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Microsoft

Overview

Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide. In light of the International Court of Justice’s legally-binding rulings to prevent Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 Advisory Opinion affirming Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system, Microsoft has failed its corporate obligation to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Microsoft, as well as its boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.

Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Microsoft’s extensive ties with Israel’s military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide.

Why do we need to pressure Microsoft using BDS tactics? What is the goal?

Microsoft provides Israel with the technology used to uphold Israeli apartheid and commit genocide in Gaza. As revealed by investigations from The Guardian, the Associated Press (AP), and +972 Magazine, Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and Microsoft Azure cloud services specifically power “sensitive” and “highly classified” workloads that “no other cloud company deals with.” Microsoft not only provides email and file management systems, but also technology for “combat and intelligence activities”. The digital infrastructure and military technologies provided by Microsoft are just as essential to the maintenance of Israel’s apartheid state and the execution of its genocide in Gaza as physical walls and munitions.

In response to Microsoft’s complicity in Israeli apartheid and genocide against Palestinians, Microsoft workers launched No Azure for Apartheid, a worker-led campaign demanding an end to Microsoft's complicity in grave human rights violations. No Azure for Apartheid, in partnership with the Palestinian BDS National Committee (the largest Palestinian coalition leading the global BDS movement), Mpower Change, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) and other civil society organizations, call for BDS pressure on Microsoft to end the sales of digital (dual-use) weapons in the form of cloud and AI technologies that are being used to kill, maim, surveil, and displace Palestinians. 

Microsoft and its executives refuse to address worker concerns and continue to decline to comment on the company’s lucrative cloud & AI contracts with the Israeli military. Instead, Microsoft perpetuates a climate of fear and repression by silencing, intimidating, and retaliating against Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and pro-Palestinian employees who are speaking up about Microsoft’s role in genocide. Israel’s Microsoft-powered war machine prioritizes profits over the company’s human rights commitments and international law. The Palestinian-led BDS movement, supported by Microsoft workers, calls on people of conscious to pressure Microsoft to end its complicity in Israeli apartheid and AI-powered genocide. To pressure Microsoft, boycott Microsoft’s consumer products whenever possible (including Microsoft gaming services), demand your institutions divest from Microsoft and exclude the company from contracts. 

Microsoft is a long-standing partner of the Israeli military. In 2002, Microsoft participated in the largest software deal in Israel at the time. The $35 million contract provided the Israeli military and government with “unlimited products’’ and committed to “broadly exchange ‘knowledge’ with the army.” Microsoft has since expanded its partnerships with the Israeli apartheid regime by providing the Israeli military with Azure cloud, AI, and storage services, which are crucial in automating Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. 

The Israeli military uses AI and cloud technologies, including from “civilian clouds”, such as Azure, to construct a “weapons platform” and a “mass assassination factory” that automate and accelerate Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians through systems such as the Gospel, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy. These systems use Israel’s vast surveillance records of Palestinian civilians to create targets and human hit lists for Israel’s bombing campaign. Lavender, for example, uses WhatsApp contacts and Facebook friends to calculate a “threat” rating, from 1 to 100 for each Palestinian added to the system. 

The Israeli military’s reliance on Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology and AI services has surged during the Gaza genocide. According to usage data from March 2024, the Israeli military’s usage of Microsoft and OpenAI artificial intelligence spiked nearly 200 times higher than pre-October 2023. By the end of March 2024, the Israeli military’s monthly consumption of Azure’s suite of machine learning tools was 64 times higher than in September 2023, demonstrating Microsoft’s technological support of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinains in Gaza. The Israeli military’s average monthly consumption of Azure storage services in the first six months of the genocide was 60% higher than in the four months leading up to the assault on Gaza. By July 2024, the amount of data the Israeli military stored on Microsoft servers doubled to more than 13.6 petabytes (13,600,000 gigabytes). 

The International Court of Justice findings in January 2024, that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, and in July 2024, that it is practicing apartheid and its entire occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and must be terminated, have not dissuaded Microsfot from continuing its criminal complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid or genocide.

Microsft’s partnership with the Israeli military began long before the Gaza genocide. It has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel. The Israeli military’s service agreements with Microsoft include more than 635 individual subscriptions listed under specific divisions, units, bases or project code words such as:

 

  • Mamram– the military’s central computing unit responsible for the military’s tech infrastructure
  • Unit 8200 and Unit 81– military intelligence units that develop spy technology for Israel’s intelligence community and are implicated in crimes against Palestinians, Lebanese and others
  • Highly classified unit inside the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office where Microsoft employees with security clearance are required to sign off and oversee the provision of cloud services
  • Army units that maintain the “Rolling Stone” system– used by the army to manage the population registry and movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
  • Air Force’s Ofek Unit, which is responsible for managing large databases of potential targets for lethal airstrikes (known as the “target bank”)
  • Matspen Unit– responsible for the development of operational and combat support systems
  • Sapir Unit– maintains the ICT infrastructure in the Military Intelligence Directorate
  • Military Advocate General’s Corps– tasked with prosecuting Palestinians and lawbreaking Israeli soldiers in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory

