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 following a delay of upwards of 45 minutes. Other emails never even made it to the intended recipient’s inbox at all.

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........

© The Intercept