Peace and Justice Post

Microsoft continues “to supply cloud and AI arms to the Israeli military,” activists pointed out.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar , Truthout Published May 13, 2026

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Microsoft’s Israel subsidiary has announced that its general manager, Alon Haimovich, will be stepping down from his position on May 31, after an investigation into the subsidiary’s collaboration with the Israeli military.

Microsoft ordered an inquiry into its Israel subsidiary last year after a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call revealed the Israeli military’s extensive use of Microsoft’s Azure platform for surveillance.

The Israeli military, it was found, used Microsoft’s Azure cloud-based system to store millions of daily phone calls made by Palestinians, enabling it to capture a much larger pool of everyday Palestinian communication than possible on military servers. According to +972 Magazine, this has created “what is likely one of the world’s largest and most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group.” This has in turn shaped the Israeli military’s operations in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Though Microsoft claimed its leadership was unaware of how the Azure cloud system would be used, leaked documents revealed that Israel’s military surveillance gave specific instructions for its vision of a project that would store “A million [Palestinian] calls an hour.”

The Israeli military’s Unit 8200 — an intelligence unit comparable to the U.S.’s National Security Agency — had approached Microsoft’s CEO in 2021 to work with Microsoft’s Azure to create a specific database for its mass surveillance of Palestinians.

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Israeli military sources said that intelligence from the phone calls was then used to identify bombing targets in Gaza, and that the military’s use of Azure had increased during the course of the genocide in Gaza. Initially, the Israeli military had focused its use of the Azure cloud platform on the West Bank, creating a network of surveillance used to assist in the Israeli occupation’s domination there.

Microsoft’s inquiry has concluded, according to The Guardian, and has resulted in Microsoft Israel’s general manager, Haimovich, leaving the company.

Several other managers of Microsoft Israel have also left their positions amidst the inquiry.

Though it has not laid out its full findings, Microsoft’s inquiry concluded that the Israeli military intelligence unit violated Microsoft’s terms of service, which prohibit the use of its technology to facilitate mass surveillance. Microsoft then ended Unit 8200’s ability to access its cloud services and AI used to support its surveillance project.

Beyond the Azure cloud system, Microsoft is used in all major infrastructure in the Israeli military system.

In a statement sent to Truthout upon the news that Microsoft Israel’s general manager would be departing, No Azure for Apartheid, an activist group that is part of a broader movement of tech organizers, said the decision “comes at the heels of relentless pressure from our campaign” as well as that of other activists.

“Microsoft has tried to quietly say goodbye to war criminal Alon Haimovich, who oversaw the development of Azure tools for the Israeli military which helped accelerate the first AI-powered genocide,” the group said.

Contrary to claims that Microsoft’s leadership did not know how the technology would be used, No Azure for Apartheid asserts that Haimovich worked closely with Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella.

“Microsoft workers who continue to speak up about those war crimes are arrested, prosecuted, brutalized, fired and sanctioned,” the statement continues.

The statement also claims that Microsoft’s investigations have not stopped it from “continuing to supply cloud and AI arms to the Israeli military” and that the group “refuse[s] to allow Microsoft to scapegoat one or a handful of individuals to wipe its hands clean of its complicity in genocide.” Microsoft, they said, must “end this collusion and cut off all ties with the Israeli military and government immediately.”

Hossam Nasr, an organizer with No Azure for Apartheid and a former tech worker fired by Microsoft for speaking out against the company’s complicity with Israel’s military, told Truthout:

Over the course of the genocide, we’ve come to learn how deeply embedded Microsoft is within the Israeli military ecosystem. Microsoft supplies cloud, AI, computing, storage and advanced AI models to the Israeli military to be used not just by Unit 8200 but also Mamram, Ofek, and specific naval, air and ground units in the Israeli military. Microsoft has a footprint in all major military infrastructures in Israel.

Following a relentless campaign waged by No Azure for Apartheid — which included a worker petition signed by over 2000 employees, disruptions at key events, and an encampment and sit-in at the president’s office last summer — Microsoft became the first U.S. tech company to end some of its contracts with the Israeli military in September 2025, Nasr said. But although the company stopped selling some of its cloud and AI services to Unit 8200, “the vast majority of their contracts with the Israeli military remain intact.”

