is a pro-Palestinian activist group demanding that Microsoft disclose all its ties to the Israeli state, military, and tech industry. The group is also calling for the termination of all Azure contracts and partnerships with the Israeli military and government, among other demands.


Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that it has made changes to filter out “politically focused emails” within the company.

This development follows a protest during CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote address at Microsoft’s flagship developer event, Build 2025. Joe Lopez, a firmware engineer in Microsoft’s Azure hardware systems team, stood up during the speech and accused the company of complicity in Israeli war crimes. He said, “How about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians? How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”

A former Google employee, who had been dismissed for participating in similar protests against Google’s cloud contract with Israel, joined him in solidarity.

Lopez’s outburst was against Microsoft’s alleged cloud and AI contracts with the Israeli government, which have become increasingly controversial among some of the company’s employees.

On May 15th, the company had issued a statement addressing the issue. Microsoft explained that it had conducted an internal review and hired an external firm to gather further information. After interviewing dozens of employees and reviewing documents, Microsoft stated that it had found “no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza”.