> The decision has not affected Microsoft’s wider commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services. The termination will raise questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.
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.
Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages, and possibly hacking their devices?
Given lackluster response to the recent attempts of the "democratic" governments to do very much the same to their own citizens, I daresay not many are particularly impressed.
The West Bank is occupied by Israel and Israel has overall control, but it is broken up into a whole bunch of tiny administrative regions, some of which are administered by the PA and some of which are administered directly by Israel.
> 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.
Arguing that mass surveillance is not unethical but actually a way to save lives is pretty disingenuous, absurdly so considering how little the country wielding it cares about collateral damage.
>"According to sources familiar with the huge data transfer outside of the EU country, it occurred in early August. Intelligence sources said Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) nor Amazon responded to a request for comment."
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.
This is off-topic, but I'd like to hijack your comment to remind everyone that your comment is _technically_ against the rules. I hope this particular example reveals that the rule against "RTFA" is misguided and should be changed or removed because it creates a culture where people are deliberately misinformed seeking only a summary in the comment section (if that) and some kind of hot take to fume about.
I agree but there are some dodgy links that make it through and a good way to lower risk is being hesitant to click random links, or at least not being the first person to do so.
Are you asking whether Microsoft engineers routinely poke around their customer’s private clouds (including ones used by foreign intelligence agencies) to make sure everything is kosher?
Well, MS reviewed previously, and said they've seen nothing wrong, now they are saying some employees (coincidentally, Israeli) might have not been all transparent ...
> 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.
>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.
“I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the Guardian,” [Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith] wrote, noting that it had brought to light “information we could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments”. He added: “Our review is ongoing.”
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.
I actually think understanding exactly how your customers do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
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.
> I actually think understanding exactly how your customers do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
Nor is surveillance even necessarily a bad thing given the context. Would it be a better world in which Israel were not able to precisely target Hamas entities and assets? Surveillance is a big part of properly targeting the correct targets.
There have been public reports by major news organizations on the subject of Israel using big tech companies to surveil the West Bank and Gaza, for a decade. This isn't an issue of customer privacy.
The difference is that pre-2023 it could at least have some plausible excuse of trying to detect terrorist activity. With Israel's current actions in Gaza, there is no longer any plausible excuse or defense for any security action Israel is conducting towards Palestinians.
Israel has a legitimate reason to want to try to intercept and detect terrorist activity, but given what they've been doing in Gaza for the past year and a half, they simply can't be trusted. They've lost all credibility and benefit of the doubt. So they can't expect other entities to help them do something they say is legitimate, because no one can trust them to do something in a legitimate and ethical way.
I think OP’s point is Israel’s legitimate surveillance needs have risen alongside their credibility crashing. This isn’t a simply reduced problem unless one has a horse in the race.
I understand that, and I am sympathetic to those needs to some degree. They do have increased legitimate surveillance needs. But they've lost all of their good will. Partnering with them is too morally and PR-ily hazardous.
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.
> 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.)
Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian land before being handed over by colonial powers and then "won" in subsequent "wars" (read: massacres) on the barely-armed villagers living there? The Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes. Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with the occupation in 1948. If your country was occupied and members of your family killed, would you be as careful to keep your resistance peaceful?
> Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian
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.)
So the problem is that you don't believe Palestinians are on their "own turf", because Israel "legally" won it from the villagers there in 1948 after having the British install them to it. Got it. Once again, the Palestinian homeland is exactly where the kibbutz (which is a military camp and outpost) was, mere miles from Gaza, and all of the people involved were actively standing members of the IDF (i.e. the occupying army akin to the Americans in Vietnam). You keep calling it a terrorist attack while appearing completely clueless that it's a largely meaningless political term. We considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist while he was locked up for 30 years, and for the UK at least he was only removed from that list in 2013.
> when the entire land was previously Palestinian land
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?
Sure, that must be why the very text of the Balfour Accord specifies "Palestine" and why coins from the 19th century have been proven to show the same. I'm afraid the hasbara isn't gonna work anymore.
Not cross border. The only purpose German surveillance of Poland would have furthered would have been (again, with the benefit of hindsight) their own occupation. Not the safety of Germans in Germany.
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.
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?
> Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian".
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 think it's the latter -- Microsoft was unable to look internally, or able to pretend they were ignorant. But the Guardian report was just too detailed to ignore.
I don't know if it's _true_, but it seems right? I don't want Microsoft to have this level of visibility into my usage of Azure, just like I don't want my phone provider to eavesdrop on my conversations. I'm no privacy ayatollah, but this seems like a reasonable amount of privacy from Microsoft
No, a Shah is a hereditary ruler (a King), whereas an Ayatollah is more like a Bishop (ie a religious leader, but not the top guy such as the Pope in Roman Catholicism)
Thanks for this one, putting in request to my manager to change my job title to data pope, since our titles are all meaningless anyway might as well have a fun one.
The whole point of confidential computing is that the cloud provider can't access your data and can't tell what you're doing with it. This is a must have requirement in many government contracts and other highly legislated fields.
I've personally never seen anything requiring confidential computing in anything. Is this required in the USA? I find that hard to believe, because the technology on a cloud level is still very beta-feeling. I think that Microsoft just never looked because they did not want to know.
They have services literally dedicated to things like health data records.
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.
But encryption at rest is not confidential compute. And Confidential compute is pretty new in terms of tech and i would be genuinely suprised if it's already required for some stuff. I am genuinely interested though, if you have any links about it please enlighten me.
> 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.
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
The head of that Israeli unit met directly with the CEO of MS. I don't buy a second the execs at MS didn't know what was going on. Blaming the local contractors is just MS throwing people under the bus.
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.
The reality is that no one can tell whose ass it is safe to kiss now a days, so it’s all scandal driven actions. Unless someone can create a big enough scandal, no one is going to do squat.
That’s the best part, they cannot. Well, they technically can, but the answer from the company that runs chinese azure servers is gonna be “none of your business.”
> 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands
The Israel Azure region wasn't launched until 2023, and AFAIK has substantially less services available than the others. I know Google's Israel region doesn't have as many GPU options, for example.
But why do you think the Netherlands govt was in anyway involved in this? I host some bsremetal in the Netherlands but I don't need to report to the government what I store..
I don’t necessarily expect them to know what resides within their borders, I merely expect them to act against atrocities. It is no accident that all this data was located in the Netherlands.
Israel (like many governments) is very Microsoft Windows centric, so if I had to guess it wasn't chosen due to technical merits but instead based on existing business relationships.
Not sure about that. To many companies or individuals, it might make them choose another provider. Unless... they already are Azure customers, in which case they might probably want to avoid the cost of moving from a cloud provider
I think people don't tend to realise how authoritarian the internal structures of companies are.
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.
>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.
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.
> is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support?
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.
I expect this to continue to be the conflict of responsibility and capability in the 21st century.
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).
Wow, they actually are pulling back. That is really surprising. Wonder if they see the winds changing on this issue and want to get on the right side of history. Big props to everyone at Microsoft who spoke out about this and risked or lost their jobs because of it. They kept that fire lit on their ass.
Last week a UN human rights commission found that Israel is carrying out a genocide. I think you're right that the winds have changed and now companies will shift their positions.
It has changed quite a bit here in the US too, even among the Jewish population. Our synagogue is very divided on this, mainly between the young and the old.
“There you are, Mr. Netanyahu! Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism? You’re making life for Jews miserable, and life for American Jews impossible!” - Jewish character on the latest South Park, a show created and run by two Jewish people.
Also ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”
I was directly referring to your closing line saying ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”. Given that about half of Israelis are Arab in origin, and about a fifth are proper Muslims, the objection of Palestinians is not to Israelis but to Jews. The video I linked demonstrates the common mode of thought in that part of the world.
You linked audio of a phone call from a Hamas terrorist, as evidence that "Palestinians don't discern Jews and Israelis". I hope you can see the irony there.
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.
If a country was killing thousands of people and saying it was to make people like you safer, might you not be inclined to point out it's having the opposite effect?
Perhaps we'll have to agree to differ, but I think American Jews being like "not in my name" sends a more politically effective message than "what are you talking about, psycho murderer?".
tbf I'm not primarily interested in what's a good look.
I think we're stuck and have to agree to disagree but the message sent is at least indistinguishable from the message of a self-interested sociopathic community with no moral concerns beyond their own. When I do things I at least try to make it discernible from psychopathy.
I don't really want to get into the A word thing, but your position makes more sense to me from a perspective of being anti-Jewish, rather than pro-Palestinian. From the latter perspective, I think it's better to challenge Israel's narratives than embolden them.
I'm glad you realize how silly that word has become. In reality, groups of people via culture or whatever other mechanism do generate certain things that are undeserving or deserving of censure. For example, due to cultural reasons, 1930-1940s Germany produced a high preponderance of Nazis, so we destroyed them.
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.
I think word is sometimes used as a cudgel to derail reasonable discussion. I still think it has its place and at this point, yeah I'm going to say you're unambiguously an antisemite.
Sorry Joe, I guess we didn't frame the discussion of a checks notes horrific genocide done and abetted by and on behalf of a cultural and ethnic identity helped or hurt you specifically enough.
The statistics bear this out, millennials on down are very against this.
Within the last year a true overall majority of the American Jewish population are opposed to what Israel is doing to Gaza. I expect this trend to continue.
The truest supporters of Israel in America have always been Christian (for both insane and cynical reasons).
Very true. I've gone on dates with a couple Jewish women over the past two or three years & they've all staunchly supported Palestine which surprised me a bit.
That's a fair point. My gut reaction is that people will default to tribalism, but I think this has been a different situation than most others (and going on a lot longer).
I think it’s surprising because Israelis are very loud in their support for Netanyahu. Yeah, there are protests but it polling suggests that the overwhelming majority of Israelis support Netanyahu.
I can understand your skepticism, but this is an example of what is termed “normal human conversation,” where people share their personal experiences. Quite often, one will find people sharing stories without the backing of statistical evidence.
My boomer Jewish stepmother surprised me when I saw her recently - complete U-turn from last year’s “all Palestinians are human animals” to “Netanyahu is a war criminal”.
Politics is weird. With the Biden administration there was lots of lip service given in opposition to the slaughter in Gaza while at the same time they were shipping unprecedented amounts of weapons to the IDF.
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.
> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel.
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.
Military spy agency involved in ongoing war stores 11.5PB of data, Microsoft commissioned external review founds no evidence that military spy agency is using said data to target and harm people, only to backtrack after media breaking more project details? Come the fuck on. What’s the point of these performative external reviews? Just thugs hired to say whatever their customer wants them to say.
I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
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.
I agree with you in most contexts, but "illegal activity (in the country of service)" is a tough one in the context of an invasion, a territorial dispute, or international espionage.
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.
I think that if Azure offers their service in Israel it has to comply with Israeli law; I don’t see why that would not govern in this case.
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.
The concept of common carriers in not a wartime concept. Should occupied Ukranians keep providing service to their occupiers on principle?
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.
> I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
Exactly! The IDF have put a lot of effort in to this genocide.
Look how carefully they worded that to make a carve-out for this very case: "in the country of service". As in, Gaza is now part of Israel, and according to Israeli laws, Israel is not doing any genocide on Palestinians.
Just to be clear: "illegal under international law" isn't good enough? It has to be sovereign entities' own laws? As in, a cloud provider should have no power to refuse service to any government?
What would happen in a hypothetical scenario where Microsoft cut off everything [1] they can for all of Israel - no Azure, no Office, no Outlook, no Exchange, no SQL Server, no Windows, no Xbox, no ...? Depending on how many things they can make unusable, I would imagine that this would be pretty bad, probably even causing some deaths because of affected infrastructure.
