The No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) protest group, representing concerned Microsoft workers, said dozens of employees have faced restrictions when sending emails with these words in the subject line or body.
NOAA organisers noted that variations such as “Israel” or altered spellings like “P4lestine” do not trigger the block, raising concerns that Microsoft leadership is censoring speech and discriminating against Palestinian workers and their allies.
Microsoft confirmed to The Verge, who first reported the story, that it has introduced measures aimed at reducing the volume of “politically focused emails” sent within the company.
Microsoft employees have discovered that any emails they send with the terms “Palestine” or “Gaza” are getting temporarily blocked from being sent. Microsoft confirmed to The Verge that it has implemented some form of email changes. Details 👇 https://t.co/v7enCyLiz4
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) May 22, 2025
Spokesperson Frank Shaw said: “Emailing large numbers of employees about any topic not related to work is not appropriate. We have an established forum for employees who have opted in to political issues. Over the past couple of days, a number of politically focused emails have been sent to tens of thousands of employees across the company and we have taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in.”
The email blocks come amid a week of protests by current and former Microsoft employees against the company’s contracts with the Israeli government during the Build developer conference.
On Monday, employee Joe Lopez disrupted CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote address, accusing Microsoft of enabling “Israeli war crimes” through its Azure cloud services.
After sending a mass email to thousands of employees, Lopez was dismissed.
Microsoft Employee Calls Out CEO for Supporting Israel pic.twitter.com/wslD0Cea6V
— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) May 20, 2025
Protests continued on Tuesday when a Palestinian tech worker interrupted a CoreAI presentation, and on Wednesday two former employees disrupted a Build session.
During the disruptions, a Microsoft executive inadvertently revealed internal messages about Walmart’s use of AI.
These protests follow Microsoft’s recent statement defending its cloud and AI contracts with Israel, saying internal and external reviews found “no evidence” that its tools were used to “target or harm people” in Gaza.