Microsoft on Monday fired two of its engineers who had interrupted speeches at an event for the company's 50th anniversary last week, to protest the Israeli military’s use of the Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI) products.

The two employees protested at different times on Friday, but both confirmed they were the employees who disrupted the festivities by sending emails to the company, according to CNBC. 

Ibtihal Aboussad, a Canada-based software engineer in the company’s AI division, interrupted the festivities first by blasting the company's CEO for Artificial Intelligence, Mustafa Suleyman.

“Mustafa, shame on you,” Aboussad said at the event in Redmond, Washington. “You claim that you care for using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region ... You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands."

Aboussad confirmed her identity in an email, stating she did not "sign up to write code that violates human rights."

“I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice,” Aboussad wrote. “This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue.”

Microsoft said Aboussad was dismissed for “just cause, wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty," and took the email as an admission that she "deliberately and willfully engaged" in misconduct.

"[Microsoft] has concluded that your misconduct was designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event,” the company wrote. “Immediate cessation of your employment is the only appropriate response."

The other software engineer, Vaniya Agrawal, told Microsoft that she would resign on Friday but the company said her resignation was effective immediately, after she interrupted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's speech.

“You may have seen me stand up earlier today to call out Satya during his speech at the Microsoft 50th anniversary,” Agrawal wrote in her email. “Over the past 1.5 years, I’ve grown more aware of Microsoft’s growing role in the military-industrial complex."

She added that the company was complicit in the genocide as a "digital weapons manufacturer that powers surveillance, apartheid, and genocide," and that all Microsoft employees were thereby complicit in the genocide.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.