Microsoft embeds its workers in Israeli military units to work on sensitive and highly classified projects such as “a surveillance system used to monitor Palestinians” where they work closely with the Israeli military’s intelligence directorate, including its elite surveillance division, Unit 8200. Within Israel, a Microsoft team is dedicated to serving the Israeli military’s account. The team includes a senior executive who served 14 years in Unit 8200 and a former IT leader for military intelligence. Microsoft’s staff and contractors provide specialized consulting and technical support both remotely and on military bases. Microsoft engineers provided support to Israeli military intelligence units such as Unit 8200 and Unit 9900 – which collects and analyzes visual intelligence – to support their use of cloud infrastructure. Between October 2023 and June 2024 alone, the Israeli military spent $10 million to purchase 19,000 hours of engineering support from Microsoft. 

Additionally, Microsoft works in collaboration with the Israeli military’s Center of Computing and Information Systems (known by its acronym Mamram). The unit is responsible for the IOF’s computing software and is essential for every modern function performed by the Israeli military. As highlighted by Mamram officials, “It is the cloud platforms that the Mamram Unit creates that enable weapons in the field or command headquarters or autonomous military systems, which are growing, to operate.” In November 2024, Microsoft sponsored the “I Love Mamram” conference in Israel to celebrate the unit and sent representatives of the company to lead workshops during the conference. Similarly, In April 2024, Microsoft Israel hosted a group from the "Combatants to Hi-Tech" program, held in collaboration with the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the Israeli army, for a TypeScript workshop developed in Microsoft, a lecture and a tour given by the company's employees. The "Combatants to Hi-Tech" program is a prestigious program designed to integrate combat fighters into the high-tech industry using their combat experience. 

 

Microsoft Azure currently hosts the IOF Reservists portal which has received a six-fold increase in visits since the start of the genocide and serves as the key website for reservists to sign up, process documents, view payslips, etc. Azure also hosts software used for training of Israeli Occupation Forces. Elbit Systems is one of Israel's largest military contractors providing military technology. In 2022, Elbit Systems announced that their new military simulation software, OneSim, would run on Microsoft Azure. As part of a $107 million contract, OneSim is used in advanced IDF training centers to mimic real-life “battle scenarios” for tank crews, thereby enabling IDF's ongoing occupation. 

In addition to directly partnering with the Israeli military, Microsoft also provides cloud infrastructure to Palantir, a company dubbed “the AI arms dealer of the 21st Century.” The Israeli military uses Palantir's AI targeting platform powered by massive troves of data collected on Palestinians and hosted in part on Microsoft servers. Palantir's CEO Alex Karp openly admits that the product is “used on occasion to kill people.” 

Microsoft proudly partners with Israel’s apartheid government. The "Al Munaseq" app, hosted on Microsoft Azure and developed by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, is used by the Israeli “Civil Administration” to manage apartheid permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli military uses the app to collect surveillance data such as personal data, notifications received, files downloaded, and the device's camera and makes use of the information collected for any purpose, as cited in app’s End-User-License Agreement (EULA). 

Microsoft partners directly with Mekorot, the Israeli national water company, which has been since its establishment in 1937 a pillar to the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine and the expulsion of the Palestinian Indigenous population. It holds the authority over the water resources in the illegally occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Mekorot was cited in the International Court of Justice’s July 19, 2024 Advisory Opinion under “Exploitation of natural resources” which reported that Israel prioritizes the water supply of illegal settlements which causes Palestinians to suffer from lengthy and frequent water outages. During the genocide in Gaza, Mekorot has remained a key instrument for Israel’s crimes. Starting October 8 2023, for instance, Mekorot reduced its water supplies to Gaza by 78%. 

Microsoft Israel has been repeatedly contracted by the Israeli Police, often with exemptions from tender, to provide various software, cloud, and licensing services totaling millions of USD. As recently as January 2024, Microsoft Israel was contracted by the Israel Police as sole supplier to provide Microsoft Premier expert services and maintenance until the end of December 2026. The company has provided Microsoft Cloud Services (MCS) to the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) since at least 2017. As recently as April 2024, Microsoft Israel was contracted by the IPS as sole supplier to provide Premier support services until April 2027.

Microsoft has illegal operations on illegally occupied Palestinian land, including in settlements, in direct violation of international law, which considers these colonies a war crime, and of the July 2024 ruling by the ICJ that found Israel’s entire occupation illegal. Microsoft services and collaborates with Ariel University, located in the illegal settlement of Ariel in the illegally occupied West Bank, providing free software services and Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate courses to students. It also and sponsors the Ariel University hackathon. It also provides financial support to organizations based in Israeli colonial settlements, including at least one that fundraises to support the Israeli military, through its employee charitable giving platform. The organizations are the Ma'aleh Adumim Foundation, Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, and the Megillot Dead Sea Rescue Team. 

