“[Israel and Microsoft are] a marriage made in heaven, but recognised here on earth,” in the words of none other than Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
Microsoft has a deep history with Israel and its genocidal military, including providing training courses to the IOF and even pre-military programs for female high school students. Microsoft was also, of course, the tech provider of choice for the IOF, providing it with cloud solutions through Azure until recently phased out by Amazon’s AWS. In November 2023, Microsoft discretely opened a data centre in Israel.
Alongside this, Microsoft supplies the Israeli police force with tech including a new exclusive contract as of January 2024 for Microsoft Premier until the end of December 2026.
In October 2023, Microsoft fired two of its employees for “a lunchtime vigil and fundraiser at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA to honor the tens of thousands of Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, enabled by Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology.” This led to the launch of the No Azure for Apartheid campaign demanding that Microsoft terminate all contracts and partnerships with the Israeli military and government.
Whilst Microsoft has halted funding to UNRWA, it instead promotes matching donations to illegal West Bank settlements and the IOF. One of the organisations benefiting from this is the Ein Prat Academy whose self-declared mission is "training Israel’s next generation of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) officers and commanders of the highest caliber," and note that it is "the sole pre-military institution with a formal agreement with the IDF.”
In Oct 2024, it has also emerged that Microsoft hires IOF soldiers including those actively participating in the Gaza genocide.
Microsoft is also financially backed by Vanguard, which invests heavily in the deeply complicit Lockheed Martin and is the third largest shareholder in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.