Less than two weeks ago, millions of Americans rallied in one of the largest nationwide protests of Donald Trump’s second term. With signs hoisted high and chants echoing through streets, parks, and public squares, demonstrators convened in cities across the country, culminating in marches to state capitols.

In Minnesota, where I live, over 80,000 people gathered at the Capitol in St. Paul. Among the speakers was Senator Amy Klobuchar, a figure whose presence was paradoxical. Klobuchar, after all, opposed Senator Bernie Sanders’s resolution to halt arms transfers to Israel amid its ongoing military campaign in Gaza, a campaign many human rights groups have condemned as ethnic cleansing. Still, she stood at the podium, endorsed by a crowd united under a sweeping slogan: “Hands Off.”

But hands off what, exactly?

When I first heard about the “Hands Off” protest—organized by an array of civic groups and activist coalitions—I assumed it was aimed at stopping the war in Gaza. For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a campaign of devastation. Yet the demonstrators that day were calling on Trump to keep his hands off democracy. But isn’t it democracy that brought Trump to power, not once, but twice?

The rallies had no shortage of spectacle. Protesters paraded through the streets with children, dogs, and banners mocking Trump and his administration. Slogans ranged from the biting— “Lock Him Up,” “Make America Merciful Again,” “Hands Off Our Democracy”—to the absurd: “Dogs Against DOGE” and “Elon Musk Is the Immigrant Who Took Your Job,” a dig at Musk’s entanglements with cryptocurrency and his proximity to the administration’s influence.

Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore, one of the protest organizers, wrote on his website: “You are not alone. We are not alone. There are more of us than there are of them. Build your communities. Find your people. Organize, Organize, Organize. And fight back. In little ways and big ways. This is the French Resistance. This is up to us.”

Yet, as millions of Americans marched through capital cities, the most pressing post-rally concern was where to eat dinner, and somehow, according to Moore, this was likened to the French Resistance.

While national coverage zoomed in on major cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, a far more potent protest passed virtually unnoticed by mainstream American media—but not by Arabs and Muslims.

During Microsoft’s 50th-anniversary celebration in Redmond, Washington, a Moroccan-born engineer named Ibtihal Aboussad—also a Microsoft employee—disrupted the event with a stunning act of protest. As Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI chief and a Syrian-American, addressed an audience that included Bill Gates, Aboussad stood and shouted: “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide.”

Though dressed in the informal style typical of tech executives, Suleyman was visibly shaken. “Mustafa, shame on you,” Aboussad called out as she walked toward the stage. “Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” he replied, struggling to maintain composure. Her voice did not waver: “Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.” She was then removed by security, leaving a stunned audience in her wake.

Unlike those marching with snarky signs and pets, Aboussad brought neither dog nor slogan. She brought moral clarity. Her protest drew a direct line between the tech industry’s profits and the machinery of war.

A report from +972 Magazine earlier this year confirmed that Microsoft has increased its provision of cloud and AI services to the Israeli military since the latest escalation in Gaza.

Aboussad quickly became a social media sensation across the Arab and Muslim world. One Arabic-language post on X read: “She is better than over 100 men.” Another raised the number to 1,000. Yet another: “She is worth more than a million men.” In a region where Arab governments—many tacitly aligned with Israel—have banned public rallies in support of Palestinians, Aboussad’s act of resistance was seen as heroic.

The “Hands Off” protests rightly criticized Trump’s authoritarian streak, but the absence of criticism aimed at the former Biden administration was telling. Joe Biden, the only sitting U.S. president to visit Israel during a war, had provided more than just diplomatic backing. He had sent advanced weaponry, 500-pound bombs, and a steady stream of political cover as the civilian death toll in Gaza climbed into the thousands, most of them women and children. Many more have since been killed when he left office.

Aboussad’s protest surfaced a point lost in much of the punditry: if the Nazis once used the gas chambers of science to exterminate millions, the Israeli military—and its Western allies—are now deploying AI, algorithmic surveillance, and cloud computing in the service of war and annihilation. This is not dystopian fiction. It is the lived reality for Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the “Hands Off” protest made no mention of George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which killed millions, nor of Barack Obama’s infamous drone program. As Al Jazeera has reported, Obama—who opposed the death penalty in the U.S.—routinely ordered drone assassinations abroad with no trials, issuing what amounted to secular fatwas against Muslims around the world.

The technologies once heralded as unifying and democratizing forces are now weaponized. What we’re seeing is the rise of techno-fascism: an authoritarianism fueled not by brute force alone, but by data, code, and machines.

Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman once observed that monstrous atrocities are not always committed by monsters. “They are done by ordinary people like you and me,” he wrote. In one era, the victims were Europe’s Jews. In this one, they are the Palestinians.