For nearly a year, the world’s largest software company, Microsoft, has faced a mounting internal rebellion over its business ties to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza. The controversy erupted into public view on August 19, 2025, when demonstrators waved Palestinian flags on the Redmond, Washington campus, demanding the tech giant sever its relationship with the Israeli military. The protest, which resulted in the arrest of twenty activists, was only the latest flashpoint in a saga that has exposed deep divisions within the company and ignited a broader debate about corporate responsibility, free speech, and U.S. foreign policy.
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft’s response has been anything but passive. The company has actively sought to stifle dissent, requesting help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to track employee protests and working closely with local authorities to prevent further demonstrations. Internally, Microsoft flagged emails containing words like “Gaza” and deleted posts about the protests, moves that critics say amount to censorship of employees’ political expression. Some protesters who disrupted company events have faced suspension or even termination, underscoring the stakes of speaking out within one of the world’s most influential corporations.
These events at Microsoft echo a larger reckoning happening across the United States, where debates about the war in Gaza—and America’s role in it—have spilled into workplaces, universities, and the halls of Congress. For Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a public health professional and candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, the conflict is not just a foreign policy issue but a moral and economic one that touches the lives of ordinary Americans in profound ways.
In a wide-ranging interview with Current Affairs published before August 26, 2025, El-Sayed did not mince words about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. “Let’s be clear, what do you use? What is the word? Well, for folks who don’t want to use this word, my question is, what do you call killing 60,000-plus people—18,500 of them kids, at least—using food and starvation as a weapon of war, rendering their homes unlivable, bombing out their schools and hospitals, and then trying to push them into other countries because they happen to speak the same language? I’m just like, what is the word for that?” he asked. “I’m just using the word that describes the thing.”
El-Sayed’s unequivocal use of the term “genocide” is notable not only for its bluntness, but for its alignment with a growing chorus of mainstream human rights organizations. “Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel,” he noted, “each one has produced a report explaining why they have reached the conclusion that what is going on is genocide.” Despite this, El-Sayed pointed out, there remains a conspicuous reluctance among U.S. senators to publicly adopt the same language, even as evidence mounts and public opinion shifts.
This disconnect between official rhetoric and the reality on the ground is, for El-Sayed, symptomatic of a broader crisis of trust in American democracy. “If we do not comport with the thing everybody sees and they hear their elected representatives saying something different, it breaks public trust in democracy and the democratic process and their elected officials generally,” he observed. He attributed much of the political inertia to the influence of powerful lobbying groups and wealthy donors, asserting, “AIPAC and the Jewish people are two very different things... AIPAC is about a very particular foreign policy end funded by MAGA billionaires and backed by messianic evangelicals.”
For El-Sayed, the stakes are not merely rhetorical. He draws a direct line between U.S. military aid to Israel and the chronic underfunding of critical needs at home. “Every dollar spent on a bomb for someone else is a dollar not spent on healthcare for someone here. Every dollar spent on a bomb somewhere else is a dollar not spent on our infrastructure over here. Every dollar spent for a bomb somewhere else is a dollar not spent to provide food for a child who’s struggling here,” he argued, underscoring the trade-offs that often go unacknowledged in political debates.
Healthcare, in particular, is a central pillar of El-Sayed’s campaign. He has made Medicare for All his signature issue, describing the current U.S. system as “an economy that has been bought off by corporations.” He highlighted the staggering $220-225 billion in medical debt burdening Americans—more than the GDP of most states—and lambasted the private insurance system for gatekeeping access and disadvantaging private practitioners. “Medicare for All is not a government takeover of healthcare. Medicare for All is the government freeing the healthcare market to actually operate in fair ways,” he explained. “Everybody comes to this with their equal token to pay for their healthcare that’s given to them by the government. The healthcare system remains private.”
El-Sayed’s commitment to labor rights is equally robust. As a member of several unions, including SEIU, AFT, UAW, and the National Writers Union, he champions the right to unionize across all sectors and supports legislation like the PRO Act to empower workers. He even floated the idea of a doctors union as a means to counteract the growing consolidation and monopolization of healthcare. “One of the best ways to stand up to big healthcare and huge consolidating healthcare corporations that have turned into localized monopolies across our country is to make sure that doctors themselves can stand up and unionize,” he said. “If that happens, I think you’re going to start seeing both far safer hospitals and far more equitable healthcare.”
The intersection of corporate power, political influence, and social justice is nowhere more apparent than in the response to the Gaza war. Microsoft’s crackdown on employee protests—seeking FBI assistance, collaborating with local authorities, and suppressing internal dissent—illustrates the lengths to which major corporations will go to protect their interests and maintain business as usual. Meanwhile, figures like El-Sayed are calling for a fundamental rethinking of national priorities, urging Americans to question not only where their tax dollars go, but what kind of society those choices create.
As the debate over Gaza, healthcare, and corporate accountability intensifies, the lines between the local and the global, the personal and the political, grow increasingly blurred. The choices made in corporate boardrooms and on Capitol Hill reverberate far beyond their immediate context, shaping the lives of millions both at home and abroad. In this moment of crisis and reckoning, the voices demanding change are growing louder—and, as recent events suggest, more difficult to ignore.
Ultimately, the struggle unfolding at Microsoft and in the national conversation is about more than just business contracts or political labels. It’s about who gets to decide what matters, whose voices are heard, and what kind of future Americans want to build—for themselves, and for a world watching closely.
