It’s a fucking disgrace to any government to be facilitating anything like this, and the Netherlands seems extra complicit.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-milita...
Every time I hear or read that expression, I stop taking the comment seriously because it attempts to shut down dialogue with a cute, esoteric phrase instead of fostering a discussion about a serious retrospective.
Israeli government wanted October 7 to happen, because they knew it would provide a good pretext for the genocide they wanted to commit.
Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to privacy commitments.
Highly likely, or at least a bit naive -- Completely reasonable to have local staff for a contract this big, but Microsoft should have independently 'double-checked' sooner
I've worked for big corporations for nearly 20 years, I've seen this more times then I can count. Higher ups always happy to turn a blind eye to a bad situation as long as it's making the company money, and then immediately throwing subordinates under the bus when it bites them in the ass.
‘Your winnings sir’
Surveillance-Suspicious Saint
I suppose it originates from the term "border czar" and others in politics e.g. https://www.politico.com/story/2009/09/president-obamas-czar...
But you don’t even need to go that sensitive, literally any type of online service might run the risk of handling PII. Which is why CIS, NIST et al have security frameworks that cover things like encryption at rest.
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-palestine-is...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-prote...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-build-israel-gaza-prote...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-protest-employees-fired...
I am not saying Israel is nearly as bad as Nazi Germany, but I think this argument is overall kind of pointless because one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after they invaded Poland.
This is an interesting comparison—thank you.
That said, did the Poles launch cross-border attacks on German civilians? The closest I can come up with is Bloody Sunday [1], which was an attack on ethnically German civilians, but not a cross-border incursion. (Granted, we can only observe this ex post facto, so your argument still stands.)
If the Armia Krajowa had carried out an October 7 style attack on the German homeland, against German civilians, their memory would be mixed, not the virtually unblemished heroism they deservedly command in the historic record.
One baby was killed. Another died 14 hours after birth after its pregnant mother was shot. Only one of those was conclusively shot by insurgents from Gaza (the UN fact-finding report[1], on page 44, notes that many Israelis were killed and injured by "friendly fire")
Out of 1200 non-Gazans killed, 33 were children, or 2.7%, and again, at least some of these deaths can be attributed to the Israeli military response. It should be noted that the casualty rate of Israel's response in Gaza has been at least 30% children.
It's bizarre that you bring up the infant casualties of Hamas October 7, of which there was 1, as evidence for calling it a terrorist attack, when the actual number of babies killed by Israel is an order of magnitude greater than the total number of people killed by Hamas on October 7
[1]: https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/a-hrc-...
That's how borders work. (Anything else is, by definition, a border dispute.) If the Armia Krajowa had bulldozed into Lithuania on the logic that they lost it due to foreign meddling, they would have tarnished their record. (Despite the claim being true.)
> Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes
On their own turf. And as for the former, against military targets--nobody serious in the Viet Cong or USSR was plotting Al Qaeda-style attacks on the American homeland.
October 7th was a terrorist attack. It was plotted like a military operation. But so was 9/11.
> would you be as careful to keep your resistance peaceful?
Not particularly. But I'd want to be fighting an actual resistance. 7 October attack was a strategic failure. The only reason it might end in a draw is because Netanyahu surrounded himself with maniacs. Even then, permanent damage has been done to the viability of a sovereign Palestine.
(There is also a massive difference between something being understandable and something being justified.)
No such thing as Palestinian. Just Islamic Arab. Choosing to label yourself the same as one name for the land doesn’t make the land yours. But also - who do you think occupied the land previously?
Correction, Gaza was first occupied by Israel for a few months in 1956, then occupied continuously since 1967.
Regardless, by 1984, nearly half of the people in Gaza would have lived their entire lives under occupation, and the most would have lived at least half their lives under occupation.
The only way one could argue that it is no longer occupied is to say there wasn't a continuous Israeli military presence of boots on ground inside of Gaza. It was still being surveilled by satellite and the entire perimeter, people venturing too far at sea from the coast would be shot, drones would occasionally bomb people, everything and everyone going in and out was controlled by Israel (until Hamas tunnels were built), all cell phones allowed in contained surveillance technology, a fence with military outposts was constructed on the perimeter, and Israel bombed the one airport they tried to build.
So arguing it was "no longer occupied" after they pulled out the settlers is disingenuous, unless you're trying to argue that it couldn't be both an occupation and a concentration camp.
oh, that's generous of you
The first one seems to be after Microsoft's claim "and Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets".
The second one looks similar "Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian".
The 3rd one seems to be a genuine example that Microsoft employees were reporting this specific contract violation concern - but I feel like there are more genuine examples I've heard of than just this one report.
The 4th one is a bit unclear, it seems to be a general complaint about the contract - not about specific violations of it.
Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian". It's not like these kinds of claims are new, or in small papers only, but maybe The Guardian was able to put together hard evidence from outside that allowed Microsoft to determine things without themselves going in breach of contract details?
I think timing. The world is finally ready to stop ignoring what Israel has been doing so it’s significantly easier for countries, companies, and even individuals to stand up, speak out, and take action.
I've had sales, customer reps, even engineers and customers describe how a customer / they work ... and then I go and look and ... it's not how anyone said they work IRL.
This is a very significant issue for American tech companies, they either need to restore the trust of global customers, or they will lose it completely.
There should be no tech for genocide!
Note: I've used Azure and it sucks. :)
Uses the same awful UI/plaform as their Xbox account settings
Microsoft always somehow succeeds in spite of the quality of everything they build.
... any day now. aaaaaany dayyyy now. Yeah.
Now obviously, this was a lie, but the implication is staggering: Microsoft can't trust it's own employees in Israel, and believes they're lying to the mothership! And if microsoft can't trust them, surely no one else should either!
The leaders of the developed nations of Europe have gone against Trump and publicly stated their recognition of Palestine.
One in every 50 children in Gaza was killed by the Israeli military. That’s like killing a child in every second classroom in the US…
Fwiw my Jewish friends have also been quite vocal in opposing Netanyahu/Likud, usually more vocal than Muslim friends.
Like do people not realize Iranian Jews also exist?
Anyway I digress..
https://jewishcurrents.org/antisemitic-zionists-arent-a-cont...
Also ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”
My reaction is "what are you talking about, psycho murderer?"
That's a good look, try that.
tbf I'm not primarily interested in what's a good look.
