Click to expand Image A demonstrator holds a Palestinian flag during a protest at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington, US, August 19, 2025. © 2025 David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images (New York, October 10, 2025) – Microsoft should suspend business activities that are contributing to grave human rights abuses and international crimes by the Israeli military and other Israeli government bodies, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Access Now, and other leading human rights groups said in a letter previously privately sent to Microsoft and published today.An August 2025 media investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call reported that the Israeli military intelligence unit, Unit 8200, has been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud services to store and process vast quantities of daily intercepts of telephone communications of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. On September 25, Microsoft announced that it had ceased and disabled specific Israeli military subscriptions and services, including their use of specific cloud storage and artificial intelligence (AI) services and technologies, as a result of its review of allegations from the Guardian’s reporting.“Microsoft has taken an important first step toward restricting the use of specific technologies by a unit within the Israeli military for repressing Palestinians,” said Deborah Brown, technology and rights deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “It should comprehensively review its business relationships with Israeli authorities and take action to ensure that its cloud infrastructure, AI technology, software and hardware, and other tools and services are not complicit in Israel’s extermination of Palestinians and other serious abuses.”Microsoft has said it plans to provide a response to the joint letter at the end of October, as it is currently carrying out its investigation and formulating recommendations.Microsoft has had ample reason to conduct heightened human rights due diligence of its business activities with Israeli authorities given the protracted nature of Israel’s occupation and repression of Palestinians and years of reporting by human rights organizations, the United Nations, and media concerning the risk of technology companies contributing to abuses, Human Rights Watch said.As Human Rights Watch research has documented, Israeli forces’ use of data-driven systems and AI technologies, including for surveillance and to inform military targeting decisions in Gaza, raises serious concerns under the laws of war, in particular the principle of distinction between military targets and civilians, and the need to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm.Human Rights Watch and five partner organizations wrote to Microsoft on September 26. The groups said that Microsoft’s decision to disable specific Israeli military subscriptions and services in response to the Guardian’s reporting was a positive step. The groups urged Microsoft to re-examine all of its contracts with the Israeli military and other government authorities, to suspend the use of any service or product contributing to human rights abuses by Israeli military or government authorities, and where this is the case to terminate the relationship.Human Rights Watch has found that Israeli authorities in recent years have carried out ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, including extermination, apartheid, and persecution, and acts of genocide against Palestinians, and violated binding orders by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).The media investigation reported that Israel’s mass surveillance system, powered by Azure, holds millions of recorded mobile phone calls, and that sources within Unit 8200 say Israeli authorities have used this data to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza, alongside AI-driven tools used for targeting. Israeli authorities have reportedly also used this information in the occupied West Bank to “blackmail people, place them in detention, or even justify their killing after the fact.” Microsoft noted that its own review, which is ongoing, “found evidence that supports elements of the Guardian’s reporting.”Israel’s extensive and pervasive surveillance of the entire Palestinian population is well documented and has been instrumental in Israeli authorities’ ongoing perpetration of the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians. Israeli authorities have used the mass surveillance and coercive extraction of Palestinians’ personal data to enable, facilitate, and even accelerate the commission of other international crimes, including acts of genocide; crimes against humanity, including of extermination; and war crimes, including air strikes carried out in violation of the laws of war.Israel’s assault on Gaza has resulted in the killing of over 67,000 Palestinians, including at least 20,000 children, and destroyed the majority of Gaza’s schools, hospitals, homes, and civilian infrastructure.Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which Microsoft publicly endorses, companies have a responsibility to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses, and to address risks directly linked to their business operations and relationships. In conflict-affected contexts, the risk of gross human rights abuses is heightened and, therefore, due diligence by businesses should be heightened accordingly.Microsoft has not publicly disclosed whether it has exercised heightened human rights due diligence or sought to terminate its links to human rights abuses. Until its September 25 announcement, Microsoft had not indicated publicly that it imposed any limits on its business relationships with Israeli authorities to address the risks of human rights abuses. A previous review that Microsoft commissioned of the Israeli military’s use of its products found in May 2025 that there was “no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.”In their joint letter, the groups outline questions concerning the scope of Microsoft’s current review and its application of its own policies concerning the responsible use of its AI in the context of the hostilities.“There is no time to delay, Microsoft should take decisive action to ensure they are not profiting from grave human rights abuses of Palestinians,” Brown said.