Microsoft continues to be a partner in not only Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but in the war on Iran and Israel’s war on southern Lebanon, Nasr said.

“This gives us even more fuel and motivation to continue our organizing. We’re not going to stop until all our demands are met — until Microsoft ends all of its contracts with the Israeli military.”

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about:blank This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Shireen Akram-Boshar

Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist.

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Jon Cink The Electronic Intifada 11 May 2026

On 13 February, the UK’s High Court of Justice ruled that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful.

Palestine Action was added to the list of proscribed organizations in July 2025, a move initiated by the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and passed by Britain’s Parliament.

In February, a panel of three senior judges allowed the challenge brought by Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, on two grounds.

First, the pathway to reach the decision to proscribe was not in line with the Home Office’s own policy. Second, a crucial ruling held that the ban under the Terrorism Act interfered with the fundamental rights of free expression and free assembly.

Yet the group remains banned, pending the outcome of the British government’s appeal.

The government’s challenge to the February ruling was heard by the Court of Appeal in late April. The verdict in the appeal case is expected within the coming weeks.

Paying no mind to the proscription, people from all walks of life have continued to show their opposition to the UK’s role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and in imperial violence throughout the Middle East. It’s clear beyond any doubt that Westminster failed at halting autonomous resistance or popular support for Palestine Action.

Direct action is a political strategy with little regard for established pathways to change when operating within a political environment that fails to prioritize human life over the interests of global finance and a decaying imperial order. Direct action is a weapon of the people.

As I write this, I am currently incarcerated in the UK, accused of being connected to an action at Brize Norton which saw two people enter a Royal Air Force base and spray paint on Voyager aircrafts which were being used to refuel British spy planes. The spy planes had regularly been seen above Gaza during Israel’s genocidal campaign, and have more recently been used to support US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Yvette Cooper responded to the action at Brize Norton by announcing proscription. My co-defendants and I were arrested by counterterrorism police.

We were held completely incommunicado for the first 48 hours. Now, we all await trial in prison.

We have already spent approximately 10 months on remand (in pre-trial detention) and face additional time if not granted bail. Under most circumstances, the limit on detention in police custody is 24 hours and imprisonment without conviction should not exceed six months.

Moreover, being imprisoned under the Terrorism Act subjects us to further surveillance and security measures while in prison. A Muslim co-defendant of mine, held in the Wormwood Scrubs prison, has recently been visited by counterterrorism officers and instructed not to speak Arabic or practice Islam outside of his cell.

We are all subjected to legislation that is on paper the same. In reality, our treatment differs based in part on our proximity to contemporary stereotypes of terrorism.

These stereotypes, created through mainstream media and the entertainment industry, are directly linked to the state’s ability to disregard its subjects’ claims to rights, seemingly celebrated in liberal democracies.

Freedom to practice one’s religion is one of those rights.

Terror of occupation

Contemporary domestic counterterrorism powers deliberately lack many of the safeguards that, however imperfect, exist under most other encounters with the state. I am being subjected to this firsthand.

Globally, the so-called war on terror green-lighted torture and prolonged imprisonment of innocent people without any judicial oversight in places like Guantanamo or US-run black sites.

Terrorism, defined as the use of “terror” to advance a political or ideological cause, leaves out the reality that the colonizer or Western soldiers’ acts of terror are considered perfectly justified, no matter how brutal.

For the colonized, any attempts at survival are quickly designated as acts of terrorism, regardless of the actual means of resistance. From First Nations on the American continent through Algeria to Ireland and Palestine, labeling occupied people as terrorists is an attempt to strip them of their right to govern themselves and govern their land.

Palestinian children understand the meaning of terrorism far better than Shabana Mahmood, the current home secretary, or Yvette Cooper ever could. They live through the terror of occupation day in, day out.

The decision to proscribe cannot be viewed as an isolated instance of state repression. Countering so-called terrorism, with all its material consequences, has been deployed to stifle dissent throughout history.

The meaning of terrorism has always been deliberately vague and often manipulated to fit the given ruling class and its ideological interests. The designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization was not an error in an otherwise well-designed system.

It might have been an escalation, but nevertheless it was one that is in line with the historical utilization of a broad range of counterinsurgency tactics against effective political movements.