[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.
I could write things here about those officially reported deaths (not estimates, which are much higher, but no one really knows and very likely never will), or the internal diaplacement, but since there might be at least 1 Palestinian still alive digging in the rubble somewhere, literalists like you would still feel the need to overcorrect.
I thought the defeated tone of my post made it clear that it was not meant to be taken that literally. I guess not.
That's about the latest number from Gaza health ministry that stopped counting well over a year ago as Israel had destroyed all but one hospital. It doesn't even count the people left in rubble from destroying 80% of all buildings.
If you think that figure is remotely accurate despite the fact Israel has decimated all hospitals, leveled entire areas, wiped out entire families and is starving those that are still alive to do the counting, you're being naive, and that's a generous interpretation. Once Israel finally allow the UN in, that figure is going up by a factor of at least 2 or 3. The true cost of most genocides are only counted years after it's over, when it's too late.
I am seeing several kneejerk "Microsoft bad" reactions here, which HNers don't do for many other companies. I encourage many of you to read what is written.
They listened to their internal staff and stakeholders and public pressure, and did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down.
The Guardian last month reported a meeting between Microsoft CEO and Unit 8200. That means this comes from high level and they did not cancel because of protestors but because of media publicity.
I really wonder if a company like microsoft has any real concern over people tweeting negative things about it. It seems like companies are finally realizing a lot of it can just be ignored, but with microsoft specifically, what’s the risk? Who in a position to deny ms enough money that they’d care or even notice is going to decide to do it based on people protesting?
Yes, unfortunately this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s, it devalues genuine modern criticisms and makes all criticism meaningless.
Have you used a modern Microsoft OS? They are somehow worse than they were in the 90s and 00s. I don’t remember having to agree to sell my personal information in the 90s or having advertising baked into the start menu in windows xp.
I agree that in-OS advertising for a paid product is dumb, but a) I thankfully still use Windows 10 which doesn't have those, and b) those are ultimately UX concerns, not ethical. And no, Microsoft doesn't sell your data no matter how many in tech subscribe to that conspiracy theory.
Last time I installed windows 11 in a VM I had to agree to at least 3, possibly more, un-skippable Eulas that required me to agree to share my personal information. Maybe they aren’t selling it outside of MS, but MS is such a giant company if they are using it for ads I don’t see the distinction.
> this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s
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.
The problem here is thinking that the only form of protest anyone ever engages in is tweeting things. Some people stop supporting companies they disagree with, both individually and, if they're able, with their own company.
Not just some people - a lot of people, and an increasing amount of people in the last year or so, including whole countries like Ireland, Spain and Slovenia. See the BDS movement/website/Facebook pages. As a lifelong Windows user I've been seriously considering moving to a Linux distro for my next desktop. I'll need to dig into the news some more, but this decision more than likely means I can stick with Windows.
But that’s my point - who will do that? Who is going to go to their company’s CEO and convince them to put in the massive amount of effort to switch cloud providers? Who is going to say “I don’t think we should use Teams anymore” and actually be able to switch to something else? I have no idea if microsoft even cares about retail customers anymore, but are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products (I honestly don’t know what those products even are) over this?
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.
Some people like me are running a company and are still picking out their tech stack. I don't like Microsoft, and that absolutely affects how likely I am to use their services. My situation might not be that common but PR surely still matters some.
> are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products
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?)
> (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.
That's fair. For the record, I recently dumped windows for linux and won't ever buy/use a microsoft product again if I can help it, and I will encourage others to do the same, but that decision had nothing to do with politics.
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?
You know a boycott movement is effective when Israel has tens of lobbies like the IAF that are dedicated entirely to passing legislation to make it illegal. Germany has already passed it and the UK is unfortunately looking very close.
You are right that with the Trump administration (well, bipartisan support), US companies don't have to worry about any adverse political action by cooperating with Israel. Negative publicity from the common people also won't adversely affect their bottom line. But they do have to worry about the legal aspects - the US is one of the few countries actually having laws against genocide / war crimes. Trump may be ready to bomb the Hague and the ICC, but we know he can't bomb US courts for any similar proceedings against any US or foreign firms ...
Trying to pin support for israel on one side and not on the entirety of the us government at all levels is either profoundly naive or profoundly dishonest.
Well, Biden was claiming that "there is no genocide" while approving the building of (future) concentration camps for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while Trump is worried only about the "optics" but is fine as long as a "beautiful resort is finally built in Gaza", after herding the Palestinians into these new "refugee centres" (i.e. the concentration camps) and from there to Egypt (who has been promised to be made the future gas hub for Europe) to complete Israeli occupation of Gaza. I'll leave it to you to decide whether I am being naive or dishonest or who planned the genocide and who is complicit in it - Here's the "propaganda" sources based on which I am making these assertions:
I guess that one needs some help to transfer "swiftly" 8000 Terabytes of data. At 1 Terabit per second it would take about 18 hours.
8000*8 Tb / 60s / 60 / 24 = .740740...
24 h *.740 = 17.76 h
But is 1 Tb/s a thing?
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.
AWS Snowball can be used to get data out of S3. They copy it onto portable devices, ship them to you, and you can copy the data off without saturating your DirectConnect bandwidth.
or it means that they met with Unit 8200 to see if there was common ground that would rationalize keeping the contract and their tech being used for a way that respected human rights, dignity, and a coherent strategy to getting to that place,
I want to believe this is true, but it would only be true if they cancel all the contracts they have with Israel that enable the genocide, rather than just the ones that have made the most noise. Otherwise it's just PR, not ethics. In other words, a lot is resting on the "some" in that quote.
That's a funny way to say "they fired staff that vandalized company property, broke into the CEO's office, and used an internal company website to publish and promote anti-company propaganda".
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:
I feel like interrupting a CEO's speech at a big conference is pretty well understood to be a social indicator of a high level of insubordination. I suspect the protestor knew that too.
The consequences were appropriate, even if I might share some of the protestor's concerns.
Interrupting a speech? Yes. It demonstrates a lack of maturity, decorum, and is completely unprofessional. Someone who pulls these shenanigans is unworthy of the role they were hired for. This isn't high school anymore. They were hired to perform productive work not be disruptive and play pretend activist.
You lost me at "pretend activist". This person put their job on the line for what they believe in, and in a public enough way that complete strangers are discussing it on the internet. That's real activism.
You are trivializing what they did. This is not that they were in a meeting with the CEO and accidentally spoke interrupting him. They started yelling disrupting the CEOs speech at a large event. Name a single company that wouldn't fire someone for that.
US corporate culture has a stronger sense of hierarchy than many other countries. It is an environment where one can get fired quickly and suddenly and that instills a lot of obedience and discipline (if not outright fear) in employees.
Oh, it was an event with custoners invited? Yeah, that's grounds for dismissal anywhere, I'd think. Even in countries with strong labor laws you could just show the court the video recording of an employee doing willfull sabotage.
If I did what the protestor did at an internal all-hands or summit I would expect to get canned as well. You can't go up yelling and interrupting the CEO. In an internal all-hands/summit situation you need to maintain decorum, if you have a point you wait until a QA session, then express your displeasure.
Half the jobs I’ve worked, I’d be immediately fired if I interrupted a CEO’s speech. The other half, I’d be in serious trouble and I’d be first on any layoff.
You’re going to base an opinion on a third-hand story? That might not even be true just to illustrate a point?
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.
You might have 1A rights as an American but it seems to me the manner in which this person protested would be grounds for termination in many jurisdictions.
1A doesn't apply to private entities anyway. 1A protects against government prosecution for your speech, and the government may make no laws "abridging the freedom of speech."
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.
This comment sums up well how the spirit of the law is not being upheld, given that the biggest players in government, finance, and the corporate world are working together hand in glove.
>”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.
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
I would also like to read the source for the last claim of that statement. The break-in is well established in multiple sources, and also documented on Wikipedia (citing one of those sources). CNBC also add that they planted microphones (using phones) as listening devices.
"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...)
I'm not sure you know what "beyond the pale" means. You probably shouldn't look into the history of the suffragette or civil rights movements, for your own sanity.
That’s a pretty low bar for “beyond the pale.” Company PR isn’t some sacred thing and these people paid a hefty price for their protest. They should be praised for their bravery even if you disagree with their message.
When did I say they shouldn’t expect consequences or that it wasn’t a fireable offense? The whole point of this discussion is that cries for people to “protest properly” are ridiculous and designed to make protests ineffective.
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.
Some people seem to think rioting and vandalism are acceptable behaviors.
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.
Rioting and vandalism are unacceptable...until they aren't and are instead necessary.
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.
It's a difficult question, because obviously violence is out of line for protests about many topics, while just as obviously necessary for some.
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.
There’s been a couple studies showing that disruptive protests (blocking roads, yelling at people entering buildings, etc) cause public support for their cause to decrease or even increase opposition.
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.
I think the people is just more vocal, not that the protest changed its opinion, but now they have an excuse, violence, to go against the cause they did not like.
"Violence" like stoping the traffic. If that is violence...
The classic "an effective protest is one that is neither seen nor heard". Which is just ahistorical. Civil rights in the US was not passed because black folks explained to white people that they are people deserving the same rights as them. I hate this white washing of history as a series of peaceful movements that everyone agreed with.
The other side of this is that the people doing the protesting have to have the fortitude to accept judicial punishment. If the punishment is out of whack WRT the crime, then you get popular support (e.g. a year in jail for sitting at a lunch counter). But the current situation where folks can break the law and then suffer no consequences? F that noise.
Sitting at a lunch counter was illegal and the punishment was widely viewed as too light for the protesters. Like the racist violence going on right now, people of color were framed as disturbing the peace and disturbing a private business. There were called animals and criminals. Like I said, buying the white washed version of history where everyone was on the right side.
There is nothing wrong with being seen or heard. Instead it is that being violently disruptive tends to lose you support.
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.
If you think being violently disruptive loses you support you should look at any equality movement. I'm not posing a false dilemma, I'm saying that when peaceful means are not working then violence will follow. "A riot is the language of the unheard".
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.
The United States has a history of rioting, vandalism, and violence. The Boston Tea Party comes to mind. The more important question is the contexts in which it is unacceptable, and who should be given the authority to swiftly deal with it - an authority that will itself require the ability to commit violence.
It’s amazing how many discussions I’ve had in the past decade about how people are supposed to “properly” protest (I.e. in a way that commands as little attention as possible) and how few I’ve had discussing the merits of what people are protesting about.
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.
They've been raising the alarm for months. If this extreme action is what it took Microsoft to look into genocide and then terminate the contract, it was absolutely the right call
Not that you're implying this, but making an "absolutely the right call" does not in any way shield one from consequences.
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.
> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel ... In response to the investigation, Microsoft ordered an urgent external inquiry to review its relationship with Unit 8200. Its initial findings have now led the company to cancel the unit’s access to some of its cloud storage and AI services.
"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 ...
What concerns me is that Project Nimbus is a public project that is still actively being enabled by Google and Amazon. Secret projects are one thing, but largely meaningless, because companies, people and governments have shown they don't even care when they're in the open.
> 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"
So the criticisms from the 90s that I mentioned in my other comment? Yeah, I prefer to live in the modern world. It isn't Microsoft that needs to be hit with antitrusts in 2025. It's Apple and Google. Live moves on, and in 2025, Microsoft is one of the more ethical tech companies around, unless you're one of the many sheltered people in tech that think targeted advertising is manifest evil that's on par with enabling a genocide.