I'm not suggesting cultural destruction is possible or desireable (maybe it is, but it's not my purview), but if a culture is producing a large preponderance of murderous ethnic supremacists it's time to sound the alarm bells. This entire thing wouldn't have been possible if that community didn't make it so.
This is especially compounded given that this group feels above critique from outsiders. That is a dangerous concoction and unfortunately the end result is wanton murder and redirection of resources to abet it. I think we're all about sick of the killing now. With great power comes great responsibility to be a moral agent.
There's also, I think, an irony that antisemites and Zionists are united in their their efforts to conflate Jewishness with the actions of the Israeli state. I think it's a welcome development that Parker / Stone / Sheila Broflovski aren't going along with it.
Now with Trump they state that they have max support for Israel while it seems like all of Europe is turning away from unconditional support for Israel and a massive change in the typical rhetoric around media in the US. That’s odd.
I thought the defeated tone of my post made it clear that it was not meant to be taken that literally. I guess not.
So the atrocity continues in Iraq, even to this day.
Estimated deaths are in the 300,000's.
The international community must be allowed into Gaza to start counting skeletons.
It's not their land to 'return to' - after all, people already live there and they have no moral right to displace them.
Undoing colonialism isn't colonialism.
The idea of a nation called Israel is the invention of Zionists in the 19th and 20th century.
It is also trivially simply to disprove “It was always Palestine”. It was made up by Romans. Again, much later than when Jewish people lived there.
It's the same people, on the same land, practicing the same religion, speaking the same language, with the same alphabet, with the same capital, with the same place names, with the same cities, with the same core texts, with the same national holidays.
But that's somehow nothing? At this point you'd have to actually work hard to figure out what's not the same.
Israel is an example of anti-colonialism, where the original inhabitants of the land were able to take it back from invaders.
They are not the same people. Modern day Palestinians share more ethnic heritage with the land's original inhabitants than European Zionist settlers.
The religion of the region has been different throughout time. Judaism is one religion of that region, and not the only nor even the first.
The language is not the same. Modern Hebrew that is spoken in Israel diverges significantly from the original Hebrew, which is more closely spoke by Yemeni Jews, for example.
Everything else is in your list is done by fiat, as even the the UN and the vast, vast majority of the world do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital.
Israel is the last major European colony and it's an anachronism that will go down in history as the final failed attempt at Western Imperialism.
Palestine was never a country before 1948, immediately prior to 1948 there was a British Mandate[0] with the name Palestine, but this mandate included land that would eventually turn into countries like Jordan(which just so happens to be a country with a Palestinian majority population). After 1948 and before 1967 the West Bank was annexed by Jordan and Gaza was occupied and administered by Egypt.
The idea of a nation called Palestine is arguably a more recent invention than the nation of Israel.
Israel's founding principles are mass murder and invasion.
Palestinian refugees are defined differently by the UN vs essentially all other refugees.
Palestinian refugees fall under the UNRWA while normal refugees(i.e. refugees from essentially all other countries) fall under the UNHCR. The UNRWA definition is hereditary while the UNHCR definition is not. This hereditary definition is largely why the Palestinian refugee populations can increase over time in other countries so easily vs normal refugees.
There were multiple reason they(or their ancestors) left, there was plenty of violence when Israel was created but it wasn't like it was just one side attacking either. Regardless it's quite strange that someone is still considered a refugee despite potentially having never even been to the country they are supposedly a refugee from, especially since that doesn't happen for refugees from other countries(at least with how the UN defines refugee).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_expulsion_from_L...
The arrival of Zionist European Jews was a phenomonen of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Zionist Jews that came from Europe brought with them a supremecist ideology that, in their eyes, justified all forms of violence committed against the Muslim, Christian, and yes, Jewish Palestians that opposed their colonization.
I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem, but Jews have always lived in Jerusalem since the Muslims first took control of it 1400 years ago when Umar ibn El-Khattab brought back in Jews who had been expelled by the Christian rulers prior to that.
Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the_We...
"The Jordanians immediately expelled all the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem.[54] Mark Tessler cites John Oesterreicher as writing that during Jordanian rule, "34 out of the Old City's 35 synagogues were dynamited. Some were turned into stables, others into chicken coops.""
Which is why Palestinians should never get East Jerusalem as their capital, it's simply not theirs, not even in the nebulous way that the West Bank is.
This:
> Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
Is not true, as even a cursory view of the history will reveal endless massacres of Jews by Muslims.
Also, you are lying about "endless massacres of Jews by Muslims". This is not, has never been, and continues to not be, true whatsoever.
Arabs and Muslims didn't even have antisemitism before Zionism existed. You can only look to times after Zionism with its supremeist ideology to find hostility from Arabs and Muslims specifically targeting Jews for being Jewish. It simply did not exist and they have coexisted for nearly the entirety of the history of Islam. Only when Europeans came down into the Middle East and they segmented and separated the society did this occur.
Avi Shlaim [0], an Israeli and also Arab Jew, talks extensively about the peaceful coexistence Muslims and Jews had for hundreds of years in the Middle East prior to Zionism.
Zionism tried to force a wedge between Arab Jews and Muslims that simply wasn't there beforehand.
There's been plenty of slander to try to say they're more arab, but they're essentially close cousins.
Which leads one to believe, perhaps a large amount of the jews in the region simply moved on with the times with the new religion taking hold.
Essentially Israel/Palestine is a fight between cousins, and one side's inlaws who never actually came from the region but converted elsewhere.
So converts vs converts. Do the local converts have a say over the foreign converts?
The idea that land rights can be derived from the bible or spans of 1000s of years is silly, but the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine going back to 1945 is within living memory.
...race is fiction.
Genetic analysis does not match "racial" classifications
"Race" is a social construct
The goal of the genetic stuff is to point this split out, not delineate races.
Sadly though, this conflict is full of racism. The Gazans are described as "Arabs" and therefore undeserving of the land. If it turns out the Gazans are not Arabs, but also locals to the region, then what does that mean?
This seems off topic. I will flag it.
They listened to their internal staff and stakeholders and public pressure, and did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down.
That is a good thing.
That will get you fired from bussing tables or washing dishes, let alone a six-figure job at MS.
Edit: Source on the last one; the first two were widely reported on in media:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/fired-microsoft-employee-enco...
