LONDON: Human rights groups and activists welcomed Microsoft’s suspension of Israeli military access to some technologies linked to mass surveillance of Palestinians, urging the company to go further and end all contracts with Israel.
The decision, announced by Microsoft President Brad Smith on Thursday, followed an investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call, which revealed that Unit 8200, Israel’s spy agency, used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store and process vast amounts of Palestinian phone calls in Gaza and the West Bank as part of a mass surveillance program.
Microsoft said it acted after reviewing the reports and had blocked the unit’s access to some cloud storage and AI services.
Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, urged the tech giant to investigate all its other dealings with the Israeli military to ensure they do not contribute to Israel’s “human rights violations against Palestinians.”
She urged other tech companies to suspend similar technology and military sales and called for accountability as Israel’s campaign in Gaza continues to cause mass civilian casualties, displacement and famine.
“There must be an end to the impunity that Israel has enjoyed and flouted,” said Callamard, urging states to “live up to their legal obligations toward bringing Israel’s genocide.”
The worker-led “No Azure for Apartheid” campaign group, which has lately escalated protests against Microsoft for its ties with Israel, welcomed the partial suspension but said it was “insufficient.”
The group reiterated its call for a complete suspension of Microsoft’s ties with the Israeli military and vowed to continue protests until that demand is met.
“We know that this is not enough,” Hossam Nasr, one of the group’s organizers, told Arab News.
“Microsoft has only disabled a small subset of services to only one unit in the Israeli military. The vast majority of Microsoft’s contract with the Israeli military remains intact.”
He said continuing ties with the military while it carries out its relentless campaign in Gaza is “unconscionable and morally indefensible for Microsoft.”
Nasr, a former Microsoft employee who was fired last year for holding an “unauthorized” vigil for Palestinian victims of Gaza, was one of seven protesters arrested after staging a a sit-in at the office of the Microsoft president in Washington. He said Microsoft’s suspension of some cloud services to Unit 8200, one month after the sit-in and repeated protests, demonstrated that the company had yielded to pressure.
Nasr said that although Microsoft’s response was “inadequate,” it marked the first instance of a US technology company halting the sale of certain services to the Israeli military “since the start of Gaza genocide.”
The campaign group, which gathered over 2,000 signatures from Microsoft employees and held demonstrations outside the company’s Washington headquarters last month, described its demand as part of a broader push for a “digital arms embargo” in parallel with weapons embargoes being imposed by governments worldwide.
In his official statement on Thursday, Smith said investigations were continuing.
Despite the suspension, he said that the company will continue to provide cybersecurity support to Israel and regional partners under existing agreements.
