| ▲ | Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy(en.globes.co.il) |
| 82 points by bhouston 2 hours ago | 65 comments |
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| ▲ | noworriesnate an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| TIL that Microsoft is the least Israel-friendly of the big three clouds: > Among the cloud giants, Microsoft is considered the most vulnerable to anti-Israel protests and allegations of the use made by the Ministry of Defense on Azure, its cloud platforms, since it is the only company among the three major cloud companies that has not signed a special agreement with the Israeli government and the Ministry of Defense. The industry says that Haimovich, who is known as a prominent salesman with the government sector, was appointed country general manager, among other things, due to Microsoft's plans to retain and increase business with the government sector, despite not winning the Nimbus tender. > In 2021, Israel awarded Amazon and Google the Nimbus cloud tender, encouraging government bodies and public organizations to migrate to these services, at the expense of Microsoft. In return, Amazon and Google pledged to establish service areas in data centers on Israeli soil, in order to avoid exposing security or government data to foreign regulation. |
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| ▲ | bhouston an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > TIL that Microsoft is the least Israel-friendly of the big three clouds This is a good thing. American companies should not be allowing their tech to be used to in the gross ongoing human rights violations in Israel/Gaza/West Bank. Google and Amazon knew their tech could be used for human rights abuses in Israel (their lawyers warned them so) but ignored that in favour of $$$ per the EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-and-amazon-ackn... | | |
| ▲ | danudey an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah but when you read the article it comes across less like 'Microsoft doesn't want its services used for ethics violations' and more 'The unethical genocide Israel is doing uses some servers in the EU exposing Microsoft to legal and regulatory issues'. IOW this isn't an ethical or moral stance against what the Ministry of Defense was doing, it's purely because they could potentially get in trouble with the EU for abetting the genocide. | | |
| ▲ | bhouston 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Yeah but when you read the article it comes across less like 'Microsoft doesn't want its services used for ethics violations' and more 'The unethical genocide Israel is doing uses some servers in the EU exposing Microsoft to legal and regulatory issues'. You are incorrect. Microsoft has made clear that it is related to all of its Azure services that were misused with regards to its terms of services, not just those in Europe. Here is Microsoft's original statement when it began this investigation: "The Guardian, on that date, reported that multiple individuals have asserted that the IDF is using Azure for the storage of data files of phone calls obtained through broad or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Microsoft’s standard terms of service prohibit this type of usage." https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/05/15/stateme... | | |
| ▲ | shevy-java 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Ok, so The Guardian was incomplete in its assumptions. But Microsoft's explanation also does not make sense - see how they have to support any war waged by the US government. They would have had to support the Vietnam war, if were were in that era back. Something does not add up here still. | | |
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| ▲ | shevy-java 12 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Agreed, but then Germany is also to be held liable as it supports Israel and allows the USA to use its bases there to bomb people in far-away countries. So there is a huge inconsistency here, IMHO. | | |
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| ▲ | ToucanLoucan an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > American companies should not be allowing their tech to be used to in the gross ongoing human rights violations in Israel/Gaza/West Bank. Fully agreed, but also a hard sell given that America itself does not recognize what is happening there as a genocide. Something something man understanding depending on his salary. Americans only give a shit about the price of gas and eggs. Whoever has to die to keep those down is apparently fine with the majority of our population. | | | |
| ▲ | frumplestlatz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is not general or even majority agreement that there even are “human rights abuses” going on in Israel/Gaza/West Bank. | | | |
| ▲ | yodsanklai 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > American companies should not be allowing their tech to ... Do they have a choice? | | |
| ▲ | idle_zealot 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | In what dimension do you mean? Legally? Yes, unless based out of a place with an anti-BDS law. Politically? Sure, it's a bet against those currently in power and for the sentiment in the population. Practically? Yes, they can refuse business and contracts. I suppose they could also put killswitches in their hardware/software, but I wouldn't be a fan of that for digital-rights reasons. Economically? Who knows, the market makes no sense at all currently. They could probably get away with whatever. |
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| ▲ | shrubble 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I’m kind of confused, in that Israel is not that big in terms of population, about 10 million people; how much data and cloud do they need? The state of Pennsylvania is 13 million; would MSFT losing PA do them serious financial damage? | |