But your employer? They can put whatever rules and restrictions they want on your speech, and with at-will employment, can fire you for any reason anyway, at anytime.
You can say whatever you want, but you aren't free from the consequences of that speech.
>”Corporations cannot exist without government intervention”
>”Some privates companies and financiers are too big to fail/of strategic national importance”
>”1A does not apply to private entities (including the above)”
>”We have a free, competitive market”
I find it very difficult to resolve these seemingly contradictory statements.
The consequences were appropriate, even if I might share some of the protestor's concerns.
Are we talking about the military or some company?
If it was an open discussion in a meeting with 5 people, no.
All these people hate on their employer and customers whilst simultaneously drawing a salary.
If they put their money where their mouth is, they can all quit en masse and let the company deal with customers without employees to support.
that would be a nice compensation package in any first world country
I know a guy that passed BillG in a hallway and said, “hey, Bill, how’s it hangin’?” (Saw him do it; I was mortified.) Just a bottom-tier IC at the time. 20 years later, he still works there. Still an IC, though, so make of it what you will. :-)
So there, now you have another folksy anecdote to balance things out.
There's a couple of sub links off of that one. Not sure if that's what GP was referring too but there is mention in there of employees being terminated related to protests
"In the aftermath of the protests, Smith claimed that the protestors had blocked people out of the office, planted listening devices in the form of phones, and refused to leave until they were removed by police. " (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/microsoft-fires-two-employee...)
Protestors (in associated with the firing) also projected "Microsoft powers genocide" on the office wall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft).
Heck, it's usually because one will be punished that doing the right thing is in any manner noble. Otherwise it's just meeting minimum expectations as a human.
It's important that people engaging in such activity are dealt with swiftly and justly. Such behavior further encourages violence and destruction as acceptable behaviors in society, which they are not.
Is everyone so quick to forget that the rights we have today in the US were won through violence after all other methods failed? The 40 hour work week we enjoy today was also won through blood.
Now, in this case between employees and Microsoft I'd agree, no, vandalism wasn't necessary at all.
But when it comes to defending our rights and freedoms, there will come a day when its absolutely necessary, and it's just as valid of a tool as peaceful protest is in enforcing the constitution.
If the ideas are good then support will build through effectively communicating those ideas. Being noisy is fine but there’s an obvious line that selfish activists cross. The sort of people who want their toys now and don’t want to patiently do the hard work of organically building up a critical mass. So they immediately start getting aggressive and violent in small groups. Which is counter productive.
"Violence" like stoping the traffic. If that is violence...
Even if it just ruins the day for thousands of people, I have zero sympathy for such assholery. Whether you call it "violence" is unimportant.
I have zero sympathy for people like yourself that use their car every day and put their time before others peoples lifes.
You are posing a false dilemma where the only thing a person can do to voice there opinion is to destroy or disrupt things.
That's not true though. Instead you can simply voice your options. You can put out manifestos, publish articles in the newspaper, post to social media, or even talk to people in person.
All those methods are how speech and ideas are normally distributed in a normal society. And if people aren't convinced by what you say, then it is time for you to get better arguments.
The idea that everyone can just be convinced with a good argument is a nice fantasy but just never true in reality. You've also rigged the game since you can just dig in your heels are refuse any argument and just say "get better arguments". It's a situation no one else can win. If people could so easily be convinced that different people deserve the same rights then we wouldn't have had to spend over a century trying to get them.
I think think that violence or vandalism in this case was unwarranted, but there are some other in this thread who believe otherwise.
I guess that I'd say that, probably, vandals/criminals should always be punished, because they're doing clearly illegal things... and it's up to the protestors to judge whether the cause they're supporting is really worth going to jail for. If sufficient numbers of people feel that, you have a revolution.
(And also, a separate issue, whether the violence is actually going to benefit their cause. It probably won't.)
I certainly don't think that we should be in a position where courts are are judging certain crimes as forgivable because of their cause, while supporters of other causes get the full weight of the law for similar actions. I think the vandals on Jan 6th should get the same punishment as, for instance, similar vandals during BLM.
Except of course Jan 6th, which somehow normalized the belief that the 2020 election was stolen AND gaslit a ton of the country into thinking the violence that occurred did not and therefore doesn’t need to be critiqued.
This admin is truly adept at labeling all forms of dissent or disagreement as unacceptable actions that make discussing the issues at hand impossible.
Vandalism can be measured in dollars. How much did this vandalism actually cost Microsoft to repair?
It's important that we don't ignore context.
“Promote company-hating propaganda” is an interesting way to describe what happened.
Laws are backed by legal, physical violence.
Sorry if that is unclear.
This is a fireable offense in nearly every company handbook in existence.
Clearly I get that their jobs and more were at risk, hence why I said they were brave. The only thing unclear is where you got the impression I thought otherwise.
I can agree with protestors, also think their choices are bad.
Moreover, their actions didn't improve anything and only serve as further fodder for painting their side here as radical.
Nobody with any semblance of ethical, just or just plain being a basic good corporate citizen would say.. oh yeah mass surveillance of the comms of a whole population for money is in any way acceptable or ok. This shouldn’t be a tech side note this should be a total meltdown front page scandal. What a disgusting abuse of power by all involved.
I think we should give props here. This is an important step forward. Thank you Microsoft!
I think we should protest when companies do things that are wrong and we should give them kudos when they make good moves. Carrot and stick.
I am not fans of those that say because you did wrong things in the past, I will never recognize when you change and make good moves.
I want to encourage more companies to correct their involvement in this.
It's like, if someone steals a million dollars and then steals a thousand dollars, you don't reward them for making progress.
I just don’t think they have anything to worry about. I personally think it’s good what they’re doing here, but I guess I’m too cynical to believe they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and I don’t think the real reason is that they’re worried about bad publicity.
Surely if any movement leads to this, it's BDS, likely the most popular and widely-known boycott since before the end of South African apartheid.
They even appear to have a page and a visualization devoted to compiling publicly visible impacts: https://bdsmovement.net/our-impact
Maybe not, but some is better than none, and I'll continue to push more people to do it, rather than tell them nothing they do matters.
> over this?
Maybe it's not just this. Maybe this is the straw that breaks the user's back. Or maybe the next thing is.
My point was to address your belief that they're too big for anyone to make any difference. That isn't true, and the belief that you or any other citizen can't make a difference is their biggest advantage.
