No Azure for Apartheid call out Microsoft ‘sham’ investigation

A campaign group has called out Microsoft’s sham investigation into the Israeli Ministry of Defence’s use of Microsoft technology.

Microsoft released a bizarre “final update” on the investigation on Thursday, June 4th, after the group, No Azure for Apartheid, disrupted all days of Microsoft’s Build conference this week.

It included protests from the water, sky, and ground to call out the company’s continued complicity in Israel’s genocide.

Microsoft whitewashing

According to the group, the statement is the company’s latest failed attempt to “whitewash its genocide-profiteering” and avoid accountability for its:

active role in powering Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide.

In reality, the statement provides “no meaningful update” since Microsoft’s September announcement of cutting a few services to Unit 8200, an Israeli military spy agency, which it made only after a sustained pressure campaign.

In a statement, the group said:

Microsoft pretends to have a bold stance against mass surveillance by cutting a single service to a single unit while it continues to facilitate mass surveillance and genocide of Palestinians through many other ways.

In August 2025 right before launching this so-called “investigation,” Microsoft colluded with the Israeli military to quickly transfer the intercepted Palestinian phone call data out of the Netherlands to the Microsoft Israel data center. In doing so, Microsoft expedited the concealment of crimes against humanity from any European regulator or international investigation.

Thursday’s statement does not even mention the phone call data hosted in Microsoft’s data centres in Ireland and Israel. It only mentions the Netherlands. This makes it clear that Microsoft chose to focus on this site after local protests at the data centre in the Netherlands.

Microsoft has made it clear it does not care about Palestinians’ privacy. It cares only about its reputation and how it impacts its profits.

‘Digital backbone’

To make matters worse:

Microsoft allows the Israeli military and government to host other surveillance projects on Azure, including the Rolling Stone database, a Palestinian population and movement registry and the Al-Munasseq or “The Coordinator” application, which is used to collect surveillance data on Palestinians. Israel forces Palestinians to download the app to manage apartheid permits to control and restrict their movement.

Microsoft also refuses to address how other Israeli surveillance units, including Unit 81 and Unit 9900, which are other Israeli military spy agencies, use its technology.

Additionally, the Lotem Unit has received direct training from Microsoft workers.

From providing services to Israeli combative and central military units, to being embedded in the national water and electricity companies which steal Palestinian resources, and the Israeli police and prison systems that arrest and torture Palestinians, Microsoft provides the digital backbone of Israel’s entire illegal occupation of Palestine.

Sustained pressure

As the Canary has previously reported, Microsoft workers have been speaking out and protesting against Microsoft’s complicity for years. And they’re not the only ones:

Civil society organizations have reached out to Microsoft. Legal experts have put the company on notice for facilitating illegal crimes against humanity. Shareholders have called Microsoft out on failing proper due diligence. Still, Microsoft decided to stall for months, as the filename Summary-of-2025-External-Investigation-Follow-Up.pdf indicates that the “investigation” actually concluded in 2025.

The group points out that even the follow-up steps detailed in the investigation report are a load of rubbish. There are no additional details on deals with private companies. Companies such as Cellebrite and Cobwebs regularly conduct mass surveillance of Palestinians. Both host their software on Azure and have been used to hack into thousands of Palestinians’ phones.

Microsoft also claims that its follow-up steps include:

additional guidance to employees regarding Microsoft policies related to acceptable use of its products and services

and:

additional mechanisms for employees to raise concerns.

But as the campaign group points out, Israeli Microsoft workers were not ignorant when they developed surveillance systems to spy on Palestinians, or proudly showed off their employees committing genocide in Gaza on its Facebook page. Company leadership were also not ignorant of what their second-largest military customer was doing with their products.

Of course, there is no moral way to work with a genocidal military or government:

Beyond the failed whitewashing, accountability evasion, and feigned ignorance in Thursday’s statement, Microsoft egregiously lists a series of “follow-up steps.” Let us be clear, there is no moral, legal, or compliant way to work with a genocidal military and government. As long as Microsoft works with the Israeli military and government in any capacity, it is complicit in crimes against humanity.

Microsoft is not only complicit in genocide – it is actively enabling and directly participating in war crimes for a genocidal terrorist state. And its latest statement does nothing except show the world how little accountability it is willing to take.

Featured image via No Azure for Apartheid