I'm 40. For me, the modern world didn't just start in 2019. And the list is additive. The fact that Microsoft has been on it since the 90s doesn't stop me from also listing Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Modern by definition means the modern day, I'm not sure what 2019 was but we don't get to redefine terms for our own use. The list is only "additive" if the criticisms still apply. Your presumably best example was a corporate strategy from the 90s. Companies, just like (most) people, change. 2025 Microsoft is pro-Linux and a much better force for good than most other tech companies, yet almost invariably I find the people triggered by the mention of Microsoft tend to be relatively quiet about and/or active consumers of Apple, Amazon, Google et al.
I think you're selling this too far with "one of the more ethical tech companies around" and "a force for good". You'll have to clarify what exactly that comparison is based on.
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. 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
That's a very dishonest framing. The article contains some not particularly subtle relativizations in various places, e.g., “ability to use SOME of its technology,” which make it clear that Microsoft is not reacting decisively here in any way, but is trying to muddle through somehow and make a few publicly visible concessions.
Furthermore, why do you think the reactions are knee-jerk? That implies a rather biased attitude on your part.
> did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down
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?
Yes it’s a good thing AND we don’t need to be celebrating companies when they finally do the bare minimum.
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 disagree that we shouldn't give them their props when companies finally give in, because most are still not doing that (see Project Nimbus). The problem here is that we don't even know they have done the bare minimum yet, since this is only one contract and to my knowledge they have several, including still actively working with the IDF.
But the question is do you want to actually reward behavior that is just less bad than before? Or should that reward just be in the form of less punishment? I agree the consequences should get better in relative terms, but I don't think bad behavior should be rewarded with a positive response, even if the behavior is less bad than before.
It's like, if someone steals a million dollars and then steals a thousand dollars, you don't reward them for making progress.
What kind of pressure campaign are we talking about here? And what kind of reward? Are we now buying Microsoft products because Microsoft's cloud storage is no longer allowed to be used in genocide, only Office and email? That's absurd. What this is about is public opinion, and that takes years and decades to change. And that's a good thing. If you change your tune after every Microsoft PR release, it's not you who's holding the carrot and the stick, it's Microsoft.
I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
> I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
Why wouldn't countries store secret data in Azure, Google Cloud and AWS services? I think that this is quite common.
I think you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not saying "this story is bogus," but rather I'm saying that this sort of data is probably not the kind of data which is acquired through really secret means. Perhaps it was purchased from providers, or some other less-secret method.
The issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas, the widely recognised terrorist. I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
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 believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
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.
Quantity doesn't correlate with accuracy. OP's point was that surely having more intelligence means you are more accurate and thus less collateral damage.
Again, prior reporting on the IDF’s computational efforts do not indicate that less collateral damage was a driver - quite the contrary, the algorithm was being used to pad out targeting lists: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...
You’re describing what ought to be, not what currently is.
Hamas is quite open about their desire to increase civilian casualties by deliberately using civilians as human shields(which is of course a war crime). It's clearly part of their overall strategy.
This shouldn’t be a controversial statement. It’s well documented that Hamas utilizes this strategy by their own statements. On the Israeli side it’s much harder to determine what tactics some (military) groups utilize.
Israel claims that they “don’t want to kill civilians” but historically have not substantially changed course when the killings became grotesquely excessive. It’s also arguably true that they have never even sincerely investigated any issues.
Israel just gets more aggressive in the murder and bombing.
> issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas
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.)
[edited to remove snark] there is a ton of evidence to the contrary, that the killing of civilians is intentional and systematic. that's why the ICC (finally) determined it is a genocide.
The ICC did no such thing, you're probably thinking of the ICJ, which also did no such thing according to one of the judges that ruled on that decision:
“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.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) is not a legal body, which would be the sort of body that is able to make a genocide determination. It also does not speak on behalf of the UN, given that it an independent commission of inquiry.
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.
It is interesting to me that all this sweat and tears are spent deliberating over the use of a word in faraway courts while all of us can see with our eyes the horrors Palestinians are subjected to by the occupying IDF. "We didn't say there was a genocide! We acknowledged the plausibility of the possibility that potentially maybe an investigation might perhaps occur into the possibility of maybe Palestinians being able to experience a genocide by someone."
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.
If you want to redefine genocide to mean "a very bad thing" then go ahead, but doing so would hollow out the term.
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.
To be fair, the UN working group that declared it genocide was completely precise in how they defined it and the criteria they used. Totally fair to disagree either with the existence of that working group, their definition of genocide, or with the facts they cite as evidence, but to pretend it’s just a bunch internet activists playing rhetorical tricks is clearly subterfuge.
You can easily find telegram channels that show what regular Israeli soldiers are up to, they post it themselves like they're proud of it. Take a look at it and see what you think then.
It is the IDF and Israel governments explicit goal, as stated by high up government officials and leaders, to eradicate all Palestians in Gaza. A cursory view into their own Hebrew media make this abundantly clear.
They are committing a genocide in both word and deed.
>I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
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
> Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
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 you accept it even if it was shown? Or would you go on with adjacents to say how it is not evidence?
Get new points from the ITF. Maybe hold them to the a fraction of accountability that you throw around.
Inconvenient truth is that anyone who remained in Gaza, in active IDF ops area, is not a civilian. Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times. Unless it's a little child that's not capable of lifting a firearm, this person is Hamas at this point.
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.
>Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times.
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.
Proof? Or just what is convenient for you to believe?
If anything, quite the opposite. Think about this logically - why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population?
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:
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
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.
Genocide is not the same as extermination. The goal of expulsion is to obtain land. Surveillance programs facilitate ethnic cleansing by countering resistance.
>why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population
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.
"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."
My first reaction was "good on Microsoft". Then I read how it was only after a Guardian report exposed this was happening that MSFT took action. They were perfectly content to provide the services so long as it wasn't widely known.
Every single one of these companies that have enabled the genocide should be help accountable. Maybe some are trying to claim plausible deniability.
--
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:
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
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.
>Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
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.
it's a jing jang thing.
soon there will be some one else who will be a tastier roast.
but as an Israeli im really impressed they were able to use so much compute before someone checked their activity report.
I mean this was not just parking space they were using, stakes were high!
it's 2025 and (still) money talks.
Well, to their credit, they've also seen that IBM, Volkswagen and Ford were still allowed to do plenty of business with no repercussions whatsoever (that I know of).
I guess time to buy more Oracle or Google stocks? They can easily provide more than needed, especially Oracle which is very friendly to Israel and Ellison is a big supporter of IDF (large donations to "Friends of the IDF" non-profit).
Here is a link in case anyone wants to donate https://www.fidf.org to this amazing organization.
Wow nice, I wish i could donate, but US Taxpayers already cover for me. What do the donors get? Like souvenirs? Funding Genocidal ITF to kill more children and bomb more hospitals has to have its perks.
Leave the government to do its thing, and you do your charity, those are not mutually exclusive.
If you are in the US ( Although I suspect Pakistan is your home country...) , FIDF is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, do a good deed and donate. Charity is a blessing (Mitzvah), spiritual elevation. I can see you are in need of one.
Imagine thinking you're the spiritually elevated one while actively trying to defend the slaughter of at least 60,000 people. Truly warped levels of delusion.
Wow! This is fantastic news, I wouldn't have bet on Microsoft ever doing something like this. I pray it's just the start and other American companies start to do the same.
There was an interesting point in the earlier article on this, where Microsoft tried to push their Israeli employees under a bus. They claimed their Israeli employees had lied to them about the use of Azure for war and civilian harm because they held more allegiance to their army than to Microsoft.
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!
Unrelated, I knew I recognised that name, thank you for everything you do, I've made a few commits to T4P myself in the last few months and can't imagine the regular work that must go into it.
Serious question, what do you think is their own land? And what exactly makes you think it is their land?
Are you aware that most of the Arabs of the Holy Land came around the same time period as the Jews? There were Arabs living here previously, of course, as were there living here Jews. Half a century before the British mandate, Jerusalem was already Jewish majority.
> where they've lived for thousands of years.
The only reason that Jews in the West Bank are called settlers is because the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1948, and that territory was free of Jews for 19 years. Other than those 19 years, the Jews had been here far longer than the Arab colonizers had been.
Palestine is not in Arabia but in the Levant, which was conquered by Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the 7th c. as part of the Arab-Byzantine wars, and came under the Rashidun Caliphate, the first incarnation of the Arab Empire (which also conquered parts of Europe, BTW, not to mention that people in Morocco or Tunisia speak Arabic for pretty much the same reason people in Peru or Mexico speak Spanish). Warfare in the Levant obviously preceded the crusades by centuries and millenia, and included not only European conquests such as Greek and Roman, but also Persian and Arab conquests.
While it is true that modern Zionism originated in Europe, most Jews living in Israel have no European ancestry whatsoever. Most Jews in Israel have a recent ancestry in the Middle East and North Africa.
Even Ashkenazi Jews of a recent European ancestry (who are a minority in Israel) have genetics pointing to Middle Eastern ancestry. While it is hard to tie any group to ancient Jews, it isn't unlikely that Jews of all origins as well as Palestinian Arabs have ancient Jewish ancestry.
Just as European nationalism excluded Jews as Europeans, Arab nationalism excluded Jews as Arabs, and if there's any group that identifies as Jewish-Arab today, it is vanishingly small.
What Zionism is has not only changed considerably over time, but now, as in the past, there's great disagreement among those considering themselves Zionist on what it means. For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a single multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state, i.e. the same position was regarded as both Zionist and anti-Zionist by different people simultaneously. Today, many (perhaps even most) of those identifying as Zionists favour a two-state solution.
> For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state,
This
The evil ideology is political Zionism
The idea the Jews should live securely in the Levant is not obnoxious.
The idea of a racialised state where "only the Jewish people have the right of self determination" is utterly repugnant
Even political Zionism is minimally defined as supporting "a home for Jews in Palestine"[1] Not only does it not require any ethnic exclusivity nor even for a national identity, it doesn't even require an independent state in the contemporary sense. Some of those who identify as Zionist take it to mean only that Jews should be able to live with some form of self-determination in Palestine, and so when they hear "anti Zionist" they take it to mean supporting the expulsion of Jews, which, of course is not what many of those who identify as anti-Zionist want. When some anti-Zionist hear the term Zionist, they take it to mean support of an exclusive ethno-national Jewish state, which, of course, is not what many of those who identify as Zionist want. The term could mean something very different to different people, to the point that the same political position can be called Zionist by some and anti-Zionist by others, which makes the term mostly useless.
This is such a perversion of the history of the holy land that I don't even see fit to correct any of it. Any reader here is welcome to read about the Muslim conquests, of which the Muslims are extremely proud.
In fact, part of that pride is calling it an the Arab conquest, even though the colonizer - Salah AlDin - was a Kurd and not an Arab.
Jews are an ethnicity and are genetically the same. Even those from Europe and those from Muslim countries (who now live in Israel after getting kicked out of Muslim countries). Stop making stuff up.
Ohhh and Muslims didn’t treat Jews “peacefully”. They were second class citizens and often massacred. Read some history.
No, Jews of today are ethnically quite diverse and have mixed significantly. There are several recognized heritages of Jews of today with known populations from North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, and also Europe. I don't deny the "Jewishness" of anyone, but say "The Jews" as if this covers all of them is wrong. There are huge swaths of Jews today that are anti-Zionist and consider Israel an abomination on religious grounds. That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals. The recent newly emerging religious Jewish Zionists are a divergence from mainstream Judaism and a recent development that relies on a lot of creative interpretation and ignorance of Jewish religious texts.
And yes, Muslims and Jews lived over 1000 years far more peacefully than any time before. Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule except for the Crusades which, surprise, came from Europe.
