Microsoft Says It’s Censoring Employee Emails Containing the Word “Palestine”

Following multiple employee-led protests against the company’s contracts with the Israeli military, Microsoft workers discovered that any emails they send containing the word “Palestine” inexplicably disappear.

According to internal communications reviewed by The Intercept, employees on Wednesday began noticing that email messages sent from their company account containing a handful of keywords related to Palestine and Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza were not transmitted as expected. In some cases, employees say the emails arrived after many hours. Other emails never even made it to the intended recipient’s inbox at all.

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Keywords subject to the disruption, according to employee test messages shared with The Intercept, include “Palestine,” “Gaza,” “apartheid,” and “genocide.” The word “Palestinian” does not appear affected, nor did emails containing deliberate misspellings of the word “Palestine.” Emails mentioning Israel appear to have gone through immediately.

The outage was first reported by The Verge.

In an email to The Intercept, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw confirmed and defended the blockage. “Emailing large numbers of employees about any topic not related to work is not appropriate. We have a 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 heavy-handed approach, however, is not just deterring messages sent to large numbers of recipients, but also blocking all emails mentioning Palestine.

Following an April 7 protest at an event celebrating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, two employees “sent separate emails to thousands of coworkers, calling on Microsoft to cut its contracts with the Israeli government,” The Verge reported.

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The email disruption comes after multiple demonstrations at the four-day Microsoft Build developer conference this week. The protests were organized by current and former Microsoft employees with No Azure for Apartheid, an advocacy group demanding the suspension of the company’s work with the Israeli government.

In February, The Associated Press reported usage of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing services by the Israeli military “skyrocketed” at the start of its ongoing bombardment of Gaza, which has now killed over 53,000 Palestinians. Earlier this month, the company absolved itself of wrongdoing in Gaza following an unspecified internal and external review. While Microsoft claimed “we have found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people,” the company also noted, “It is important to acknowledge that Microsoft does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.”