Page 26 - Issue 70
P. 26
Vol 1 - issue 70 ELITE
leading efforts in tech education for massacre, because she knew some
girls, and working at Microsoft on things are simply not for sale.
machine learning. She may have It would be easy to frame the act of
been able to join the ranks of top both ladies as a battle between villain
tech leaders worldwide. and hero, traitor and savior. But reality
She could have stayed there, built a is always more complicated.
life of comfort. But when Ibtehal Dalia Ziada is not unique. Across the
discovered that Microsoft had Arab world, there is a growing class
struck a $133 million deal to willing to reframe colonial violence as
provide cloud services to the Israeli modernization. They believe, or hope,
Ministry of Defense, which would that survival comes through alignment
aid in the surveillance and targeting with power, even if it means advocating
of Palestinian civilians, she couldn’t for a lie we all know its use.
just stay silent.
“I can no longer remain silent,” she
wrote in a letter later leaked to the
press, explaining how Microsoft's
AI technologies were being
weaponized to track journalists,
doctors, and humanitarian
workers.
Their existence is not a sign of personal
evil as much as it is the success of a
global system designed to reward
amnesia. Hamas attacks on 7th
October became just an autonomous
act of terrorism, totally forgetting
what’s really been happening since
1948.
Ibtehal Abou El Saad, on the other
hand, is rare, not simply because she
opposed Israel, but because she broke
her silence despite knowing the
personal cost. She exposed what many
While most people try to play it
prefer to deny: that "neutrality" in the
safe in their careers, Ibtehal didn’t
face of injustice is not neutral at all. It
mind sacrificing her future in one of
is complicity.
the world’s most influential
At the heart of it all lies the real
companies to condemn the ongoing
question: Palestine.
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