Why do you think Jewish people are mixed? Could it that occupiers, like invading Islamic Arabs, drove them away and they mixed over time with others? Regardless of that, it is Jewish people and their culture that are indigenous to the Levant. Not the Islamic Arabs who call themselves Palestinian.
> That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals.
It is literally a religious goal of Hamas and the people who voted for them (Gazans) to destroy a religion (Judaism) and to commit genocide. It is literally in their charter. They voted for it. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel has a population that is over 20% Islamic Arab and they are thriving. The reality seems to me to be the opposite of what you’re stating here.
> Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule
It seems to me like you are pro colonization when the rules are Islamic and when the suppressed are Jewish. But not in the reverse? Israel is a democracy. Surely that is preferable to a religious supremacist rule?
Kicked out? Is that what you call the One Million Plan and all the other plans like it? They were imported there because that's been the MO of the state of Israel since the Irgun and Haganah first envisioned it.
On genetic terms, the Palestinians are virtually identical to Semitic Jews.
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.
Israel was not formed by displacement. That's a common misconception. Jews bought lands all across Palestine in early 1900's, with bodies such as the JNF. The displacement ("Nakba") came in 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence (started by the Arabs in Palestine and abroad), and even that mostly concerned areas which participated in the war. Areas that remained peaceful integrated into Israel (today's Israeli Arabs, 23% of the population).
It wasn't started by the Palestinians. Israelis conduced ethnic cleansing operations against civilians to displace them, including biowarfare and well poisoning. It continues today, in Gaza and in the West Bank.
The article you linked refers to events during the war of 1948, when Israel was already formalized. It's establishment up to that point was primarily based on lawful acquisition, not expulsion. When it turned to an all out war, then yes, expulsion took place.
They have been deliberately displaced by Israeli's apartheid government giving Jewish people around the world a "right to return" to Israel. Except unlike the Palestinians, they were never from Israel in the first place so the term "right to return" as used by Israel is nothing but colonialist propaganda.
So you think the Jews imported by the One Million Plan and the tens of others like it were "displaced"? There's a reason that the multiplicity of Jews in Israel today are American and European immigrants with no connection to the land whatsoever.
It’s all just the ‘hopes and prayers’ of the left anyway. When someone doesn’t give a damn (like Israel right now), all the public shaming is just another version of the UN’s strongly worded letter.
Yes, the shameless and evil generally aren't to be reasoned with, in which case things will come to a head and there are other ways to stop genocides. See for example, the Nazis.
You say "the Jews" but you're leaving out that there are Arab Jews and European ones. Arab Jews have lived in Palestine for hundreds of years alongside other Arabs peacefully in coexistence.
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.
"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.
This is completely in the context of the formation of Israel in 1948.
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.
I'm as against the genocide as you can be, but what you are saying is historically completely inaccurate. Discrimination against Jews is old, older than Israel or Zionism. The arguments against the land theft and genocide are strong enough without the hyperbole.
The amount of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack on specific places at specific times is contextual and not comparably equal.
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.
> Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
What's the protocol when a client stores data that violates their terms of service? Delete it immediately? Retain it until the client can retrieve a backup? Deny access until they sign a new contract?
I suspect that really depends on the content. What does Microsoft do when it's CSAM? They can't legally posses it but can't legally delete it because that would be destroying evidence. I'm sure there's a process.
"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)
> I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...
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).
As someone who's been boycotting Microsoft in line with the BDS movement, I welcome this (belated) move, but seeing Bill Gates on stage laughing (maybe nervously) at Ibtihal Aboussad's (now validated) protest still makes me uneasy about a guy who I previously followed and liked to a reasonable extent, and I'll still probably hold off on watching his most recent documentaries. It makes me wonder how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that. Hell, even Ballmer had the sense to keep a straight face.
> how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that
Laughing at someone yelling on stage can be entirely orthogonal to what they’re saying. (And it’s not like that outburst did anything.)
The article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure, of which Ibtihal Aboussad's was the most vocal and memorable in the media, played a significant role in the decision.
> article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure
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.
Does that "literature" include history itself? I can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off. Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition.
> 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.)
> The decision has not affected Microsoft’s wider commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services. The termination will raise questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.
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.
Doesn't every army conduct "mass surveillance"? What do you think all those satellites with cameras are doing orbiting the planet?
Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages, and possibly hacking their devices?
Given lackluster response to the recent attempts of the "democratic" governments to do very much the same to their own citizens, I daresay not many are particularly impressed.
And not in a war zone, even. (West Bank is governed by Israel.)
The West Bank is occupied by Israel and Israel has overall control, but it is broken up into a whole bunch of tiny administrative regions, some of which are administered by the PA and some of which are administered directly by Israel.
Gee i wonder what happens if Israel just let the west bank be. Wait…i know what will happen
Perhaps the actual moral choice is peace?
> 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.
It would be pretty difficult for the IDF to increase their level of collateral damage.
Holy crap you’re totally right
Arguing that mass surveillance is not unethical but actually a way to save lives is pretty disingenuous, absurdly so considering how little the country wielding it cares about collateral damage.
"Finding out" in the "shocked! shocked!" Casablanca sense.
The IDF's "Wolf" system have been well known for years.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facia...
> 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.
>"According to sources familiar with the huge data transfer outside of the EU country, it occurred in early August. Intelligence sources said Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) nor Amazon responded to a request for comment."
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.
All: Please actually read the article before posting conclusions based on the headline or a quick skim. Most of this thread is confused.
Articles should probably come with a similar delay that comment replies do, to prevent comments in the first few minutes after it's posted.
This is off-topic, but I'd like to hijack your comment to remind everyone that your comment is _technically_ against the rules. I hope this particular example reveals that the rule against "RTFA" is misguided and should be changed or removed because it creates a culture where people are deliberately misinformed seeking only a summary in the comment section (if that) and some kind of hot take to fume about.
I agree but there are some dodgy links that make it through and a good way to lower risk is being hesitant to click random links, or at least not being the first person to do so.
> The decision brings to an abrupt end a three-year period in which the spy agency operated its surveillance programme using Microsoft’s technology.
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?
Are you asking whether Microsoft engineers routinely poke around their customer’s private clouds (including ones used by foreign intelligence agencies) to make sure everything is kosher?
Well, MS reviewed previously, and said they've seen nothing wrong, now they are saying some employees (coincidentally, Israeli) might have not been all transparent ...
> 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.
>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.
Thanks, but no, thanks.
If you can give me a counter, why these actions are not evil, I'm all ear.
"Routinely"? No.
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.
“I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the Guardian,” [Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith] wrote, noting that it had brought to light “information we could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments”. He added: “Our review is ongoing.”
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.
Weird, pretty sure employees brought this to their attention a few times already…
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 actually think understanding exactly how your customers do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
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.
I wasn't addressing any of that. More generally that knowing what your customer is doing, even if someone "tells" you, it might not be accurate.
> Would it be a better world in which Israel were not able to precisely target Hamas entities and assets
They are already not doing that
If they act on information their employees report, they are violating their commitments.
There have been public reports by major news organizations on the subject of Israel using big tech companies to surveil the West Bank and Gaza, for a decade. This isn't an issue of customer privacy.
The difference is that pre-2023 it could at least have some plausible excuse of trying to detect terrorist activity. With Israel's current actions in Gaza, there is no longer any plausible excuse or defense for any security action Israel is conducting towards Palestinians.
Did something happen in 2023 that makes it _less_ relevant for Israel to try to prevent terrorist activity?
Israel has a legitimate reason to want to try to intercept and detect terrorist activity, but given what they've been doing in Gaza for the past year and a half, they simply can't be trusted. They've lost all credibility and benefit of the doubt. So they can't expect other entities to help them do something they say is legitimate, because no one can trust them to do something in a legitimate and ethical way.
I think OP’s point is Israel’s legitimate surveillance needs have risen alongside their credibility crashing. This isn’t a simply reduced problem unless one has a horse in the race.
I understand that, and I am sympathetic to those needs to some degree. They do have increased legitimate surveillance needs. But they've lost all of their good will. Partnering with them is too morally and PR-ily hazardous.
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.
> 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.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1939)
Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian land before being handed over by colonial powers and then "won" in subsequent "wars" (read: massacres) on the barely-armed villagers living there? The Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes. Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with the occupation in 1948. If your country was occupied and members of your family killed, would you be as careful to keep your resistance peaceful?
> Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian
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.)
So the problem is that you don't believe Palestinians are on their "own turf", because Israel "legally" won it from the villagers there in 1948 after having the British install them to it. Got it. Once again, the Palestinian homeland is exactly where the kibbutz (which is a military camp and outpost) was, mere miles from Gaza, and all of the people involved were actively standing members of the IDF (i.e. the occupying army akin to the Americans in Vietnam). You keep calling it a terrorist attack while appearing completely clueless that it's a largely meaningless political term. We considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist while he was locked up for 30 years, and for the UK at least he was only removed from that list in 2013.
> when the entire land was previously Palestinian land
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?
Sure, that must be why the very text of the Balfour Accord specifies "Palestine" and why coins from the 19th century have been proven to show the same. I'm afraid the hasbara isn't gonna work anymore.
There was the Warsaw uprising.
Not cross border. The only purpose German surveillance of Poland would have furthered would have been (again, with the benefit of hindsight) their own occupation. Not the safety of Germans in Germany.
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.
Warsaw uprising with killing babies. Sure you’re the good guys
>I am not saying Israel is nearly as bad as Nazi Germany
oh, that's generous of you
No, because those employees didn't learn about it by snooping around in Azure data.
Can anyone help clean up these sources/verify?
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?
> Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian".
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 think it's the latter -- Microsoft was unable to look internally, or able to pretend they were ignorant. But the Guardian report was just too detailed to ignore.
I don't know if it's _true_, but it seems right? I don't want Microsoft to have this level of visibility into my usage of Azure, just like I don't want my phone provider to eavesdrop on my conversations. I'm no privacy ayatollah, but this seems like a reasonable amount of privacy from Microsoft
Privacy ayatollah? Is that like an infosec shah?
I have seen "czar" used as an informal title to denote ownership of a domain, e.g. the "security czar."
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...
No, a Shah is a hereditary ruler (a King), whereas an Ayatollah is more like a Bishop (ie a religious leader, but not the top guy such as the Pope in Roman Catholicism)
Data pope?
Thanks for this one, putting in request to my manager to change my job title to data pope, since our titles are all meaningless anyway might as well have a fun one.
Grand Mullah of GDPR Compliance
Metadata monitoring messiah
Privacy professing prelate
Surveillance-Suspicious Saint
Chain of Custody Cakkavatti
Bodhisattva of Vibe Ops Infrachaos
Well, the average org isn't out there literally committing genocide
The whole point of confidential computing is that the cloud provider can't access your data and can't tell what you're doing with it. This is a must have requirement in many government contracts and other highly legislated fields.
I've personally never seen anything requiring confidential computing in anything. Is this required in the USA? I find that hard to believe, because the technology on a cloud level is still very beta-feeling. I think that Microsoft just never looked because they did not want to know.
They have services literally dedicated to things like health data records.
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.
But encryption at rest is not confidential compute. And Confidential compute is pretty new in terms of tech and i would be genuinely suprised if it's already required for some stuff. I am genuinely interested though, if you have any links about it please enlighten me.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/confidential-computi...
It could also mean "now that someone else has seen it, we can finally act on what we have only privately seen but couldn't admit seeing"
More likely MS was well aware of what was going on and didn't care until the Guardian forced their hand.
> 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.
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
The head of that Israeli unit met directly with the CEO of MS. I don't buy a second the execs at MS didn't know what was going on. Blaming the local contractors is just MS throwing people under the bus.