Microsoft has invested millions of dollars into Israeli startups specializing in war technology. In 2020, Microsoft faced internal and external pressure from employees and human rights groups for its investments in AnyVision, an Israeli company that makes surveillance technology that is used to surveil Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank, violating Microsoft’s ethical standards for facial recognition technology as well as violating international law. This pressure successfully forced M12, Microsoft’s venture capital fund, to pull out of its AnyVision investment. However, Microsoft continues to invest in and partner with Israeli start-ups that violate the company’s ethical standards. 

 

Israeli cybersecurity startups that developed software hosted on Azure have been used to unethically surveil Palestinians and other communities of color across the globe. Cellebrite and Cobwebs’ technology was used by the IOF to hack into thousands of Palestinians’ phones and computers.Voyager Labs, a Microsoft “defense and intelligence” partner, which is currently being sued by Meta, provided surveillance software to the Los Angeles Police Department to racially profile Arabs and Muslims and also provided the surveillance software to the Colombian military to target journalists. Cognyte Technology sold spyware to a Myanmar state-backed telecommunications firm a month before the 2021 military coup, to National Security Service in South Sudan, and to the Israeli military from the start of the Gaza genocide. Cognata's off-road AV simulation software was chosen by the Israeli government and Israeli Ministry of Defense, which was developed in partnership with Microsoft and runs on Azure cloud. Microsoft also invested in: Airobotics, which has partnered with Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the Israeli military as well as ShotSpotter to deploy drones and surveillance technology against Palestinians; Conbo, which provides AI-assisted surveillance to Shin Bet, one of three principal organizations of the Israeli Intelligence Community; and Gyptol, which provides cybersecurity services to Israeli weapons manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries.

Impact

  • Over 223,000 letters sent to Microsoft executives demanding that Microsoft end its complicity in Israel’s AI-powered genocide of Palestinians.
  • Over 2,100 people signed Microsft workers’ petition demanding Microsoft end its complicity in Israel’s AI-powered genocide of Palestinians. 
  • In response to BDS pressure, in 2020 Microsoft divested 74 million USD from AnyVision, a facial recognition tech company that powers Israel’s illegal system of apartheid check points, mass surveillance and human rights violations. #DropAnyVision #BDSVictory

Take Action

  • As a consumer, boycott Microsoft products whenever possible. Here are some examples:
    • Microsoft Gaming products (Xbox, Bethesda Softworks Activision Blizzard King)
      • Cancel Xbox Game Pass Subscription
      • Uninstall & boycott key games owned by the company such as Minecraft, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, etc.
      • Boycott Xbox Platform (e.g. Xbox Console or Xbox App on PC) & Hardware (Consoles, Controllers, Headsets, etc.).
    • Microsoft Surface Hardware (Laptops, Headsets, accessories). 
    • Microsoft AI / Copilot:
      • Avoid using Microsoft’s AI Copilot standalone app or extensions in Bing, Edge, Windows, Office, etc.
      • Change your Microsoft 365 subscription to avoid paying for Microsoft’s AI / Copilot (e.g. change from “Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Microsoft 365 Copilot” plan to “Microsoft 365 Business Basic” plan).
    • Microsoft Operating System, Office Suit, Browser, Search services and other tools (Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Bing, MSN, Teams, Skype etc.). Consider switching free and open software instead of another, possibly complicit company. 

 

  • As a consumer, sign the workers’ petition at: noaa.cc/sign and send a letter to Microsoft executives demanding that Microsoft end its complicity in Israel’s AI-powered genocide of Palestinians at noaa.cc/letter.
  • If you are a student or faculty member, join or start a campaign to pressure your university to cut ties with Microsoft by divesting from the company and ending institutional contracts when possible, exclude Microsoft from career fairs. Also, peacefully disrupt Microsoft sponsored hackathons and events.
  • Pressure your local government to divest from Microsoft, cut contracts with the company and divest local Pride and other celebrations from Microsoft as an intersectional commitment to ending complicity in Israeli apartheid and Pinkwashing. 
  • If you are an academic or involved in a civil society organization, get involved in the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s policy related work on regulating AI and cloud as dual use by contacting [email protected].
  • If you are a Microsoft worker (full-time, contract, intern, etc.) or work for any of Microsoft’s subsidiaries, sign the internal worker petition at noaa.cc/petition, join the No Azure for Apartheid campaign by filling out this form: noaa.cc/join or contact the campaign at [email protected]. 

Divest from Microsoft and its subsidiaries.

BDS Microsoft Fact Sheet