| ▲ | shimman an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That must explain why the "least" friendly MSFT asked the FBI to spy on employees attending pro-Gaza/anti-genocide protests: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/microsof... Good grief. Let's maybe not parrot out nation state propaganda with zero critical thinking on what's being said. | | |
| ▲ | george916a 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Of course. Instead let’s call TikTok propaganda “critical thinking”, virtue signal and be content how “smart” and “moral” we are. |
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| ▲ | hersko an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Is it because it is the most "woke"? Weren't they doing land acknowledgments before some big press event? | | |
| ▲ | cyanydeez an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | No, it's just a random coin toss. Most of what's happening with rich people becoming psychotic or anti-social is simply greed based. You add money to 70% of the population and they'll turn out to be an asshole. If Microsoft was given more attention by AIPAC or it's billionaires, it would've been the same. Watching the rise of fascism in america should really remind everyone that theres far more going on then a single idiot driving far right fascism. | |
| ▲ | noworriesnate 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Being anti-Israel is a bipartisan position in the US among the constituents but not among the representatives (yet) | | |
| ▲ | idle_zealot 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | There's bipartisan consensus among both constituents and representatives. They're just the opposite consensus. |
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| ▲ | periodjet 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is a very bad look for Microsoft. Israel is the only successful and powerful free democratic state in that part of the world, surrounded on all sides by authoritarian regimes who scheme its destruction, and Microsoft harrumphs and says it would be unethical to do business with them? All the while continuing to do business with the Saudis, the UAE, and Qatar. But no, Israel (the only good guy in the area) is just a step too far… | | |
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| ▲ | bhouston 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For those that do not know, this is part of the fallout of this Microsoft investigation from 2025 into the misuse of Azure services in Israel for military purposes: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/09/microsoft-blo... |
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| ▲ | tinfoilhatter 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Israel has been leaking US state secrets to China and Russia for decades. Intel and Microsoft both moved core R&D hubs to Israel even after the country had been caught leaking US secrets. Israel is not an ally of the United States, end of story. |
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| ▲ | shevy-java 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > In September 2025, Microsoft decided to unilaterally terminate the usage agreement with IDF intelligence Unit 8200 after an article published in the UK newspaper "The Guardian," which claimed that the unit was collecting information about Palestinians for the purpose of fighting terrorism Ok but ... isn't Microsoft forced, by law, to cooperate with the US government and US military? So why is that then not an ethical (or other) issue? To me this seems inconsistent. The only "necessity" I see is for Microsoft to be penalised by EU laws, which could explain that "investigation" to some extent. But the EU in general is super-weak. They even give data from EU citizens to the US government as-is, without any problem, so I don't quite buy into that explanation. Is there another explanation that makes more sense? |
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| ▲ | tradethedelta an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Israel consistently flaunts international law, has been accused of war crimes by the Hague, and the UN has found it most likely has committed and continues to commit genocide in Gaza. So I am not surprised that dealing with the country's Defense apparatus would lead to ethical concerns. Every international company should think twice about doing business with the Israeli government or companies rooted in defense and cybersecurity. |
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| ▲ | hersko an hour ago | parent [-] | | Didn't they just have a 5k in Gaza? Its genuinely wild that people think it's a genocide. | | |
| ▲ | artnanika an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | What a bizarre thing to say, concentration camps during the Holocaust also had swimming pools and soccer fields (for the inmates as well), does that prove the Holocaust is a hoax? Swimming pools, soccer fields, and 5k events do not disprove ongoing genocides. | | |
| ▲ | rodrodrod 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Let's not forget the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics too. Public events don't disprove atrocities. |
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| ▲ | _alternator_ an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Honestly it's difficult for me to respond to this comment because the premise is so clearly flawed. A semblance of civilian life does not mean genocide did not or is not taking place. Wholesale population displacement, destruction of a significant percentage of civilian structures, bombings, raids, land and sea blockades, statements from leaders that suggest genocidal intent... these point in the other direction. Would it only be genocide only if no child in Gaza was smiling? If no one was getting married, no one singing, no one relaxing amid the horror? Inhumanity of this level of extreme only occurs literally when everyone is dead. I guess that's the line you have in mind? | | |