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.
If they weren’t intended to be thrown under the bus, they’d be called… superordinates? I guess?
Not to sound too much like a reddit comment... but God damnit take my upvote.
And if they all just took the bus together they'd be coordinates?
A tale as old as time.
‘I’m shocked! shocked! that there is gambling in this establishment! This is unacceptable!’
‘Your winnings sir’
That comment is... weird, considering they disabled the accounts of certain International Court of Justice that were individually targeted.
The reality is that no one can tell whose ass it is safe to kiss now a days, so it’s all scandal driven actions. Unless someone can create a big enough scandal, no one is going to do squat.
They should ask their Chinese engineers in charge of sensitive Azure servers.
That’s the best part, they cannot. Well, they technically can, but the answer from the company that runs chinese azure servers is gonna be “none of your business.”
What is interesting is they gave some privacy while others they strip away.
> 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands
I wonder why IDC choose the Netherlands location. Microsoft has one Azure region in Israel itself: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/reliability/regions-...
The Israel Azure region wasn't launched until 2023, and AFAIK has substantially less services available than the others. I know Google's Israel region doesn't have as many GPU options, for example.
might have something to do with the Netherlands being a large investor in Israel. the largest in the EU. It's responsible for two-thirds of EU investment in Israel. https://www.somo.nl/economic-sanctions-eu-is-israel-largest-...
Safer from ballistics
Why build something near or semi near conflict?
Valid question, but just look at the huge amount of R&D / the tech companies in Israel. Even if it’s near conflict, I don’t think companies care
A company doesn't care. An army does.
It bothers me more that it was held in the Netherlands than that it was held on Azure servers.
It’s a fucking disgrace to any government to be facilitating anything like this, and the Netherlands seems extra complicit.
But why do you think the Netherlands govt was in anyway involved in this? I host some bsremetal in the Netherlands but I don't need to report to the government what I store..
What makes you think Netherlands government knows what data resides within its borders?
I don’t necessarily expect them to know what resides within their borders, I merely expect them to act against atrocities. It is no accident that all this data was located in the Netherlands.
Would it have been different elsewhere in Europe?
How much would the bill be for this?
Kinda bullish for azure that the idf chose it over aws
Israel (like many governments) is very Microsoft Windows centric, so if I had to guess it wasn't chosen due to technical merits but instead based on existing business relationships.
Note: I've used Azure and it sucks. :)
Azure’s web app for managing servers is a nightmare
Uses the same awful UI/plaform as their Xbox account settings
Microsoft always somehow succeeds in spite of the quality of everything they build.
Not sure about that. To many companies or individuals, it might make them choose another provider. Unless... they already are Azure customers, in which case they might probably want to avoid the cost of moving from a cloud provider
meh more of a bearish signal. evil using shitty evil tech.
why would that imply bullying?
Bullish, as in, not bearish.
implying not bearing
I think people don't tend to realise how authoritarian the internal structures of companies are.
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...
>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.
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.
> is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support?
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.
I expect this to continue to be the conflict of responsibility and capability in the 21st century.
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).
Guess those protesting employees who lost their jobs weren’t fired for nothing, at the very least. Finally.
Wow, they actually are pulling back. That is really surprising. Wonder if they see the winds changing on this issue and want to get on the right side of history. Big props to everyone at Microsoft who spoke out about this and risked or lost their jobs because of it. They kept that fire lit on their ass.
The article says they are continuing to work with IDF. It’s the spy agency who crossed a line.
Last week a UN human rights commission found that Israel is carrying out a genocide. I think you're right that the winds have changed and now companies will shift their positions.
Sentiment toward Israel outside of USA has changed.
The leaders of the developed nations of Europe have gone against Trump and publicly stated their recognition of Palestine.
It has changed quite a bit here in the US too, even among the Jewish population. Our synagogue is very divided on this, mainly between the young and the old.
“There you are, Mr. Netanyahu! Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism? You’re making life for Jews miserable, and life for American Jews impossible!” - Jewish character on the latest South Park, a show created and run by two Jewish people.
Also ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”
Palestinians don't discern Jews and Israelis. If you listen to this recording you'll understand - they're after the Jews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bACNYtaLBQI
I think you're probably propagandizing rather than trying to engage coherently with the conversation, but perhaps I'm missing something.
I was directly referring to your closing line saying ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”. Given that about half of Israelis are Arab in origin, and about a fifth are proper Muslims, the objection of Palestinians is not to Israelis but to Jews. The video I linked demonstrates the common mode of thought in that part of the world.
You linked audio of a phone call from a Hamas terrorist, as evidence that "Palestinians don't discern Jews and Israelis". I hope you can see the irony there.
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.
Hard to imagine that this argument exists, the real victims of mass murder aren't the actual victims of mass murder.
If a country was killing thousands of people and saying it was to make people like you safer, might you not be inclined to point out it's having the opposite effect?
No, that isn't my general reaction to Hitler saying he killed Jews to make Europeans safer.
My reaction is "what are you talking about, psycho murderer?"
That's a good look, try that.
Perhaps we'll have to agree to differ, but I think American Jews being like "not in my name" sends a more politically effective message than "what are you talking about, psycho murderer?".
tbf I'm not primarily interested in what's a good look.
I think we're stuck and have to agree to disagree but the message sent is at least indistinguishable from the message of a self-interested sociopathic community with no moral concerns beyond their own. When I do things I at least try to make it discernible from psychopathy.
I don't really want to get into the A word thing, but your position makes more sense to me from a perspective of being anti-Jewish, rather than pro-Palestinian. From the latter perspective, I think it's better to challenge Israel's narratives than embolden them.
I'm glad you realize how silly that word has become. In reality, groups of people via culture or whatever other mechanism do generate certain things that are undeserving or deserving of censure. For example, due to cultural reasons, 1930-1940s Germany produced a high preponderance of Nazis, so we destroyed them.
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.
I think word is sometimes used as a cudgel to derail reasonable discussion. I still think it has its place and at this point, yeah I'm going to say you're unambiguously an antisemite.
Sorry Joe, I guess we didn't frame the discussion of a checks notes horrific genocide done and abetted by and on behalf of a cultural and ethnic identity helped or hurt you specifically enough.
The statistics bear this out, millennials on down are very against this. Within the last year a true overall majority of the American Jewish population are opposed to what Israel is doing to Gaza. I expect this trend to continue. The truest supporters of Israel in America have always been Christian (for both insane and cynical reasons).
Do you have a source for this?
Here is a good background:
https://jewishcurrents.org/antisemitic-zionists-arent-a-cont...
Very true. I've gone on dates with a couple Jewish women over the past two or three years & they've all staunchly supported Palestine which surprised me a bit.
Why would that surprise you? I think the opposite opinion is a lot more surprising.
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…
That's a fair point. My gut reaction is that people will default to tribalism, but I think this has been a different situation than most others (and going on a lot longer).
Why is it surprising?
Fwiw my Jewish friends have also been quite vocal in opposing Netanyahu/Likud, usually more vocal than Muslim friends.
I think it’s surprising because Israelis are very loud in their support for Netanyahu. Yeah, there are protests but it polling suggests that the overwhelming majority of Israelis support Netanyahu.
No they are not. It’s like 20%
Comments like that reminds of people asserting blanket statements like: majority of Iranians support the regime and hate Jews!
Like do people not realize Iranian Jews also exist?
Anyway I digress..
My gut assumption is that people will default to tribalism, but that has proven to be wrong over the past few years.
I think the fact that you have gone on dates with Jewish women shows they don’t really care about being Jewish.
Your sample size of two surely is conclusive? lol
I'm just speaking from my personal experience and don't mean to draw any conclusions about anything.
I can understand your skepticism, but this is an example of what is termed “normal human conversation,” where people share their personal experiences. Quite often, one will find people sharing stories without the backing of statistical evidence.
My boomer Jewish stepmother surprised me when I saw her recently - complete U-turn from last year’s “all Palestinians are human animals” to “Netanyahu is a war criminal”.
Politics is weird. With the Biden administration there was lots of lip service given in opposition to the slaughter in Gaza while at the same time they were shipping unprecedented amounts of weapons to the IDF.
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.
> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel.
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.
Good on Microsoft! This is really amazing.
Too little, too late. The whole world knows that Microsoft has blood on its hands.
Military spy agency involved in ongoing war stores 11.5PB of data, Microsoft commissioned external review founds no evidence that military spy agency is using said data to target and harm people, only to backtrack after media breaking more project details? Come the fuck on. What’s the point of these performative external reviews? Just thugs hired to say whatever their customer wants them to say.
I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
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.
I agree with you in most contexts, but "illegal activity (in the country of service)" is a tough one in the context of an invasion, a territorial dispute, or international espionage.
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.
I think that if Azure offers their service in Israel it has to comply with Israeli law; I don’t see why that would not govern in this case.
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.
MS is saying they violated terms of service. Are you saying common carriers shouldn't have terms of service?
The concept of common carriers in not a wartime concept. Should occupied Ukranians keep providing service to their occupiers on principle?
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.
> I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
Exactly! The IDF have put a lot of effort in to this genocide.
So you think making a genocide is not illegal ?
Look how carefully they worded that to make a carve-out for this very case: "in the country of service". As in, Gaza is now part of Israel, and according to Israeli laws, Israel is not doing any genocide on Palestinians.
Just to be clear: "illegal under international law" isn't good enough? It has to be sovereign entities' own laws? As in, a cloud provider should have no power to refuse service to any government?
What would happen in a hypothetical scenario where Microsoft cut off everything [1] they can for all of Israel - no Azure, no Office, no Outlook, no Exchange, no SQL Server, no Windows, no Xbox, no ...? Depending on how many things they can make unusable, I would imagine that this would be pretty bad, probably even causing some deaths because of affected infrastructure.
[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.
That would never happen.
Israel has too much influence over the US.
That is why the comment says hypothetical scenario. ;-)
No one left to surveil, I guess.
Estimates of deaths are around 60,000, of a 2 million strong population.
I could write things here about those officially reported deaths (not estimates, which are much higher, but no one really knows and very likely never will), or the internal diaplacement, but since there might be at least 1 Palestinian still alive digging in the rubble somewhere, literalists like you would still feel the need to overcorrect.
I thought the defeated tone of my post made it clear that it was not meant to be taken that literally. I guess not.
That's about the latest number from Gaza health ministry that stopped counting well over a year ago as Israel had destroyed all but one hospital. It doesn't even count the people left in rubble from destroying 80% of all buildings.
If you think that figure is remotely accurate despite the fact Israel has decimated all hospitals, leveled entire areas, wiped out entire families and is starving those that are still alive to do the counting, you're being naive, and that's a generous interpretation. Once Israel finally allow the UN in, that figure is going up by a factor of at least 2 or 3. The true cost of most genocides are only counted years after it's over, when it's too late.
I am seeing several kneejerk "Microsoft bad" reactions here, which HNers don't do for many other companies. I encourage many of you to read what is written.
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.
The Guardian last month reported a meeting between Microsoft CEO and Unit 8200. That means this comes from high level and they did not cancel because of protestors but because of media publicity.
Did the protestors help the media publicity?
I really wonder if a company like microsoft has any real concern over people tweeting negative things about it. It seems like companies are finally realizing a lot of it can just be ignored, but with microsoft specifically, what’s the risk? Who in a position to deny ms enough money that they’d care or even notice is going to decide to do it based on people protesting?
Yes, unfortunately this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s, it devalues genuine modern criticisms and makes all criticism meaningless.
