Microsoft admonished for position in facilitating Gaza genocide
Microsoft should instantly finish any involvement with the “Israeli authorities’ systemic repression of Palestinians” and work to forestall its services or products getting used to commit additional “atrocity crimes”, civil society teams have urged.
In a joint letter despatched to the tech large on the finish of September 2025, which has now been made publicly out there, six civil society teams referred to as on the corporate to cease offering synthetic intelligence (AI) and cloud computing applied sciences that they are saying are facilitating what the United Nations (UN) has described as Isreal’s genocide towards Palestinians.
Signed by the Digital Frontier Basis, Entry Now, Amnesty Worldwide, Human Rights Watch, Battle for the Future and 7amleh, the letter cites quite a few media stories detailing how the Israeli Defence Pressure (IDF) is utilizing Microsoft’s AI and cloud capabilities to conduct mass surveillance of Palestinians and facilitate deadly airstrikes on civilians.
The publication of the letter follows Microsoft’s determination to limit “a unit throughout the Israel Ministry of Protection” from utilizing its companies, after an ongoing inside evaluation “discovered proof that helps parts” of an investigation by The Guardian, +972 Journal, and Native Name.
Revealed in August 2025, that investigation alleged that Israeli army intelligence and surveillance company Unit 8200 was utilizing Microsoft’s Azure cloud companies to retailer and course of huge portions of communications information from tens of millions of Palestinians dwelling within the West Financial institution and Gaza.
In keeping with the Unit 8200 sources cited, information saved on the Azure platform has helped immediately form the Israel Protection Forces’ (IDF’s) army operations by facilitating the preparation of lethal airstrikes.
The investigation famous that though Israeli authorities have lengthy managed Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, permitting it to often intercept cellphone calls within the occupied territories, the “indiscriminate” new system permits Unit 8200 intelligence officers to play again the cellphone conversations of a a lot bigger pool of Palestinian civilians.
By July 2025, the tens of millions of calls recorded through the Azure-based surveillance system amounted to 11,500 terabytes of information.
Microsoft mentioned that it was not conscious of the civilian surveillance happening, and that regardless of assembly with Israeli spy chief Yossi Sariel in late 2021 in regards to the provision of cloud companies, Microsoft chief government Satya Nadella was additionally unaware of what varieties of information Unit 8200 deliberate to retailer on Azure.
Previous to this, an Related Press investigation from February 2025 discovered the IDF was utilizing Microsoft Azure to compile, transcribe and translate the info of Palestinians – together with cellphone calls, texts and audio messages – which is then cross-checked with Israel’s in-house synthetic intelligence (AI) focusing on methods to pinpoint goal places for assault, in accordance with inside Microsoft data reviewed by the media outlet.
Whereas Microsoft vice-chair and president Brad Smith introduced in a weblog submit on 25 September that the agency had “ceased and disabled a set of companies” to Unit 8200 following The Guardian’s reporting, the civil society teams say the suspension of a few of its companies is “lengthy overdue” given the corporate’s potential complicity in human rights abuses.
Heightened due diligence wanted
The letter states: “Microsoft’s September 25 assertion and the aforementioned media stories stand in distinction to Microsoft’s public assertion on Could 15, 2025, wherein the corporate claimed to have discovered no proof that its Azure or AI applied sciences have been getting used to focus on or hurt individuals in Gaza.”
Highlighting its obligations beneath the United Nations Guiding Rules on Enterprise and Human Rights (UNGPs) – which the corporate publicly endorses – the teams mentioned that whereas Microsoft ought to have performed heightened due diligence given the clear danger of gross human rights abuses occurring, it has not overtly disclosed what steps it has taken to stop or forestall its applied sciences from contributing to such abuses.
“The allegations within the media stories of Israel’s use of Microsoft’s applied sciences would point out failure by the corporate to respect human rights and uphold its obligations beneath the UNGPs,” they wrote.
“They’d additionally contravene Microsoft’s personal self-proclaimed commitments to advance human dignity and respect human rights throughout the corporate’s worth chain, operations and applied sciences as said within the Microsoft International Human Rights Assertion.”
They added that, given Unit 8200’s documented historical past of surveillance on Palestinian communities, on prime of “Israel’s long-established file of great violations of worldwide legislation”, the dangers of complicity have been “foreseeable and preventable”.
“Due to this fact, claiming that it was not conscious of the Israeli army’s use of its cloud system for mass surveillance functions and to facilitate different abuses doesn’t absolve Microsoft from its duty,” they mentioned.
Following its determination to limit Unit 8200’s use of Azure, the teams say Microsoft should now look at all of its Israeli army and authorities contracts, and droop them the place there’s proof that its enterprise actions are contributing to abuses.
The teams are additionally calling on Microsoft to publish the complete findings of its inside evaluation, clarify what steps it should take to droop its enterprise actions within the area, conduct a further human rights evaluation, and element how it’s planning to offer “efficient treatment, together with reparations”, to affected Palestinians.
Whereas the teams gave the corporate till 10 October 2025 to reply, Microsoft is now anticipated to take action by the top of the month. Pc Weekly contacted Microsoft in regards to the contents of the letter, however the tech large declined to remark.
In an investigative report printed on 30 June inspecting “the position of company entities in sustaining the unlawful Israeli occupation and its ongoing genocidal marketing campaign in Gaza”, Francesca Albanese, the particular rapporteur for the “human rights state of affairs in Palestine”, outlined the important thing position the expertise sector performs in “sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial mission of displacement and alternative”.
Noting that expertise corporations globally are actively “aiding and abetting” Israel’s “crimes of apartheid and genocide”, she highlighted how the “repression of Palestinians has grow to be progressively automated” by the rising provide of highly effective army and surveillance applied sciences to Israel, together with drones, AI-powered focusing on methods, cloud computing infrastructure, information analytics instruments, biometric databases and high-tech weaponry.
She mentioned that if the businesses supplying these applied sciences had performed the correct human rights due diligence – together with IBM, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Palantir – they’d have divested “way back” from involvement in Israel’s unlawful occupation of Gaza and the West Financial institution.