(I put this last because I know what HN will say to this, but: are CEOs and other executives not people too? Can they not make principled moves either?)
Not sure what you mean by "what HN will say to this", but for me the answer is clear - they are, they can, and they often do. As do their employees - or at least they push in the direction which is better aligned with their values.
I fully expect some form of cynical "No" as an answer.
I originally had phrased it, "Are CEOs not humans too?" which might make it clearer what I expected :P
I don't think I actually disagree with anything you've said. I am just very cynical, and while I want to believe like you do, I find it very difficult.
edit: "Can they not make principled moves either?" - Yeah, they _could_, but does that _ever_ happen at companies as big as microsoft?
There are more than a couple of us who have Office or Teams imposed on us. There is plenty to complain about that is current and most definitely valid.
1. Trump criticizes Israel for releasing photos and videos of its devastating war in Gaza - https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-criticizes-israels-pho...
2. Trump ruthless take on Israel's war on Gaza: 'Finish the problem' - https://www.newarab.com/news/trump-israels-war-gaza-finish-p...
3. Satellite photos show Egypt building Gaza wall as Israel’s Rafah push looms - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/16/satellite-photos-sh...
4. Israel’s plan to build Gaza ‘concentration camps’ was rolled out months ago - https://mondoweiss.net/2025/07/israels-plan-to-build-gaza-co...
5. Trump’s Gaza takeover all about natural gas - https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/trumps-gaza-takeover-all-about...
Yet the US does not allow prosecutions in the international criminal court.
How do you explain Mai Lai what went on more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Intern...
BDS is also about as formidable as a boycott movement gets.
Barely gotten started.
This is what made the difference in South Africa, but the boycotts were much bigger
Amazon, Google and Oracle will have to boycott too. I am boycotting them
8000*8 Tb / 60s / 60 / 24 = .740740...
24 h *.740 = 17.76 h
I think this has been another case of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway" (Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981). Maybe rack units of disks? For very important data I would pay for the privilege of removing my disks at a very short notice.
the rack and infra are yours; the storage media and all contents are mine.
and there wasn't
This was after they ignored it and doubled down for almost 3 years*. What was the total gain in profits and how many Palestinians died during that time? You’re going to ignore the full cost because they did the least they could do almost 3 years later?
* if the starting line is set to October 2022 attacks, if not how long were they making money off this contract?
No? Hmm, then you should not let Microsoft whitewash its record by taking credit for the very cause those workers were punished for defending
One can be correct in theory and wrong in practice at the same time.
"Some" ... Microsoft's chief executive was involved in cementing a collaboration for a secret military / intelligence project with an AI component, to spy on people against whom a genocide is ongoing by their colonial occupiers. This only "ended" when the public became aware of it, for political and (possibly) legal reasons, clearly indicating that they would have continued with "business as usual" if the public hadn't become aware of it. What other Israeli projects are Microsoft hiding and supporting, that possibly aids Israel's genocide, is what concerns me ...
To be fair in 2021 you'd be laughed out of the room (or be in a DSA conference) if you called what was happening in Palestine a "genocide".
you have a very narrow historical lens if you think a DSA conference in 2021 is the only place that has treated allegations of genocide seriously.
I'd recommend reading through [0] which has a very nice chronological timeline.
for example, way back in 1982 the UN General Assembly voted to declare the Sabra and Shatila massacre [1] an act of genocide. it was carried out against a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, by a militia allied with the Israeli military, and during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon:
> In February 1983, an independent commission chaired by Irish diplomat Seán MacBride, assistant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, concluded that the IDF, as the then occupying power over Sabra and Shatila, bore responsibility for the militia's massacre. The commission also stated that the massacre was a form of genocide.
there's also a long history of "well...it's not genocide, because genocide only comes from the Geno region of Nazi Germany, everything else is sparkling ethnic cleansing" type of rhetoric:
> At the UN-backed 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism, the majority of delegates approved a declaration that accused Israel of being a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing". Reed Brody, the then-executive director of Human Rights Watch, criticised the declaration, arguing that "Israel has committed serious crimes against Palestinian people but it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide", while Claudio Cordone, a spokesman for Amnesty International, stated that "we are not ready to make the assertion that Israel is engaged in genocide"
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusatio...
I'm not a total fan of Apple here but it's weird to contrast them with Apple in this case when they don't enable a genocide (having a closed ecosystem is a UX decision compared to genocide). You mention that Microsoft is now "pro-Linux", but if that's your measure, many other tech companies contribute significantly more to the Linux kernel. https://lwn.net/Articles/1031161/
With respect to anti-trust, some of their bundling decisions absolutely deserve to be scrutinized (e.g. Teams).
Furthermore, Microsoft is still doing business with the IDF. If your bar is "enabling a genocide" (presumably by being in contract with the IDF), I don't think that's changed too much, just the most egregious example of cloud services in service of that are being challenged (Unit 8200 stuff). It looks like that work is now moving the AWS though.
Their laziness, greed and business acumen have left us in the position that the world's dominant personal OS is insecure, unreliable and running a protection racket with virus detection (and virus writers)
This is an ongoing rolling clusterfuck, and is entirely due to MS
However, even in the present, the increasing intrusiveness of their update schemes, forcing people to have a Microsoft account even to install Windows, shoving AI into people's faces at every opportunity, etc., would all count as reasons I think they are bad. Also I tend to think in general that simply existing as a giant corporation with large market share is bad.
To be clear, I also think that Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., are also very very bad. I think I'd agree that these days Microsoft is on the lower end of badness among these megacorps. However, that's partly just because it's become somewhat weaker than it was at the height of its badness. You could argue that this isn't "badness" but something like "ability to implement badness" but I see those as pretty closely tied. Basically the bigger a corporation becomes, the harder it has to work to avoid being bad.
Furthermore, why do you think the reactions are knee-jerk? That implies a rather biased attitude on your part.
In which case, is it prudent to remove the IDF's ability to successfully target the correct people? Precise military intelligence is absolutely necessary for minimising civilian casualties.
I think it’s this second assertion that relies on facts not in evidence. Previous Guardian reporting on IDF use of compute for targeting indicated they were using it to increase, not decrease, the number of approved targets.
You’re describing what ought to be, not what currently is.
Israel just gets more aggressive in the murder and bombing.