Have you used a modern Microsoft OS? They are somehow worse than they were in the 90s and 00s. I don’t remember having to agree to sell my personal information in the 90s or having advertising baked into the start menu in windows xp.
I agree that in-OS advertising for a paid product is dumb, but a) I thankfully still use Windows 10 which doesn't have those, and b) those are ultimately UX concerns, not ethical. And no, Microsoft doesn't sell your data no matter how many in tech subscribe to that conspiracy theory.
Last time I installed windows 11 in a VM I had to agree to at least 3, possibly more, un-skippable Eulas that required me to agree to share my personal information. Maybe they aren’t selling it outside of MS, but MS is such a giant company if they are using it for ads I don’t see the distinction.
> this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s
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.
"Software with slightly worse UX than the competing products" is not an ethical concern.
The problem here is thinking that the only form of protest anyone ever engages in is tweeting things. Some people stop supporting companies they disagree with, both individually and, if they're able, with their own company.
Not just some people - a lot of people, and an increasing amount of people in the last year or so, including whole countries like Ireland, Spain and Slovenia. See the BDS movement/website/Facebook pages. As a lifelong Windows user I've been seriously considering moving to a Linux distro for my next desktop. I'll need to dig into the news some more, but this decision more than likely means I can stick with Windows.
But that’s my point - who will do that? Who is going to go to their company’s CEO and convince them to put in the massive amount of effort to switch cloud providers? Who is going to say “I don’t think we should use Teams anymore” and actually be able to switch to something else? I have no idea if microsoft even cares about retail customers anymore, but are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products (I honestly don’t know what those products even are) over this?
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.
Some people like me are running a company and are still picking out their tech stack. I don't like Microsoft, and that absolutely affects how likely I am to use their services. My situation might not be that common but PR surely still matters some.
> are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products
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?)
> (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.
> Not sure what you mean by "what HN will say to this"
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
That's fair. For the record, I recently dumped windows for linux and won't ever buy/use a microsoft product again if I can help it, and I will encourage others to do the same, but that decision had nothing to do with politics.
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?
Don't worry, so do I :)
> Who is going to go to their company’s CEO and convince them to put in the massive amount of effort to switch cloud providers?
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
I can't speak to Microsoft specifically, but bad press has certainly hurt other similar companies (eg Meta) when it comes to hiring.
BDS is also about as formidable as a boycott movement gets.
You know a boycott movement is effective when Israel has tens of lobbies like the IAF that are dedicated entirely to passing legislation to make it illegal. Germany has already passed it and the UK is unfortunately looking very close.
> 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
You are right that with the Trump administration (well, bipartisan support), US companies don't have to worry about any adverse political action by cooperating with Israel. Negative publicity from the common people also won't adversely affect their bottom line. But they do have to worry about the legal aspects - the US is one of the few countries actually having laws against genocide / war crimes. Trump may be ready to bomb the Hague and the ICC, but we know he can't bomb US courts for any similar proceedings against any US or foreign firms ...
> the US is one of the few countries actually having laws against genocide / war crimes.
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...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
Trying to pin support for israel on one side and not on the entirety of the us government at all levels is either profoundly naive or profoundly dishonest.
Well, Biden was claiming that "there is no genocide" while approving the building of (future) concentration camps for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while Trump is worried only about the "optics" but is fine as long as a "beautiful resort is finally built in Gaza", after herding the Palestinians into these new "refugee centres" (i.e. the concentration camps) and from there to Egypt (who has been promised to be made the future gas hub for Europe) to complete Israeli occupation of Gaza. I'll leave it to you to decide whether I am being naive or dishonest or who planned the genocide and who is complicit in it - Here's the "propaganda" sources based on which I am making these assertions:
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...
I guess that one needs some help to transfer "swiftly" 8000 Terabytes of data. At 1 Terabit per second it would take about 18 hours.
But is 1 Tb/s a thing?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.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
that would be an interesting service contract.
the rack and infra are yours; the storage media and all contents are mine.
AWS Snowball can be used to get data out of S3. They copy it onto portable devices, ship them to you, and you can copy the data off without saturating your DirectConnect bandwidth.
Isn't media publicity the entire point of peaceful protest?
or it means that they met with Unit 8200 to see if there was common ground that would rationalize keeping the contract and their tech being used for a way that respected human rights, dignity, and a coherent strategy to getting to that place,
and there wasn't
I want to believe this is true, but it would only be true if they cancel all the contracts they have with Israel that enable the genocide, rather than just the ones that have made the most noise. Otherwise it's just PR, not ethics. In other words, a lot is resting on the "some" in that quote.
They fired staff who protested against the firm’s ties to the IDF.
That's a funny way to say "they fired staff that vandalized company property, broke into the CEO's office, and used an internal company website to publish and promote anti-company propaganda".
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...
One protestor was fired after interrupting a CEO's speech.
I feel like interrupting a CEO's speech at a big conference is pretty well understood to be a social indicator of a high level of insubordination. I suspect the protestor knew that too.
The consequences were appropriate, even if I might share some of the protestor's concerns.
You feel that being fired is an appropriate consequence to interrupting a CEO?
Interrupting a speech? Yes. It demonstrates a lack of maturity, decorum, and is completely unprofessional. Someone who pulls these shenanigans is unworthy of the role they were hired for. This isn't high school anymore. They were hired to perform productive work not be disruptive and play pretend activist.
You lost me at "pretend activist". This person put their job on the line for what they believe in, and in a public enough way that complete strangers are discussing it on the internet. That's real activism.
If they don't like it, they don't have to work there.
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.
In general, continuing to get paid while being disruptive and forcing them to fire you is more activist than quitting.
If they don't like it, they can voice what they don't like. And that is what happened here.
When doing a presentation at a big conference, yes.
If it was an open discussion in a meeting with 5 people, no.
You are trivializing what they did. This is not that they were in a meeting with the CEO and accidentally spoke interrupting him. They started yelling disrupting the CEOs speech at a large event. Name a single company that wouldn't fire someone for that.
> insubordination
Are we talking about the military or some company?
US corporate culture has a stronger sense of hierarchy than many other countries. It is an environment where one can get fired quickly and suddenly and that instills a lot of obedience and discipline (if not outright fear) in employees.
I don't even think you need a strong sense of hierarchy. The meaning of the word would apply anywhere.
I think that term can be / is used for individuals at companies.
LOL. The military isn't the only organization with a hierarchy.
If I interrupt the CEOs speech at a public conference, yeah, I fully expect to get canned. It’s not like this was an internal all-hands or summat.
Oh, it was an event with custoners invited? Yeah, that's grounds for dismissal anywhere, I'd think. Even in countries with strong labor laws you could just show the court the video recording of an employee doing willfull sabotage.
If I did what the protestor did at an internal all-hands or summit I would expect to get canned as well. You can't go up yelling and interrupting the CEO. In an internal all-hands/summit situation you need to maintain decorum, if you have a point you wait until a QA session, then express your displeasure.
Half the jobs I’ve worked, I’d be immediately fired if I interrupted a CEO’s speech. The other half, I’d be in serious trouble and I’d be first on any layoff.
I know a story of a guy who got fired for just talking to the CEO of his large company!
failure to use acceptable method of interdepartmental communication ?
america sounds like such a hell-hole
that would be a nice compensation package in any first world country
You’re going to base an opinion on a third-hand story? That might not even be true just to illustrate a point?
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.
Well, not quite third-hand, the guy was working in my team. But not a US company, not in the US either though.
Oh no, is the CEO ok?
You might have 1A rights as an American but it seems to me the manner in which this person protested would be grounds for termination in many jurisdictions.
1A doesn't apply to private entities anyway. 1A protects against government prosecution for your speech, and the government may make no laws "abridging the freedom of speech."
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.
This comment sums up well how the spirit of the law is not being upheld, given that the biggest players in government, finance, and the corporate world are working together hand in glove.
>”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.
Literally nothing to do with 1A
That's because 1A only has to do with a limited subset of the actual concept of freedom of speech.
And?
Source?
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-prote...
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
I would also like to read the source for the last claim of that statement. The break-in is well established in multiple sources, and also documented on Wikipedia (citing one of those sources). CNBC also add that they planted microphones (using phones) as listening devices.
"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).
Every protest we praise in history broke the law at some point.
“Promote company-hating propaganda” is an interesting way to describe what happened.
Building a website on internal Microsoft infra that ledes with a picture of "Azure Kills Kids" is beyond the pale.
I'm not sure you know what "beyond the pale" means. You probably shouldn't look into the history of the suffragette or civil rights movements, for your own sanity.
Killing kids is not beyond the pale, building a website criticizing is.
Saying what has happened is worse than it happening? American missiles kill kids, and so does intelligence and support systems they use to do so.
That’s a pretty low bar for “beyond the pale.” Company PR isn’t some sacred thing and these people paid a hefty price for their protest. They should be praised for their bravery even if you disagree with their message.
I make no comment on their message but you cannot use company resources to do it and not expect consequences.
Sorry if that is unclear.
This is a fireable offense in nearly every company handbook in existence.
When did I say they shouldn’t expect consequences or that it wasn’t a fireable offense? The whole point of this discussion is that cries for people to “protest properly” are ridiculous and designed to make protests ineffective.
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 think laws enforced by the government are a difference in kind from social standards or company rules.
Laws are backed by legal, physical violence.
Some people seem to think rioting and vandalism are acceptable behaviors.
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.
Rioting and vandalism are unacceptable...until they aren't and are instead necessary.
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.
It's a difficult question, because obviously violence is out of line for protests about many topics, while just as obviously necessary for some.
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.
There’s been a couple studies showing that disruptive protests (blocking roads, yelling at people entering buildings, etc) cause public support for their cause to decrease or even increase opposition.
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.
I think the people is just more vocal, not that the protest changed its opinion, but now they have an excuse, violence, to go against the cause they did not like.
"Violence" like stoping the traffic. If that is violence...
Stopping traffic can easily kill people if it stops a medical transport, for example.
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.
Using your car every day create trafic and congestion.
I have zero sympathy for people like yourself that use their car every day and put their time before others peoples lifes.
The classic "an effective protest is one that is neither seen nor heard". Which is just ahistorical. Civil rights in the US was not passed because black folks explained to white people that they are people deserving the same rights as them. I hate this white washing of history as a series of peaceful movements that everyone agreed with.
The other side of this is that the people doing the protesting have to have the fortitude to accept judicial punishment. If the punishment is out of whack WRT the crime, then you get popular support (e.g. a year in jail for sitting at a lunch counter). But the current situation where folks can break the law and then suffer no consequences? F that noise.
Sitting at a lunch counter was illegal and the punishment was widely viewed as too light for the protesters. Like the racist violence going on right now, people of color were framed as disturbing the peace and disturbing a private business. There were called animals and criminals. Like I said, buying the white washed version of history where everyone was on the right side.
There is nothing wrong with being seen or heard. Instead it is that being violently disruptive tends to lose you support.
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.
If you think being violently disruptive loses you support you should look at any equality movement. I'm not posing a false dilemma, I'm saying that when peaceful means are not working then violence will follow. "A riot is the language of the unheard".
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.
The United States has a history of rioting, vandalism, and violence. The Boston Tea Party comes to mind. The more important question is the contexts in which it is unacceptable, and who should be given the authority to swiftly deal with it - an authority that will itself require the ability to commit violence.
The employees weren't "rioting."
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.
Pardons all round then
It’s amazing how many discussions I’ve had in the past decade about how people are supposed to “properly” protest (I.e. in a way that commands as little attention as possible) and how few I’ve had discussing the merits of what people are protesting about.
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.
Some people think it is ok to do business with genociders
That would put you in the pro genocide camp and subject you to consequences.