| ▲ | hersko an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | "Wholesale population displacement, destruction of a significant percentage of civilian structures, bombings, raids, land and sea blockades," These are all things that happen during war. Explain why this war is different. All war is bad. I genuinely don't see how this is not a war but a genocide. | | | |
| ▲ | tptacek an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wholesale population displacement is explicitly not (by itself) genocide under the convention. Genocide is an intent crime, and the intent has to be the eradication of the targeted ethnic, national, racial, or religious group. Kidnapping all the children in an occupied territory and dispersing them so they can't be returned to their families is genocidal. Mass displacement isn't. The fixation on the term "genocide" has been a major own-goal for advocates of Palestinians. It was deliberately defined to be a difficult bar to clear. "Warm crimes" and "ethnic cleansing" are easy claims to make in the region, and ordinary people don't care about the distinction between "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide"; that term would have served just as well, without the escape hatch "genocide" provides. | | |
| ▲ | _alternator_ an hour ago | parent [-] | | So... "statements from leaders that suggest genocidal intent" ... meets the genocide bar, yes? I'll just quote wikipedia: The Gaza genocide is the ongoing,[19][20] intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killings, deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites.[21] The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee[22] and commission of inquiry,[21] the International Association of Genocide Scholars,[23][24] multiple human rights groups,[c] state governments, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars,[30][31] and other experts.[32] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | There are certainly people involved in the Israeli government that have expressed genocidal intent. The problem is that you can say that about basically every state in the world. It can't be the case that the moment a state commits an ethnically-targeted war crime it is per se committing genocide because you can find someone in the majority, the opposition, or the administrative state that has embraced genocidal logic. The logic has to animate the whole conflict. You've rattled off a list of war crimes, many of which I agree with you about unreservedly, all of which are colorable. I don't think there's much doubt about the impact of Israel's post-October-7 policy on Gazans. But so long as you remained fixed on the term "genocide", you'll forever be arguing with opponents who, at least in the current trajectory of the conflict, have the better side of the legal argument. | | |
| ▲ | _alternator_ 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I'm no genocide expert, but it does seem like legal scholars who _are_ genocide experts agree that the facts here seem to clearly meet the bar. The people who you credit with "hav[ing] the better side of the legal argument" do not seem, from my vantage, to be arguing in good faith. They are trying to bog us down in semantics when a truly horrifying crime is happening, and saying that we can't call a horse a horse is not helping. I'll also say this: I greatly sympathize with Israel and Jews more generally here. The problem at the core remains global antisemitism; it's the reason Israel needed (and still needs!) to exist, and the reason Jews globally feel threatened. Antisemitism in the middle east is particularly pernicious, but it's not much better in Europe or the Americas. It doesn't just feel like a dangerous wolrd for Jews, it _is_ a dangerous world. That doesn't change my opinion about the situation in Gaza---there's ample evidence that it's a genocide. But I hope this helps people see that we can, and should, hold these two truths at once. Jews are persecuted, and are in a precarious situation globally. In fear and in anguish, the state of Israel is performing unconscionable deeds in Gaza. The root cause is antisemitism; if we could somehow find a solution to that, you'd solve the whole conflict in the middle east. But good luck. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Really the only thing that moved me to comment here, besides message board vulnerability amplified by waiting for a Rust compile run to finish, was the implication upthread that mass displacement of populations was genocidal. The rest of it I don't think there's enough daylight between us to debate usefully. |
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| ▲ | rexpop an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It was held in the U.S., not in Gaza, at Nethermead Lawn in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. There are also other Gaza 5K events in U.S. cities, including Dallas and Milwaukee, depending on the year and location. | | | |
| ▲ | b00ty4breakfast 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | See, the thing that makes a genocide is all the dead people. The dead people who were killed by Israeli missiles and bombs. Or when they, the Israeli military, denied aid workers entry into the steaming heap of rubble that they, the Israeli military, created with their missiles and bombs. The steaming heap of rubble that used to be populated buildings that they, the Israeli military, bombed into powder whilst people were inside of them. | |