“I’m glad I have a chance to address that because the court’s test for deciding whether to impose measures uses the idea of plausibility. But the test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South Africa” she told the BBC show HARDtalk.
“The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court,” Donoghue said. “It then looked at the facts as well. But it did not decide—and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media—it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
“It did emphasize in the order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide,” she added. “But the shorthand that often appears, which is that there’s a plausible case of genocide, isn’t what the court decided.”
Donoghue’s term on the bench expired a few days after the court delivered its initial ruling on Jan. 26.
https://www.jns.org/former-top-hague-judge-media-wrong-to-re...
It reminds me of a conversation I had with an Israeli a few weeks back. He asked me, "if what Israel is doing is so bad, why does nobody stop it?"
A great question. I don't know. And the bodies of children continue to pile up.
There's nothing stopping people from discussing the events in Gaza as a tragedy and a war crime, but activists are intent on attaching the word genocide to this. Referring to it as a genocide has become a litmus test to be considered pro-Palestinian.
Israel-Palestine used to be really important, because it was a surrogate conflict for Western vs Arab control of the Middle East, and what that is really about is of course oil.
The Arab-Israeli wars of the 1950s/1960s were direct conflicts, but it became apparent that the West wouldn't let Israel lose because Israel represents the latent threat of Western invasion if the Arabs ever really turned off the oil spigot.
So the Palestinians became the thorn for the Middle East to keep Israel at bay, so you get strange bedfellows of Iran and Qatar (Sunni and Shiite) funding them, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But a funny thing happened over 75 years of relative stability of borders and global trade: the status quo established itself, oil price and supply was managed and stabilized, security agreements established and backed up (with the Iraq invasion of Kuwait). Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel in fact are effectively allies against Iran and Turkey.
And the US has its own supply of oil with Dakota shale oil. A FUCKTON of it. So strangely, the Arabian peninsula isn't afraid of the US. They are afraid of Iran and Turkey. And who has the best army to counteract Iran and Turkey?
Israel.
The Palestinians don't have a geopolitical use anymore. The Palestinians used to number around 400,000. Now? They number 4,000,000. That is ... not good. The Palestinians have no economy, and rely almost entirely on external aid. So the scope of a humanitarian burden on Arab sponsors has risen from 400,000 people to 4,000,000 people. AGAIN: the humanitarian burden has risen by a factor of 10, while their geopolitical value has DECREASED, almost evaporated.
And that is without the decreasing value of oil from EVs/alt energy and the long term specter of global warming.
That is NOT GOOD for the Palestinians.
I am curious to see what the ICJ ruling in South Africa's case will be. That would be an actual legal body charged with making a genocide determination.
Whatever they've been doing on that front doesn't seem to be working so far...
> The goal is not to kill hamas, that was just the excuse, it is to clear the ground for new settlements.
Israel has explicitly stated that this is NOT the goal, are you in a position to change their policy or something? I don't get how you think you can determine their goals for them, unless you are a member of their government (are you?).
Your stated goal doesn't even make any sense - why would they even need to "clear ground" in the first place? Just go live in those houses. And if you mean "kill people", then why are the deaths so low?
Israel has been taking over palestinian villages for a very long time, murdering the inhabitants. The government is fueling the hate. They aren't even affraid to say it out aloud. I have seen several reports where they are calling for genocide.
If anything, quite the opposite. Think about this logically - why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_the...
A question suited for ITF and Netanyahu maybe? Ask them spend less. He gets to prolong this Genocide, then he gets to stay out of trial for his previous crimes. Maybe ITF is not in a hurry.
1. UN Commission of Inquiry: Concluded that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. * Report: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c... * Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA
2. Amnesty International: Concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. * Statement: https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-genocide-aga...
3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. * Report ("Our Genocide"): https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention. * Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
5. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: Issued an "Active Genocide Alert" in October 2023, warning of the high risk of genocide. * Alert: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-genocide-alert-1/acti...
Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source validates their lived experience.
Gaza has long been a showroom and R&D space for technologies of oppression. Field proven platforms sell.
They are committing a genocide in both word and deed.
This is entirely made up.
For some additional context this initial complete siege lasted for roughly two weeks.
What else do you call people who rape and murder civilians, then parade their dead bodies around to cheering crowds?
Hamas will never have any sympathy from most people who watched the October 7 attack footage.
I have ZERO issue with the IDF killing Hamas. That's what you do in a war. But we have ample evidence that Israel and the IDF is not making any effort to not kill random Palestinians.
They made some stupid AI algorithm to feed data into in order to generate target lists. They accepted something like 10:1 "innocent palestinian":"literal terrorist" ratios. They have no qualms about killing a 10 innocent Palestinians to kill a single Hamas terrorist
This is unacceptable.
Well, it is difficult to distinguish between the two when you’re hunting down terrorists who hide among civilians. But also, let’s not forget - the civilian population of Gaza VOTED for Hamas. In polls they still show support for Hamas even after October 7. There are videos of those civilians cheering in the streets while the naked bodies of raped / murdered women were paraded down the street by Hamas terrorists. I don’t think you can pretend “random Palestinians” are entirely innocent either.
Would note that this issue has sufficiently polarised that there are thoughtful people in e.g. New York who think it’s an atrocity for even Hamas fighters to be killed. (Same as there are folks who think every Palestinian is safely presumed a terrorist until proved innocent.)
If you have better way to differentiate, I will happily pass it to IDF. Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own life.
Where to?
Hind Rajab ,literally a child, was brutally killed when fleeing their home, after being asked of course. The ambulance which came to rescue was blown up by the ITF. The Whole world has seen it all, ITF proudly displays it. Maybe it is time to update the Hasbara points.
>Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own life.
Why? ITF certainly risks many children's life, just for sport often.
> Why
Because there's no shortage of armchair operators that know better how to make split second decisions in combat. Also, they never do anything wrong because they never happen to be in situation where you have to decide between bad and worse.
They should probably stop shooting them then.
Israel has been very effective at blurring that distinction, using that attack from Gaza as the pretext to accelerate land theft in the West Bank.
So was the data moved in August to Amazon (AWS)? I am sure the $3.8bn USD the US gives annually will pay for it anyway. Because it is given as a loan, no accountability is required if it were a grant to Israel, and then the US forgives the loan, so there's not payback or interest for borrowing.