They've been raising the alarm for months. If this extreme action is what it took Microsoft to look into genocide and then terminate the contract, it was absolutely the right call
Not that you're implying this, but making an "absolutely the right call" does not in any way shield one from consequences.
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.
I think how you protest matters.
I can agree with protestors, also think their choices are bad.
> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel ... In response to the investigation, Microsoft ordered an urgent external inquiry to review its relationship with Unit 8200. Its initial findings have now led the company to cancel the unit’s access to some of its cloud storage and AI services.
"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 ...
What concerns me is that Project Nimbus is a public project that is still actively being enabled by Google and Amazon. Secret projects are one thing, but largely meaningless, because companies, people and governments have shown they don't even care when they're in the open.
>to spy on people against whom a genocide is ongoing by their colonial occupiers
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".
True, the correct term back then would've been apartheid.
> 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...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
The problem is that if you're very very bad, you can do a good thing and still be very bad.
What other reasons are Microsoft very very bad? Genuinely curious about what your definition of "very, very bad" is and whether it aligns with mine.
Search for "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".
So the criticisms from the 90s that I mentioned in my other comment? Yeah, I prefer to live in the modern world. It isn't Microsoft that needs to be hit with antitrusts in 2025. It's Apple and Google. Live moves on, and in 2025, Microsoft is one of the more ethical tech companies around, unless you're one of the many sheltered people in tech that think targeted advertising is manifest evil that's on par with enabling a genocide.
I'm 40. For me, the modern world didn't just start in 2019. And the list is additive. The fact that Microsoft has been on it since the 90s doesn't stop me from also listing Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Modern by definition means the modern day, I'm not sure what 2019 was but we don't get to redefine terms for our own use. The list is only "additive" if the criticisms still apply. Your presumably best example was a corporate strategy from the 90s. Companies, just like (most) people, change. 2025 Microsoft is pro-Linux and a much better force for good than most other tech companies, yet almost invariably I find the people triggered by the mention of Microsoft tend to be relatively quiet about and/or active consumers of Apple, Amazon, Google et al.
I think you're selling this too far with "one of the more ethical tech companies around" and "a force for good". You'll have to clarify what exactly that comparison is based on.
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. 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.
> What other reasons are Microsoft very very bad
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
That's a very dishonest framing. The article contains some not particularly subtle relativizations in various places, e.g., “ability to use SOME of its technology,” which make it clear that Microsoft is not reacting decisively here in any way, but is trying to muddle through somehow and make a few publicly visible concessions.
Furthermore, why do you think the reactions are knee-jerk? That implies a rather biased attitude on your part.
Will Microsoft rehire the employees who were fired for protesting?
No? Hmm, then you should not let Microsoft whitewash its record by taking credit for the very cause those workers were punished for defending
> Will Microsoft rehire the employees who were fired for protesting?
One can be correct in theory and wrong in practice at the same time.
> did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down
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?
October 2023
It has come a tad too late to be called a good thing.
Yes it’s a good thing AND we don’t need to be celebrating companies when they finally do the bare minimum.
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 disagree that we shouldn't give them their props when companies finally give in, because most are still not doing that (see Project Nimbus). The problem here is that we don't even know they have done the bare minimum yet, since this is only one contract and to my knowledge they have several, including still actively working with the IDF.
> Yes it’s a good thing AND we don’t need to be celebrating companies when they finally do the bare minimum.
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.
I agree. If we want our pressure campaigns to be successful, we need to reward companies that respond to them.
But the question is do you want to actually reward behavior that is just less bad than before? Or should that reward just be in the form of less punishment? I agree the consequences should get better in relative terms, but I don't think bad behavior should be rewarded with a positive response, even if the behavior is less bad than before.
It's like, if someone steals a million dollars and then steals a thousand dollars, you don't reward them for making progress.
What kind of pressure campaign are we talking about here? And what kind of reward? Are we now buying Microsoft products because Microsoft's cloud storage is no longer allowed to be used in genocide, only Office and email? That's absurd. What this is about is public opinion, and that takes years and decades to change. And that's a good thing. If you change your tune after every Microsoft PR release, it's not you who's holding the carrot and the stick, it's Microsoft.
M$ is bad, just not cause of this
I mean, they have thoroughly soiled their reputation with the US tech workforce by being the most egregious abusers of the H1B program.
I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
> I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
Why wouldn't countries store secret data in Azure, Google Cloud and AWS services? I think that this is quite common.
I think you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not saying "this story is bogus," but rather I'm saying that this sort of data is probably not the kind of data which is acquired through really secret means. Perhaps it was purchased from providers, or some other less-secret method.
Israel actually had a bunch of rules where Palestinians are not allowed to have 5G or 4G networks to ensure that they can be monitored.
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...
I really had no idea, thanks for the links.
Yes, they do
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-government-top-...
I'm clearly not informed and equally surprised. Thanks for letting me know.
The issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas, the widely recognised terrorist. I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
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 believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
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.
Quantity doesn't correlate with accuracy. OP's point was that surely having more intelligence means you are more accurate and thus less collateral damage.
Again, prior reporting on the IDF’s computational efforts do not indicate that less collateral damage was a driver - quite the contrary, the algorithm was being used to pad out targeting lists: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...
You’re describing what ought to be, not what currently is.
Exactly. And an increase in accurate targets would lead to the faster removal of Hamas, and the process of repair can begin faster.
Hamas is quite open about their desire to increase civilian casualties by deliberately using civilians as human shields(which is of course a war crime). It's clearly part of their overall strategy.
This shouldn’t be a controversial statement. It’s well documented that Hamas utilizes this strategy by their own statements. On the Israeli side it’s much harder to determine what tactics some (military) groups utilize.
Israel claims that they “don’t want to kill civilians” but historically have not substantially changed course when the killings became grotesquely excessive. It’s also arguably true that they have never even sincerely investigated any issues.
Israel just gets more aggressive in the murder and bombing.
Reading the article you'll see that much of the surveillance is against the West Bank population, which has nothing to do with Hamas or Oct 7.
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.
> I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians
They should probably stop shooting them then.
> Precise military intelligence is absolutely necessary for minimising civilian casualties.
Whatever they've been doing on that front doesn't seem to be working so far...
> issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas
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.)
[edited to remove snark] there is a ton of evidence to the contrary, that the killing of civilians is intentional and systematic. that's why the ICC (finally) determined it is a genocide.
The ICC did no such thing, you're probably thinking of the ICJ, which also did no such thing according to one of the judges that ruled on that decision:
“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...
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem determined that it is a genocide in a report released September 16: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) is not a legal body, which would be the sort of body that is able to make a genocide determination. It also does not speak on behalf of the UN, given that it an independent commission of inquiry.
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.
It is interesting to me that all this sweat and tears are spent deliberating over the use of a word in faraway courts while all of us can see with our eyes the horrors Palestinians are subjected to by the occupying IDF. "We didn't say there was a genocide! We acknowledged the plausibility of the possibility that potentially maybe an investigation might perhaps occur into the possibility of maybe Palestinians being able to experience a genocide by someone."
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.
If you want to redefine genocide to mean "a very bad thing" then go ahead, but doing so would hollow out the term.
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.
To be fair, the UN working group that declared it genocide was completely precise in how they defined it and the criteria they used. Totally fair to disagree either with the existence of that working group, their definition of genocide, or with the facts they cite as evidence, but to pretend it’s just a bunch internet activists playing rhetorical tricks is clearly subterfuge.
hasn't the death toll surpassed the number of hamas members?
The state you are referring to literally calls Palestinians a demographic threat.
You can easily find telegram channels that show what regular Israeli soldiers are up to, they post it themselves like they're proud of it. Take a look at it and see what you think then.
It is the IDF and Israel governments explicit goal, as stated by high up government officials and leaders, to eradicate all Palestians in Gaza. A cursory view into their own Hebrew media make this abundantly clear.
They are committing a genocide in both word and deed.
A few government officials have said this. No one part of the War Cabinet has said this and it is definitely NOT the explicitly goal of the IDF.
This is entirely made up.
>I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
> I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.
For some additional context this initial complete siege lasted for roughly two weeks.
> We are fighting human animals
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.
Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
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.
> Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
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.
Evidence indicates the intention is to kill indiscriminately, hence the genocide determinations.
I would be interested to read the evidence for myself if you have sources?
Would you accept it even if it was shown? Or would you go on with adjacents to say how it is not evidence? Get new points from the ITF. Maybe hold them to the a fraction of accountability that you throw around.
Inconvenient truth is that anyone who remained in Gaza, in active IDF ops area, is not a civilian. Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times. Unless it's a little child that's not capable of lifting a firearm, this person is Hamas at this point.
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.
>Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times.
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.
It is a genocide. They are targeting civilians.
Proof? Or just what is convenient for you to believe?
If anything, quite the opposite. Think about this logically - why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population?
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.
Genocide is not the same as extermination. The goal of expulsion is to obtain land. Surveillance programs facilitate ethnic cleansing by countering resistance.
It's already been linked in the thread
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_the...
>why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population
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.
After they fired how many protestors?
Looks like the contracts are not going to AWS or Google but to Nebius (founded by Volozhin, who founded of Yandex).
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."
My first reaction was "good on Microsoft". Then I read how it was only after a Guardian report exposed this was happening that MSFT took action. They were perfectly content to provide the services so long as it wasn't widely known.
Every single one of these companies that have enabled the genocide should be help accountable. Maybe some are trying to claim plausible deniability.
--
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.
>Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
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.
Nice
Cue the victimhood - how unfair it is that the IDF gets singled out for doing what every military does - how Israel is the real victim here.
it's a jing jang thing. soon there will be some one else who will be a tastier roast. but as an Israeli im really impressed they were able to use so much compute before someone checked their activity report. I mean this was not just parking space they were using, stakes were high! it's 2025 and (still) money talks.
Impressive.
I often think of Microsoft as the new IBM, and it's startling to me to watch them buck that reputation.
They could never be that while Amazon and Google still run Project Nimbus.
After 2 years of genocide, and massive dissent from their own employees repeatedly warning that this was happening...
Those who make holocaust tabulation machines belong in prison.
Well, to their credit, they've also seen that IBM, Volkswagen and Ford were still allowed to do plenty of business with no repercussions whatsoever (that I know of).
I guess time to buy more Oracle or Google stocks? They can easily provide more than needed, especially Oracle which is very friendly to Israel and Ellison is a big supporter of IDF (large donations to "Friends of the IDF" non-profit).
Here is a link in case anyone wants to donate https://www.fidf.org to this amazing organization.
No? No one should service them
Wow nice, I wish i could donate, but US Taxpayers already cover for me. What do the donors get? Like souvenirs? Funding Genocidal ITF to kill more children and bomb more hospitals has to have its perks.
Leave the government to do its thing, and you do your charity, those are not mutually exclusive. If you are in the US ( Although I suspect Pakistan is your home country...) , FIDF is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, do a good deed and donate. Charity is a blessing (Mitzvah), spiritual elevation. I can see you are in need of one.
Imagine thinking you're the spiritually elevated one while actively trying to defend the slaughter of at least 60,000 people. Truly warped levels of delusion.
makes sense to do if you support genocide
https://www.jfeed.com/analysis/gaza-nutella-cafe-reality
>Is there famine? In some selected areas, yes, but for the ones with money, this reality never came.
Seems like what Israel is doing disproportionately affects poor people.
Wow! This is fantastic news, I wouldn't have bet on Microsoft ever doing something like this. I pray it's just the start and other American companies start to do the same.
It's okay if they mass surveil and kill other people using sweeping AI systems, surely it will never happen to me.
