Nov. 18 - No Azure for Apartheid, MPower Change, JVP Bay Area, PYM Bay Area, Labor for Palestine, IJAN, and more will host a rally and protest at Ignite, one of Microsoft's largest conferences. The company will be showcasing its latest cloud and AI developments, all while providing ICE and the Israeli military with these same technologies for genocide and the kidnapping of our neighbors and families.
Our campaign will run truck ads from Nov. 18-21 during the San Francisco conference, courtesy of ACRE, Ekō, and MPower Change.
Be sure to sign onto Ekō's petition here.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Nov. 12, 2025
Microsoft must stop supporting mass kidnappings of our families and neighbors in the U.S. and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.
The through line between Microsoft’s contracts with ICE and its contracts with the Israeli military is tech complicity in mass surveillance — aiding violent kidnappings in the U.S. and genocide in Palestine.
Let’s be clear: Mass surveillance does not keep us safe. It keeps us watched.
That’s why, as ICE invades our cities, schools, and workplaces, we are adding the demand to Microsoft that it stop all contracts that support ICE.
Years before biometric scanning in U.S. airports became commonplace, facial recognition tech was being field-tested on occupied Palestinians in the West Bank.¹
Today, if Israel has a new surveillance tech product, the U.S. probably has a buyer. This includes spyware that can extract data from encrypted phones² to autonomous, weaponized drones.³ And if Israel has a tech void, like the need for cloud or AI for its genocidal war on Gaza, a U.S. tech company – like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon – is willing to fill it.⁴
What Israel and the U.S. haven’t bargained for is us — a growing number of citizens and organized tech workers who are loudly and firmly telling Microsoft to stop providing tech for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians and the U.S.’s war on immigrants.
Microsoft has been supporting ICE since the first Trump presidency. In response to worker and public criticism, Microsoft uses third-party contracting through Dell to hide its tech for ICE.⁵
Research shows $20 million in contracts between ICE and Dell Federal Systems for Microsoft software.⁵
Join us in calling for Microsoft to divest from mass kidnappings of our families and neighbors in the U.S. and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Tell Microsoft: No Tech for ICE and No Tech for IDF.
Sources:
“Ban the Scan Automated Apartheid Facial recognition entrenches the oppression of Palestinians,” Amnesty International.
“Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps,” The Guardian, Sept. 2, 2025.
“Israeli drone company opens new U.S. headquarters in Tampa,” FOX 13 News, July 1, 2025.
“Revealed: Microsoft deepened ties with Israeli military to provide tech support during Gaza war,” The Guardian, Jan. 23, 2025.
“Microsoft Powers ICE: Why doesn’t Microsoft want to talk about its contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)?” Medium, Oct. 27, 2025.
BREAKING CAMPAIGN NEWS: Sept. 25, 2025
The Guardian just revealed that Microsoft is ending a 3-year program of storing surveillance data of Palestinians for Israel’s elite spy agency, Unit 8200.¹
This is a significant win and a crucial move by Microsoft — demonstrating that our collective pressure is having an impact.
Microsoft is ending its Unit 8200 surveillance storage after investigations revealed that Microsoft’s cloud was storing “millions of calls” — that is, surveillance data extracted from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — for at least three years after Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, agreed to a plan in 2021 to “grant Unit 8200 access to a customised and segregated area within Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.”²
The investigations suggest that the stored data and subsequent additions were used to create AI-produced kill lists for targeting and bombing in Gaza.
According to The Guardian, the termination of services by Microsoft “is the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza.” But that does not impact Microsoft’s deep “commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services.”
This critical campaign achievement comes at a time of growing worldwide condemnation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In lockstep with Microsoft workers at No Azure for Apartheid,³ we will continue to pressure Microsoft to sever all ties with the Israeli military. That is the goal, and this is the time to push toward it.
Show your solidarity by taking action.
Sources:
1. “Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians,” The Guardian, Sept. 25, 2025.
2. “‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians,” The Guardian, Aug. 6, 2025.
3. "No Azure for Apartheid statement." (Accessed Sept. 25, 2025).
UPDATE: Aug. 19, 2025
Microsoft workers didn’t sign up for employment in the service of genocide, but new reports reveal that their CEO, Satya Nadella, did.
That’s why dozens of Microsoft workers, both former and current, escalated their efforts on August 19 to pressure Microsoft to divest from the Israeli military. Inspired by the student encampments, No Azure for Apartheid claimed a plaza at Microsoft HQ to voice their demands, before being shut down hours later and forced to leave by police.
New investigations into Microsoft’s cloud storage for “millions of calls” — surveillance data extracted from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — reveal that Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, agreed to a plan in 2021 to “grant Unit 8200 [Israel’s military surveillance agency] access to a customised and segregated area within Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.”¹
The investigations suggest that the stored data and subsequent additions have been used to create AI-produced kill lists for targeting and bombing in Gaza.
TAKE ACTION: Send letters today and tell Microsoft leaders to divest from genocide.
Source:
- “‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians,” The Guardian, Aug. 6, 2025.
UPDATE: May 29, 2025
Microsoft workers continue to pressure leadership at the company, and most recently at Microsoft BUILD, where another set of workers disrupted talks on AI to let conference attendees know that Microsoft's AI and Azure are still powering a horrific genocide in Gaza.Following a rally and march, workers and allies were pepper-sprayed and arrested but are undeterred.
Lots of media coverage, including on how the company is blocking emails with the word "Palestine," in internal email exchanges in the company. See more here.
UPDATE: May 16, 2025
Microsoft is no longer ignoring us.
After relentless pressure from Microsoft workers, three news exposés, and over 300,000 letters from activists like you, the company has finally responded with a statement on its tech use by Israel during the genocidal war on Gaza.¹
Israel’s AI program — which required external tech support, including support from Microsoft — “has been a behind-the-scenes force accelerating the death toll in Gaza, which has claimed [over] 45,000 lives.”²
Let’s be clear: Microsoft doesn’t take any responsibility for enabling a genocide. But we’ve forced them to stop remaining silent, to admit that they’re concerned, and that they do provide technology to Israel’s military.
Now is the time for us to ramp up the pressure. Tell Microsoft: No tech for genocide.
Microsoft claims that after conducting its internal investigation, with “external fact-finding,” they’ve found “no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.”
We do not accept that claim, and neither do the workers who issued a statement in response to the company’s PR.³
Leaked documents published on Jan. 23, 2025, expose a well-established partnership between Israel’s military operations and Microsoft. Israel’s military used Microsoft’s cloud platform (Azure, a “suite of communications and messaging systems”), millions of dollars of engineering support, and more during Israel’s attacks in Gaza.⁴
Palestinian men, women, and children are being massacred and starved. Over 51,000 Palestinians are confirmed dead. More than 17,000 were children.⁵
Microsoft is a partner in genocide, and we will continue to hold them accountable until they stop enabling genocide.
Take action today.
Thank you.
Sources:
“Microsoft Statement on the Issues Relating to Technology Services in Israel and Gaza,” (accessed May 16, 2025).
“Revealed: Microsoft deepened ties with Israeli military to provide tech support during Gaza war,” The Guardian, Jan. 23, 2025.
“Microsoft admits complicity in genocide in a failed attempt to deny their involvement — No Azure for Apartheid campaign statement,” Medium, May 16, 2025.
“The Israeli Military Is One of Microsoft's Top AI Customers, Leaked Documents Reveal,” Drop Site, Jan. 23, 2025.
“Israel-Gaza war death toll: Live tracker,” Al Jazeera, March 18, 2025.
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