Here is a link in case anyone wants to donate https://www.fidf.org to this amazing organization.
Seems like what Israel is doing disproportionately affects poor people.
Are we supposed to believe Microsoft was unaware of the contents but decided to terminate coincidentally when reports of what they're doing came out?
> The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review.
You think, that is plausible?
To me, Nope, it's just that, the money was too good.
Only after Guardian's report, they realized:
"Oops, we got caught, now do the damage control dance"
And here we are ...
Also, are those employees going to get fired? I doubt. But the protestor, standing up for something, did. Who is more damaging?
Oh right, the protestor, because, they ruined the big cake.
Did the unit that breach the contract lose anything? Nope, they got enough time to move their data safely, and will continue doing the same thing.
It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
let's please hear your complete list of evil entities, just curious who else it includes. you can go out in concentric circles from israel, or just start with the most evil worldwide and go till you get to israel and microsoft.
If you can give me a counter, why these actions are not evil, I'm all ear.
When the customer is indicted by the Hague for crimes against humanity? Yes, it's difficult to imagine a more clear-cut case of professional ethics.
It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.
Well, why wouldn't they? It's Microsoft, they're not exactly stewards of privacy.
Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
The concern is who gets to decide what is or isn't a legitimate target? Today's heroes might be tomorrow's victims. I'd rather no one have that much power over others.
The assertion was that "every army" is doing it, not that it's happening in active warzones.
Yes, that is a sign of restraint, obviously.
It is very obvious that the only restraint that the IDF is showing is that they do not kill every single civilian on sight.
Beyond that, everything you wrote is perfectly compatible with the IDF showing tremendous restraint. It is all more or less inevitable with any war in such an environment. All of it happened in Iraq with the Americans, for example.
- Buildings destroyed aren't people
- Documented cases are just that - cases. You need to demonstrate a pattern at scale. Bad cases are inevitable among millions of interactions.
- Investigations opened is a signal of political incentives as much as actions taken.
Now you're saying, okay they do have restraint, but what I really meant was their restraint is driven by the PR concerns, not by their own moral hearts. Well, that's pretty different accusation now.
I'm glad you've conceded the original point that they do indeed have restraint. Thank you.
It wouldn't be difficult at all to increase collateral damage, just fight like they did during ww2 and collateral damage would skyrocket.
Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn’t take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and schools is going to kill innocent people.
Also, Israel has attacked or destroyed most hospitals in Gaza. So the Health Ministry's counting is obviously hindered.
Only 34,344 of the GHM estimate are confirmed identities. The rest of either missing but presumed dead or gross adjustments. They are open about using "media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza".
The Lancet study published in January 2025 estimated 70,000 as of October, 2024. This is higher than the GHM estimate, but I can't find anything close to your 200k estimate.
So you may believe in your estimates, but they are many multiples larger than any other credible source that I can find... so it's odd to wave these figures around without any sources, links, etc.
Or maybe that man is a hamas spy, right?
> The current official toll is 64,718 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 163,859 injured, since the start of the war on 7 October 2023
You may have been misled by the headline “X killed or injured”.. those are two different things, and we’re talking about the number killed.
I don’t know if those numbers are accurate (the article about the IDF solider claims it is), but I’m not even questioning that. The GP is claiming that an order of magnitude more people have been killed than even GMH claims.
> Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.
> The retired general told a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week that more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”.
The point is that we know 64,000 is almost certainly an undercount. Notably it hasn't changed much in the last year since the Hamas ministry of health collapsed.
The commenter above is correct in saying the bound of deaths is very likely between 45,000 and 600,000. We have good reason to suspect it was over 100,000 late last year. We won't know the actual number until an independent assessment can occur.
More explicitly: 64,718 killed + 163,859 injured =~ "more than 200,000 people"
I don't understand what basis you (and other commenters) have to suggest that these estimates are all wrong, you merely say "we have good reason". What reason?
So while 680k (the current highest estimate) is probably higher than reality, god i hope it is, it’s also true that reality is probably much higher than the current GMH numbers.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/press-briefing-francesca...
“65,000 is the number of Palestinians are certain killed, including over, of which 75% are women and children.
In fact, we shall start the thinking of 680,000, because this is the number that some scholars and scientists claim being the real death toll in Gaza.
And it would be hard to be able to prove or disprove this number, especially if investigators and others remained banned from entering the occupied Palestinian territory, and particularly the Gaza Strip.”
The death toll could be that high. I hope to hell it isn’t. But we don’t know and won’t know until the killing stops. We do know that tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed, and at least 150,000 people injured.
If you want to let the lack of a specific number hold you up while the killing continues, that’s up to you.
But those who are well informed agree it the data supports a number above 45k, probably above 65k, and the highest estimate published is 680k. If we use a higher number we are just making shit up. If we use a lower number we are choosing to ignore a data point without a specific reason to write it off. “It defies reality” isn’t an actual reason - it’s just an assertion that it’s wrong. Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?
but either way, the tens of thousands of innocents killed and the complete destruction of the infrastructure of gaza is appalling - and arguing about specific numbers is pretty pointless if we don’t agree on that.
I would love to be "well-informed", but how can I get there with hearsay?
> Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?
Once again, the 68k figure is not confirmed! This is already an estimate. The figure for confirmed identifies is much lower, around ~35k. So this is a totally false argument. I'm not saying the estimate is wrong, I'm just saying that if there was a reason for the estimate to be 1/3 of people in Gaza, that's what they would say.
- begins with the high estimate from [2], which uses some very questionable data (like WhatApp chats) to argue that most deaths were not counted by GHM
- extrapolates it to the present, as if the casualty rate were a constant
- multiplies it by 5, which was the multipler that was somewhat arbitrarily picked in that Lancet letter [3]
- forgets that this includes future deaths (attributable to past conflict events), and uses the past tense as if all these supposed indirect deaths already occurred
They also end up with an estimate of "about 380,000 under-five-year-old infant" deaths, which seems unlikely since there were never more than about ~340k children under five in the strip.
Overall, it's about as believable as that letter which claimed Hamas was under-reporting starvations by over three orders of magnitude [4].
[1] https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
It's also non-peer-reviewed, and based on rather arbitrarily picking a multiplier of 15x from a range of past conflicts' multipliers. One author described the figure as "purely illustrative" in a now-deleted tweet.