There was an interesting point in the earlier article on this, where Microsoft tried to push their Israeli employees under a bus. They claimed their Israeli employees had lied to them about the use of Azure for war and civilian harm because they held more allegiance to their army than to Microsoft.
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!
Unrelated, I knew I recognised that name, thank you for everything you do, I've made a few commits to T4P myself in the last few months and can't imagine the regular work that must go into it.
Seems to be fairly equivalent to ABC pulling Kimmel and reinstating it a few days later.
It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own state after this.
And their own datacenter!
On what land, exactly?
Their own land, of course, where they've lived for thousands of years.
Serious question, what do you think is their own land? And what exactly makes you think it is their land?
Are you aware that most of the Arabs of the Holy Land came around the same time period as the Jews? There were Arabs living here previously, of course, as were there living here Jews. Half a century before the British mandate, Jerusalem was already Jewish majority.
The only reason that Jews in the West Bank are called settlers is because the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1948, and that territory was free of Jews for 19 years. Other than those 19 years, the Jews had been here far longer than the Arab colonizers had been.[flagged]
There are quite a few inaccuracies here.
Palestine is not in Arabia but in the Levant, which was conquered by Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the 7th c. as part of the Arab-Byzantine wars, and came under the Rashidun Caliphate, the first incarnation of the Arab Empire (which also conquered parts of Europe, BTW, not to mention that people in Morocco or Tunisia speak Arabic for pretty much the same reason people in Peru or Mexico speak Spanish). Warfare in the Levant obviously preceded the crusades by centuries and millenia, and included not only European conquests such as Greek and Roman, but also Persian and Arab conquests.
While it is true that modern Zionism originated in Europe, most Jews living in Israel have no European ancestry whatsoever. Most Jews in Israel have a recent ancestry in the Middle East and North Africa.
Even Ashkenazi Jews of a recent European ancestry (who are a minority in Israel) have genetics pointing to Middle Eastern ancestry. While it is hard to tie any group to ancient Jews, it isn't unlikely that Jews of all origins as well as Palestinian Arabs have ancient Jewish ancestry.
Just as European nationalism excluded Jews as Europeans, Arab nationalism excluded Jews as Arabs, and if there's any group that identifies as Jewish-Arab today, it is vanishingly small.
What Zionism is has not only changed considerably over time, but now, as in the past, there's great disagreement among those considering themselves Zionist on what it means. For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a single multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state, i.e. the same position was regarded as both Zionist and anti-Zionist by different people simultaneously. Today, many (perhaps even most) of those identifying as Zionists favour a two-state solution.
> For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state,
This
The evil ideology is political Zionism
The idea the Jews should live securely in the Levant is not obnoxious.
The idea of a racialised state where "only the Jewish people have the right of self determination" is utterly repugnant
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/israel-passes-law-granting-o...
Even political Zionism is minimally defined as supporting "a home for Jews in Palestine"[1] Not only does it not require any ethnic exclusivity nor even for a national identity, it doesn't even require an independent state in the contemporary sense. Some of those who identify as Zionist take it to mean only that Jews should be able to live with some form of self-determination in Palestine, and so when they hear "anti Zionist" they take it to mean supporting the expulsion of Jews, which, of course is not what many of those who identify as anti-Zionist want. When some anti-Zionist hear the term Zionist, they take it to mean support of an exclusive ethno-national Jewish state, which, of course, is not what many of those who identify as Zionist want. The term could mean something very different to different people, to the point that the same political position can be called Zionist by some and anti-Zionist by others, which makes the term mostly useless.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_Zionism#Political_Zio...
This is such a perversion of the history of the holy land that I don't even see fit to correct any of it. Any reader here is welcome to read about the Muslim conquests, of which the Muslims are extremely proud.
In fact, part of that pride is calling it an the Arab conquest, even though the colonizer - Salah AlDin - was a Kurd and not an Arab.
Jews are an ethnicity and are genetically the same. Even those from Europe and those from Muslim countries (who now live in Israel after getting kicked out of Muslim countries). Stop making stuff up.
Ohhh and Muslims didn’t treat Jews “peacefully”. They were second class citizens and often massacred. Read some history.
No, Jews of today are ethnically quite diverse and have mixed significantly. There are several recognized heritages of Jews of today with known populations from North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, and also Europe. I don't deny the "Jewishness" of anyone, but say "The Jews" as if this covers all of them is wrong. There are huge swaths of Jews today that are anti-Zionist and consider Israel an abomination on religious grounds. That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals. The recent newly emerging religious Jewish Zionists are a divergence from mainstream Judaism and a recent development that relies on a lot of creative interpretation and ignorance of Jewish religious texts.
And yes, Muslims and Jews lived over 1000 years far more peacefully than any time before. Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule except for the Crusades which, surprise, came from Europe.
Why do you think Jewish people are mixed? Could it that occupiers, like invading Islamic Arabs, drove them away and they mixed over time with others? Regardless of that, it is Jewish people and their culture that are indigenous to the Levant. Not the Islamic Arabs who call themselves Palestinian.
> That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals.
It is literally a religious goal of Hamas and the people who voted for them (Gazans) to destroy a religion (Judaism) and to commit genocide. It is literally in their charter. They voted for it. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel has a population that is over 20% Islamic Arab and they are thriving. The reality seems to me to be the opposite of what you’re stating here.
> Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule
It seems to me like you are pro colonization when the rules are Islamic and when the suppressed are Jewish. But not in the reverse? Israel is a democracy. Surely that is preferable to a religious supremacist rule?
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where else?
Arabs are from Arabia, Egypt was colonised just like Judea and the rest of the middle east and north africa was.
Right of return for all Palestinians and their descendants, worldwide.
Also for the 850K middle eastern Jews that were kicked out of their countries by arabs?
Kicked out? Is that what you call the One Million Plan and all the other plans like it? They were imported there because that's been the MO of the state of Israel since the Irgun and Haganah first envisioned it.
If committing genocide puts the genociders in a tough spot, then I’m actually cool with that
On genetic terms, the Palestinians are virtually identical to Semitic Jews.
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.
> On genetic terms...
...race is fiction.
Genetic analysis does not match "racial" classifications
"Race" is a social construct
Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, here, that would have the stench of colonialism about it.
It's not their land to 'return to' - after all, people already live there and they have no moral right to displace them.
How do you think Israel was formed in the first place? Or is your comment intentionally ironic?
How do you think most countries or borders were formed? It's almost all wars and displacement.
In the fist place? That was 3,000 or so years ago.
There was never a country called Israel until 1948. It was always Palestine.
The idea of a nation called Israel is the invention of Zionists in the 19th and 20th century.
Ancient Israelites existed approximately 2000 years before your incorrect claimed timeline. Today’s Jews are descendants of Israelites.
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.
Today's Israel has absolutely nothing to do with ancient Israel. They took on the name as propaganda, a cynically constructed state origin myth.
And spearheaded by the Haganah and Irgun, who were violent terrorists whose many bombings "persuaded" the British to hand the land over to them.
Israel was not formed by displacement. That's a common misconception. Jews bought lands all across Palestine in early 1900's, with bodies such as the JNF. The displacement ("Nakba") came in 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence (started by the Arabs in Palestine and abroad), and even that mostly concerned areas which participated in the war. Areas that remained peaceful integrated into Israel (today's Israeli Arabs, 23% of the population).
It wasn't started by the Palestinians. Israelis conduced ethnic cleansing operations against civilians to displace them, including biowarfare and well poisoning. It continues today, in Gaza and in the West Bank.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_expulsion_from_L...
The article you linked refers to events during the war of 1948, when Israel was already formalized. It's establishment up to that point was primarily based on lawful acquisition, not expulsion. When it turned to an all out war, then yes, expulsion took place.
Yes, it was so lawful that the Irgun had to bomb the British and Palestinians to lawfully convince them to hand it to them.
Palestinians still owned most of the land... and buying land doesn't give you the right to rule over the peasants who till it. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Pa...
Started by the Arabs is charitable when Jewish terrorists went around massacring villages.
They have been deliberately displaced by Israeli's apartheid government giving Jewish people around the world a "right to return" to Israel. Except unlike the Palestinians, they were never from Israel in the first place so the term "right to return" as used by Israel is nothing but colonialist propaganda.
Undoing colonialism isn't colonialism.
Hey chatgpt how many jews displaced from Arab countries in 1948? and how many descendants they have today?
So you think the Jews imported by the One Million Plan and the tens of others like it were "displaced"? There's a reason that the multiplicity of Jews in Israel today are American and European immigrants with no connection to the land whatsoever.
It’s all just the ‘hopes and prayers’ of the left anyway. When someone doesn’t give a damn (like Israel right now), all the public shaming is just another version of the UN’s strongly worded letter.
Yes, the shameless and evil generally aren't to be reasoned with, in which case things will come to a head and there are other ways to stop genocides. See for example, the Nazis.
Imagine you kill my dad, steal his house and turn me out into the street; you get convicted and sent to jail and your son gets to keep the house.
That what Jordan did to the Jews in Jerusalem, and then handed the house to Palestinians who decided they want to make it their capital.
You say "the Jews" but you're leaving out that there are Arab Jews and European ones. Arab Jews have lived in Palestine for hundreds of years alongside other Arabs peacefully in coexistence.
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.
> I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem
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.
This is completely in the context of the formation of Israel in 1948.
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.
I'm as against the genocide as you can be, but what you are saying is historically completely inaccurate. Discrimination against Jews is old, older than Israel or Zionism. The arguments against the land theft and genocide are strong enough without the hyperbole.
Honestly can't tell if this is satire or not.
Poe's law! Welcome to the internet!
> It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own state after this.
This seems off topic. I will flag it.
A small step, mostly for PR I guess, but still better than nothing.
There should be no tech for genocide!
Too little too late, but anything we can do to stop this genocide...
I doubt it can be stopped anymore without physical intervetion.
Honestly, respect to the big M.
A little more surveillance might have prevented Oct 7.
A lack of surveillance wasn’t the problem. It was not believing the intelligence.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-milita...
Such a Monday quarterback's perspective. There is always plenty of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack
The amount of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack on specific places at specific times is contextual and not comparably equal.
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.
Not moving troops and police away from the border might have prevented Oct 7th. I think they were more focused on the West Bank at the time.
Or following up the reports of suspicious behavior in Gaza by your own IDF border troops days before the terror attack.
Ah, yes, the classic argument: we must ramp up surveillance because it is the only way to stop pedophiles, terrorists, and pirates.
> Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
You can spy but data is all mine.
What's the protocol when a client stores data that violates their terms of service? Delete it immediately? Retain it until the client can retrieve a backup? Deny access until they sign a new contract?
I suspect that really depends on the content. What does Microsoft do when it's CSAM? They can't legally posses it but can't legally delete it because that would be destroying evidence. I'm sure there's a process.
"Microsoft condones Hamas attack on Oct 7th."
"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 wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...
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).
As someone who's been boycotting Microsoft in line with the BDS movement, I welcome this (belated) move, but seeing Bill Gates on stage laughing (maybe nervously) at Ibtihal Aboussad's (now validated) protest still makes me uneasy about a guy who I previously followed and liked to a reasonable extent, and I'll still probably hold off on watching his most recent documentaries. It makes me wonder how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that. Hell, even Ballmer had the sense to keep a straight face.
> how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that
Laughing at someone yelling on stage can be entirely orthogonal to what they’re saying. (And it’s not like that outburst did anything.)
The article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure, of which Ibtihal Aboussad's was the most vocal and memorable in the media, played a significant role in the decision.
> article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure
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.
Does that "literature" include history itself? I can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off. Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition.
> Does that "literature" include history itself?
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.)