So while resistance to genocide and occupation never relied on permission from the courts, the ruling of Palestine Action’s proscription as unlawful is extremely significant nonetheless. It is the first successful legal challenge to a group’s proscription since the current counterterrorism powers came into force at the start of the century.

The court ruling from 13 February isn’t only a massive victory for the freedom of speech and right to protest in the UK. It challenges the state’s hegemony on deploying counterterrorism powers as a tool to manufacture a climate of fear, to distract, to justify invasion or genocide and in our case, attempt to make us into a deterrent.

The past 10 months have seen a sharp rise in public critiques of counterterrorism powers, especially in the context of political repression.

That has been made possible in no small way thanks to the campaign organized by Defend Our Juries and thanks to continuing resistance on the streets, on the top of weapons factories, and within prisons.

I reject the label of “terrorist.” I reject it only insofar as this rejection leads to the naming of terror experienced by millions in this country and globally – lack of social care, poverty, homelessness, brutal border policies and imperial wars.

State-sanctioned terrorism is policy-driven and deliberate terror, aimed at protecting the ideology of free market capitalism. I witness the effects of state-sanctioned terrorism daily through the stories and the fears of many women held behind the same walls as me.

I reject the label of “terrorist” as a way to reject the notion that all life isn’t equal.

I believe that we will ultimately see the unlawful proscription of Palestine Action completely lifted. However, we have a duty to keep up the struggle against the strategic deployment of counterterrorism powers at large beyond this moment.

Something that seems unavoidable at a time of increased imperial violence enacted by the US and the Zionist regime, whose leaders, yet again, rely on the excuse of fighting terrorism to justify their attacks on sovereign countries, all the while instilling terror themselves.

Jon Cink is in pre-trial detention after being arrested for allegedly breaking into Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airforce base, and helping to decommission two warplanes suspected of being used in the Gaza genocide.

Palestinians were seen walking in Gaza City with the belongings they could carry on October 10, 2025.

(Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Israeli officials who ordered unlawful destruction, collective punishment, or acts of genocide must be held accountable.”

Jake Johnson

May 12, 2026

Amnesty International released a report Tuesday detailing the Israeli military’s leveling of more than a dozen high-rise residential and commercial buildings in the Gaza Strip late last year, attacks that the leading human rights organization said must be investigated as “war crimes of wanton destruction and collective punishment.”

The new report cites “celebratory and gleeful” comments from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz as evidence that there was no plausible military objective for Israel’s destruction of at least 13 multistory residential and commercial buildings in Gaza City between September and October 2025. In one mid-September social media post, Katz boasted that Israeli bombs sent one Gaza university “soaring to the heavens.”

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Amnesty, which has called Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide, notes that the Fourth Geneva Convention bars occupying powers from engaging in collective punishment and property destruction “except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”

“In the month preceding the so-called ceasefire in October 2025, Israel expanded and escalated its relentless assault on Gaza City, causing one of the worst waves of mass displacement during the genocide,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns. “A key pattern of this assault was the deliberate destruction, through aerial bombardment, of multi-story civilian buildings, leveling the homes of thousands of civilians, and destroying makeshift camps in their vicinity.”

“All the available evidence indicates that Israel’s destruction of these 13 high-rise buildings was not ‘rendered absolutely necessary by military operations’ and as such must be investigated as war crimes,” she added.

“”Our children are sick from the rain and cold. It is especially difficult to raise a baby in such disastrous conditions. We lack everything.“

Amnesty said that satellite imagery, interviews with residents displaced by Israel’s large-scale destruction of Gaza buildings, and verified video footage revealed “a chilling pattern of deliberate destruction of the civilian structures by Israeli forces without requisite military necessity.” A 32-year-old IT engineer told the group that his family, including three children, is now living in a tent in southern Gaza after Israel bombed the 10-story Al-Najm building in Gaza City.

“Our children are sick from the rain and cold,” the man said. “It is especially difficult to raise a baby in such disastrous conditions. We lack everything. My other children, a six-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy, are traumatized; we had to run away from home and they saw it bombed into rubble in front of their eyes. They don’t understand and I can’t explain it to them.”

The United Nations has estimated that Israeli attacks have damaged or destroyed more than 80% of structures in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, when Israel’s assault began in response to a deadly Hamas-led attack.