Keep in mind deaths published by the Gaza(Hamas) ministry of health do not differentiate civilian vs combatant deaths at all.
And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble. Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
From my understanding GHM numbers don't break these figures for those that are combatants either, the population overall is quite young and Hamas is known to use child soldiers as well. Journalists(along with doctors) in Gaza have even been themselves involved in holding hostages for Hamas[0]. There are many issues like this which significantly complicate separating combatant deaths from non-combatant deaths.
> And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble.
The 65k is AFAIU not even advertised by the GHM as confirmed deaths(i.e. deaths with confirmed identities), it's an estimate from an organization(Hamas) which is highly incentivized to report the highest figures that are believable internationally. There are not any incentives for them to underestimate casualties since they use casualties figures for propaganda purposes and will use the highest figures they can come up with while maintaining some level of credibility.
It's also unlikely there are many deaths that can be attributed directly to starvation, while there may be food insecurity issues there is still sufficient aid reaching Gaza to largely prevent deaths from starvation. There are countries in the world where there is actual famine and pictures/videos from those places(i.e. those taken out in the open on the streets) look nothing like those from Gaza. Even organizations like the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have been known to put out(and subsequently walk back) blatantly false information[1] to make it appear the situation is worse than it actually is.
> Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
Numbers 10x those put out by the GHM(which is already highly incentivized to inflate casualty figures) are not remotely credible.
IMO the figures put out by the GHM are likely within the correct order of magnitude, keeping in mind that those figures include combatant deaths. For a conflict like this which involves urban warfare(where similar conflicts historically have had very high casualties) such casualty figures certainly don't appear to be unusually high.
Claims of genocide made against Israel simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Civilian deaths are largely in line with what would expect for a war like this, especially one where enemy combatants are not in uniform and intentionally hide amongst the civilian population and fight from civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). There are strong incentives both internationally and domestically for Israel to minimize civilian casualties as much as feasible.
If intelligence from surveillance increases combatant deaths then it could be expected that the death figures like those from the GHM(which include combatant deaths) may rise even if the actual civilian casualty rate decreases.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/middleeast/gaza-neighborhood-...
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...
Virtually all of the discourse on Israel-Palestine concerns moral righteousness or moral shame. I think the era of moral arguments in geopolitics is coming to an end, because the unipolar or Communist-Capitalist bipolar world combined with the Holocaust that enabled geopolitical moral arguments is basically dead.
It might just be my interest in global affairs spiking to avoid the constant bad news from the Trump administration, but I think we are entering a much more turbulent (and historically normal) period of realist/self-interest directed foreign policy. The US isn't around to be "good cop" (I can't emphasize the quotes around "good" enough).
I think this is why we are surrounded by the sense that authoritarianism is on the rise. The US won't care if you are democratic or authoritarian. The US won't care if you invade your neighbor if it doesn't disrupt them too much. Or the US just plain doesn't care at all.
So it's my general opinion that even if the Palestinians are more morally righteous in the great moral book-pounding, history-pointing, casualty-counting endless debate ... the era where that mattered has come to an end. Alas, I think we are entering a might-makes-right era of world politics, especially in the Middle East, and especially since the US has its own oil now from the Dakota shale fracking.
That would only be true if your goal was not to completely obliterate the population you are attacking and bombing, as Israel has demonstrated.
Are you claiming that the IDF is trying their hardest to kill all the Palestinians they can, and that this is the best they can do? Really?
Fact checking services debunking the claim of population not shrinking since October 2023:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/gaza-population-growth-proj...
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' population estimates, as of July 2025 - down 6% in one year since 2024, which is 10% below original forecasts for 2025:
https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_... (3rd section of page 2; though the whole document is worth reading)
There are less people physically in Gaza now because a bunch of people emigrated. Not because of deaths.
The overall group of families who lived in Gaza on Oct 7 2023 is about the same number of humans now. A few hundred thousand have emigrated. About 40-60k were killed. About 50k were born.
See for example this July 2024 estimate of close to 200k deaths (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...) or this more recent estimate of over 600k (https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/ )
Sure, they're estimates not proven statistics, but the situation on the ground means it's impossible for anyone to have an accurate count. What's important is that we don't look at the relatively small (yet still depressingly large) number of confirmed deaths of known named people, tracked by the Gaza health ministry, as if it's a count of the actual number of deaths. Hell, even the IDF recently claimed that there have been 90k deaths (when they were boasting that they had killed 30k Hamas fighters and that they had "only" killed 2 civilians to every 1 Hamas) - and, setting aside the IDF's track record of lying and their incentive to claim less civilian deaths than reality, even if they were telling the truth that would still be limited to deaths they were actually able to track and confirm, not the many other deaths that weren't officially recorded.
2. Sure, they can surveil, let them do it on their own data centers. It's actually strange that they would put such data/tech on a 3rd party data center to begin with.
The IDF's "Wolf" system have been well known for years.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facia...
Why wouldn't countries store secret data in Azure, Google Cloud and AWS services? I think that this is quite common.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/israeli-restri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Palestine
And yes it is recording pretty much all calls in Palestine:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-isra...
Those who make holocaust tabulation machines belong in prison.
This seemed completely glossed over in the article (never revisited beyond this) but seems to imply that Satya must have at least known something about what was happening?
Or was he mislead, told partial truths, or something?
Very curious who within Microsoft knew anything about what was happening.
They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.[0]
For me, this is more proof (not less) that I shouldn't rely on US tech giants. Not because I will be collecting data on a population to do god-knows-what with, but because someone believes themselves to be the moral authority on what the compute I rent should be doing and that moral authority can be outraged for the whims of someone completely random, for any reason.
[0]: https://www.aurasalla.eu/en/2025/05/26/mep-aura-salla-micros...
Alfred Nobel was known as a "merchant of death" for enabling the use of combat explosives that could do (by the standards of the time) preposterous damage to people, but his argument was that he just sold the dynamite; he wasn't responsible for the anarchists getting it and bombing something twice a week in New York. And even then, his conscience weighed on him enough that he endowed a Peace Prize when he died.
The story is different when the data conversion is being done on machines you own, in buildings you own, in a company you own (for practical reasons in addition to moral / theoretical; if someone wants to stop those computations, they're now going after your stuff, not trying to stop a supply-chain).
That's why I never find it "fine." It's only a matter of time before corporate power finds it's way to your hobby horse. I thought part of the "hacker vibe" was being highly suspicious of any form of authority.