| ▲ | dpoloncsak an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Pretty sure it was in NYC to raise funds/awareness for what is, by any modern definition, a genocide | | |
| ▲ | kgwgk an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Surprisingly, 5k races may happen in multiple places: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYM64Boqt9K/ | |
| ▲ | hersko an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nope [1], they actually hosted a 5k in Gaza. Can you imagine Holocaust survivors or Armenians during the genocide taking part in a 5k? I can't. Also, it is definitely not "by any modern definition" a genocide. Ireland is currently trying to broaden the definition of the term just to indict Israel [2] [1] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/palestine-marathon-returns-gaza-we... [2] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409187 | | |
| ▲ | _alternator_ an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, I can. This is what being human is. You eat, sleep, laugh when you can, make plans with friends, fall in love, get married, and grieve when the people around you die. And there is a lot of grief in Gaza right now, but there are still living people and living people do nothing if not love one another. To suggest that genocide is only possible when there is no civil life, no humanity, nothing to live for, no I do not accept your definition. If you kill 10% of a population... does it only count as a crime against humanity if the rest of the population cannot even be human? | |
| ▲ | viccis an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | People are allowed to attempt to live a life of dignity even while the entity and its defenders on HN are trying to wipe their people out. | |
| ▲ | constantius 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Holocaust survivors did have art/dance/theatre events, and soccer/boxing competitions. In ghettos and in concentration camps. This was viewed as a triumph of the human spirit over the horrors of Nazism. These events are celebrated in countless books by survivors, exhibitions, and art installations. I dare you to find one survivor's account that does not mention these events. >90% of Gaza's infrastructure is destroyed, >90% of the population is displaced, no universities left, only one hospital with no equipment. These numbers are from several months ago, so you'll excuse me if I'm not keeping up with Israel's killing frenzy. That Gazans still can make art, enjoy a coffee, and do a 5k to raise awareness in a world that doesn't care is seen as victory over darkness by those who are caring about this catastrophe. Those who don't know anything about anything and use the smile of a child to screech "not a genocide!" should be ashamed of themselves. |
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| ▲ | rolymath an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What exactly did he do? |
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| ▲ | danudey an hour ago | parent [-] | | Allowed 'unethical' usage of Azure services by the Ministry of Defense (...to occur on servers in the European Union, where Microsoft could get in trouble for it) |
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| ▲ | aaa_aaa an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Too little too late. |
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| ▲ | basisword 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >> Alon Haimovich is leaving after an investigation into alleged unethical use of Azure by the Ministry of Defense, “Globes” has learned. Microsoft Israel has been placed under the management of Microsoft France. |
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| ▲ | Animats an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So Israel is switching to Google and Amazon. Hm. |
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| ▲ | localhoster an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I love reading on hacker news,
but every once in a while I get reminded what detathed people there is here.
You truly know shit about everything other than you see on your screens eh |
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| ▲ | deaux an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Lovely, but in character, to see a .co.il 403-block a broad swath of the world. |
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| ▲ | computerex an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Okay, now I will be supporting Azure products and will try to bring them into my workplace over AWS/Google Cloud. |
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| ▲ | orochimaaru an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Why? Microsoft probably just hasn’t prioritized nimbus participation over their other construction work. They probably haven’t yet constructed the correct subsidiary structure or key sharing agreements that allow them to participate either. Sooner or later they’ll participate. And then you would have moved your workload for no reason. | |
| ▲ | pnemonic an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I wouldn't be so sure. The departure of these guys only opens new room for less 'pro-ethics' corpos to replace them. | |
| ▲ | danudey an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The reason cited for this whole fiasco is that some of the Ministry of Defense's genocide work could be performed by servers in the EU, which could expose Microsoft to legal or regulatory issues. It's not that Microsoft was against this, it's that Microsoft was against themselves getting in trouble for this with the EU. |
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