“The widespread destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, including homes, either through bombardment or demolitions with explosives, combined with Israel’s ongoing restrictions on the entry of shelter material into Gaza and the prohibition on the return to the areas east of the yellow line, have inflicted catastrophic suffering on Gaza’s population,” said Guevara Rosas. “Israel must allow immediate, unfettered access to indispensable aid and goods, including shelter material.”

“Israeli officials who ordered unlawful destruction, collective punishment, or acts of genocide must be held accountable,” she added.

MEM, May 7, 2026 at 2:55 pm

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awards the Order of Civil Merit to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, on 7 May 2026 [sanchezcastejon/X]

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awarded on Thursday the Order of Civil Merit to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, recognizing her work documenting violations of international law in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

Sanchez received Francesca Albanese in Madrid, where they discussed the situation in Palestine, the importance of international law and “the need for an immediate end to the violence and the building of a lasting peace based on dignity and humanity,” according to a government statement.

“Public responsibility also implies the moral obligation of not looking away,” Sanchez wrote on social media, praising Albanese as “a voice that upholds the conscience of the world.”

The Order of Civil Merit is one of Spain’s highest civilian honors and is awarded to Spanish and foreign citizens for extraordinary services benefiting the state or society.

Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has served since 2022 as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She has become one of the most prominent international voices criticizing Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

On Tuesday, Sanchez also sent a letter to the European Commission calling for the activation of the EU’s Blocking Statute to counter US sanctions imposed on Albanese as well as judges and prosecutors from the International Criminal Court.

READ: Spain urges EU to take steps to protect independence of ICC, UN, their actions to end Gaza genocide

“It’s like an international mafia — they want to silence everyone who demands an end to genocide, an end to the crimes,” Albanese told Spanish broadcaster RTVE, referring to the sanctions against her.

Also on Thursday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares criticized Israel’s continued detention of Spanish-Palestinian activist Saif Abukeshek, calling it “inadmissible and unacceptable.”

Jose Manuel Albares told the Spanish parliament that he summoned Israel’s top envoy in Spain on Wednesday to discuss the situation and had also spoken with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.

Albares said Abukeshek was “illegally” detained in international waters where Israel had “no jurisdiction” while traveling with a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla.

“Spain reacted without hesitation, with complete clarity and firmness, in response to violations of international law,” Albares said.​​​​​​​

Lawyers says two activists are being subjected to ‘psychological torture’ as their detention is extended for another week

Activist Thiago Avila, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla seized by Israel in international waters, sits at a magistrate’s court hearing in Ashkelon, Israel, 3 May 2026 (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

By Mera Aladam

Published date: 5 May 2026 12:08 BST | Last update:21 hours 34 mins ago

Two activists seized by Israeli forces in international waters while en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been threatened with death or lengthy imprisonment, their lawyers said on Monday.

The legal centre Adalah, which represents Thiago Avila and Saif Abu Keshek, said the pair have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement since their capture last week.

On Tuesday, a court in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon extended their detention until Sunday.

Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained late on Wednesday when Israeli naval forces raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece.

They were taken to Israel and accused of assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership of and providing services to a terrorist organisation, and transferring funds to such a group. Both deny the charges.

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Since their detention, the men have been held in cells under constant bright light, a practice intended to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation, according to Adalah. They are also blindfolded whenever taken out of their cells, including during medical examinations, which it described as a serious breach of medical ethics.

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Avila reported being subjected to repeated interrogations lasting up to eight hours, during which he was allegedly threatened that they would be “killed” or “imprisoned for 100 years”.

He is also being held in very low temperatures, the group said. 

The two men, now in solitary confinement, have entered their sixth day of a hunger strike in protest at what legal experts have described as an unlawful seizure outside Israel’s territorial waters.

Lawyers Hadeel Abu Salih and Lubna Tuma of Adalah told the court the case was “flawed and unlawful”, arguing there is no legal basis for applying Israeli law to foreign nationals in international waters.

During Friday’s raid, Israeli forces intercepted at least 21 Gaza-bound vessels and detained 175 activists, in what organisers from the Global Sumud Flotilla described as an act of “piracy”.

The boats were seized about 600 nautical miles from Gaza’s coast, near the Greek island of Crete.

Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday describing the detention of Avila and Abu Keshek as illegal.