Not that I necessarily agree with what they did here, but I would like to point out that one alternative which has been employed previously would be to silently forward her e-mails to the NSA or state department. Refusing to offer their services is probably the most ethical thing that MS has ever done on behalf of the US federal government.
You do realize that the said tenant is massacring an entire population as we speak, right? Framing that as just something that's "disagreeable" is one hell of a euphemism.
The absolute bare minimum one can do is to not actively provide the technical means to carry out this atrocity, yet you claim it's only moral to do the exact opposite. This neoliberal fantasy that it's moral and good for society to let powerful corporations do whatever it wants is an absurdity not even worth refuting. But it's downright cruel and tone-deaf when it's used to justify taking part in an officially approved genocide.
I often think of Microsoft as the new IBM, and it's startling to me to watch them buck that reputation.
Laughing at someone yelling on stage can be entirely orthogonal to what they’re saying. (And it’s not like that outburst did anything.)
Fair enough. I’m not buying it—the timeline doesn’t work, and the broader literature on disruptive protest is mixed, leaning towards negative.
What clearly swung the odds was the Guardian reporting on the frankly brazen meetings Microsoft executives decided to take. Without that reporting, this wouldn't have happened. With that reporting and absent the employee protests, this would have still likely happened.
Literally how these things are studied.
> can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off
Disruptive protest takes the form of interrupting ordinary peoples' lives. (In contrast with targeted protest, which seeks to directly disrupt the problematic conduct.)
They are effective at raising awareness of an issue and rallying the base. Among those who are already aware and have not yet committed to a side, however, they tend (broadly) to decrease sympathy.
> Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition
Of course. I'm talking about broader views.
Sympathy for Israel went up after the Columbia protests because (a) nobody was surprised that there was a war in Gaza and (b) folks breaking into a building and disrupting public spaces doesn't naturally elicit sympathy from undecideds. (It also crowds out coverage of the actual war.)
I think that the only reasons that a cloud provider should be permitted to use to justify termination of service, are illegal activity (in the country of service), non-payment, or attempting to harm or disrupt the service.
I am in no way condoning anything that Israel is doing, just like I wasn’t condoning what people on Parler were saying when AWS axed them in 2021.
No matter how much you like what the people in charge are doing today or who they’re doing it to, sooner or later someone will take the reins who decides that you are the target.
Same with banks, credit card companies, etc. if you are incorporated and your business is to support commerce, you should keep your thumb off the scale.
Before the current war, Hamas was the governing authority in Gaza, despite the Palestinian Authority being the internationally recognized one. Regardless, whether the surveillance was legal under Israeli law doesn't seem like the correct standard.
If Azure were providing service to the US Government then that service would be governed by US law even if the employees using the service traveled abroad; the only exception would be if service was initiated by an employee in another country under the terms for the service provider in that country, but even then likely government has contracts with the provider that would shift jurisdiction back to the US.
Aside from the common carrier concept, operating a significant war-supporting facility makes you a significant target. And I don't just mean a target for criticism. Datacenters risk a security threat on a whole new level if taking them out is important to war operations.
Would you criticize a commercial port in the Black Sea if it turned away Russian warships? Harboring Russian warships makes it extremely likely that your port could become the target of missile strikes. If you want to remain an innocent bystander, don't harbor combatants.
This is not a statement in support of any side of any war.
Exactly! The IDF have put a lot of effort in to this genocide.
[1] Not sure what they could actually make unusable by revoking licenses, blocking logins, and whatnot. It probably also matters how quickly the effects are felt, Azure would be gone immediately but I am not sure how often Office checks whether its license has been revoked, if at all. If license checks make things stop working over weeks and months, it would still not be pretty, but it would provide at least some time to prepare and avoid the worst.
Israel has too much influence over the US.
I have not seen any hard evidence of this nor have i ever suspected a fellow employee at any of my employers of being a double-agent loyal to a state intelligence agency but it's easy enough to do that there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of sleeper agents all over santa clara and redmond.
reliance of everything/everybody on cloud platforms already mind-boggling.
One can extrapolate it further - in a near future conflicts both sides may have their data, weapons control systems, etc. running inside the same Big Cloud Provider ... in this case would they need actual physical weapons systems? or may be it would be easier to just let those weapons control systems duke each other out in the virtual battle space provided as a service by the same Big Cloud Provider.
The assertion that Microsoft knew what it's customers were doing, that it was inspecting customer data and workloads, comes from ignorance of how cloud providers work.
This is just CYA. That it took Microsoft this long is incorrigible.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nebius-to-build-a...
"Google and Amazon, both of which already hold the $1.2 billion Nimbus contract with the Israeli government, originally received a preliminary tender for the supercomputer but ultimately withdrew from contention."
"Microsoft changes company slogan to 'Allah Akbar Surveillance for the Future of Glorious Jihad"
"Microsoft Pledges Billions of Dollars to Help Hamas Rebuild Tunnels That Were Used to Invade Israel".
I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...I guess people need income/have families to think about, but still... Preventing Israel from using MS tech to protect itself from terrorist attacks is pretty disgusting. Highly recommend Douglas Murray's (extremely disturbing and sad) book "On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Western Civilization" (warning: includes horrific accounts of extreme violence against Israeli civilians)
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/on-democraci...
https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Democracies-and-Death-Cults-Au...
I suspect the sensible ones are keeping a low profile and praying for it all to be over, much like the Palestinians (except they are starving in a wasteland not working for Microsoft).
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For those looking for direct sources on the findings of genocide in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal conclusions from human rights organizations, international courts, and genocide scholars:
1. UN Commission of Inquiry: Concluded that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. * Report: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c... * Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA
2. Amnesty International: Concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. * Statement: https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-genocide-aga...
3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. * Report ("Our Genocide"): https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention. * Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
5. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: Issued an "Active Genocide Alert" in October 2023, warning of the high risk of genocide. * Alert: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-genocide-alert-1/acti...
Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source validates their lived experience.
During the troubles in Northern Ireland all the phones were tapped. IRA supporters knew this, so would frequently discuss fake bombing plans over the phone, sending the authorities on a wild goose chase.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-cu...
srameshc•4mo ago
You can spy but data is all mine.
sionisrecur•4mo ago
IlikeKitties•4mo ago