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Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy
- localhoster 5mo ago[flagged]
- krembo 5mo ago[flagged]
- tinfoilhatter 5mo ago[flagged]
- krembo 5mo ago[flagged]
- tinfoilhatter 5mo agoWhich ones? I may have fudged the church one - I meant Gaza and not the entirety of Palestine. What other claims above aren't true? I'm happy to provide sources to prove them.
- surgical_fire 5mo ago[flagged]
- krembo 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- basisword 5mo ago>> 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.
- tradethedelta 5mo agoIsrael 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.
- hersko 5mo ago[flagged]
- dpoloncsak 5mo ago[flagged]
- hersko 5mo agoNope [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-welcoming-090503377.html?guccounter=1 https://ca.news.yahoo.com/palestine-marathon-returns-gaza-we... [2] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409187 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409187
- viccis 5mo agoPeople 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.
- _alternator_ 5mo agoYes, 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?
- noworriesnate 5mo agoTIL 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.
- hersko 5mo ago[flagged]
- cyanydeez 5mo agoNo, 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.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- noworriesnate 5mo agoBeing anti-Israel is a bipartisan position in the US among the constituents but not among the representatives (yet)
- Animats 5mo agoSo Israel is switching to Google and Amazon. Hm.
- bhouston 5mo agoYup. Google and Amazon knew their tech could be used for human rights abuses in Israel (their lawyers warned them so) but Google and Amazon apparently value $$$ more than human rights per this EFF article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-and-amazon-acknowledged-risks-and-ignored-responsibilities https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-and-amazon-ackn...
- deaux 5mo agoLovely, but in character, to see a .co.il 403-block a broad swath of the world.
- dang 5mo agoI don't know what you're experiencing, of course, but I do know from the (entirely different) context of running HN that such blocks can happen for a lot of different reasons and you can't really assess them correctly without, at least, multiple data points. Not sure if it's helpful to say this or not...
- deaux 5mo agoI confirmed that it was a pure geo-based block before writing the comment. It stayed in place even on mobile internet vs. residential, across devices and browsers.
- computerex 5mo agoOkay, now I will be supporting Azure products and will try to bring them into my workplace over AWS/Google Cloud.
- orochimaaru 5mo agoWhy? 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 5mo agoI wouldn't be so sure. The departure of these guys only opens new room for less 'pro-ethics' corpos to replace them.
- danudey 5mo agoThe 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.
- j_maffe 5mo agoWell they did put in their contracts with the Israeli government that their services can't be used for mass surveilance which makes them slightly less evil than Google/Amazon.
- rolymath 5mo agoWhat exactly did he do?
- danudey 5mo agoAllowed '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)
- aaa_aaa 5mo agoToo little too late.
- bhouston 5mo agoFor 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-block-israel-military-unit-from-using-its-technology/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/09/microsoft-blo...
- rbanffy 5mo agoIf these are resources located in the EU, there are a lot of additional criminal liabilities that will need investigation.
- shevy-java 5mo ago> 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?
- bhouston 5mo ago> isn't Microsoft forced, by law, to cooperate with the US government and US military? Microsoft and other cloud companies are not forced to do anything the US government or US military tells them to do. You are just making this up.
- Mr_Bees69 5mo agoTechnically the government can force some industries to do some things. (and that's just officially. The singer sewing machine company didn't need to be forced into weapons manufacturing) But, that's a wartime measure, if the government forced every steel mill in the country to produce for them, I'm not sure it'd even have to go to the supreme court.
- kikoreis 5mo agoActually there is a long and storied history of mechanisms created to compel American companies to comply with requests for digital intervention. A good starting point is the concept of the NSL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter Relevant acts include https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Priv... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act and the more recent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
- tinfoilhatter 5mo agoIsrael 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.
- krembo 5mo ago[flagged]
- tinfoilhatter 5mo agohttps://www.military.com/defensetech/2013/12/24/report-israel-passes-u-s-military-technology-to-china https://www.military.com/defensetech/2013/12/24/report-israe... Weaponizing antisemitism as usual, what a shocker.
- krembo 5mo ago[flagged]
- tinfoilhatter 5mo agoYes actually you can, because it's happened multiple times over multiple decades.
- array_key_first 5mo agoBeing anti-israel is not the same as being anti-semetic. That's a low-effort low-intelligence "argument" people throw out to quickly stamp out dissent against Israel, and it doesn't work anymore. It's been overused, get new material. Israel probably does not leak secrets to Russia or China, but Israel is a bad ally of the US and has gotten us in a lot of hot water. It would be better for the US if we just let them figure their own shit out. We do not need to be aiding a genocide for no benefit of our own.
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- Fando 5mo ago~28,000 Gaza children murdered in 2 years by Israeli gov. About 68,000 people are officially confirmed killed. 70% of all casualties are women and children. "Western liberal democracies", especially the US gov, are up to their necks in blood, as usual. Microsoft is no different, its only concern is to avoid legal trouble and uphold the facade of legal obligation, otherwise business as usual with Israeli gov. In any category of violence, the US gov, is the undisputed record holder since WW2 - wars of aggression started, proxy wars started, democracies overthrown, dictatorships established, terrorist groups created, funded and armed, resources plundered, economies impoverished, tens of millions of civilians displaced, maimed and murdered. US citizens have a duty to learn about the actual history of their country, and the elite uni-party mafia criminals in charge of it, not just what is shown to them on CNN, FOX, NYT, WSJ, etc. Read books by Michael Parenti, like, Face of Imperialism, as a starting point.
- Mr_Bees69 5mo ago[flagged]
- culi 5mo ago[flagged]
- ch4s3 5mo ago> You can add Noam Chomsky That's because Chomsky is a genocide denialist, he especially and famously called victims of the Khmer Rouge liars.
- culi 5mo agoChomsky's had his fair of controversial takes but he never called any victim a liar
- ch4s3 5mo agoLucky you, since I know you love links, here’s the rat-bag’s own site[1]. > Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter will fail to take into account. There are several other quotes where he implies refugees are lying. And if you’re good at digging through library archives there’s a recording of him saying it more directly in an interview some time around 1977. Chomsky’s a huge piece of shit and carried water for the Khmer Rouge. [1] https://chomsky.info/19770625/ https://chomsky.info/19770625/
- jksmith 5mo agoMSFT won't sign non-disclosures, but they have policies regarding not using your data to train their models. Just trust them if you want to use azure -except for that rogue employee part I guess.
- foruhar 5mo agoApple also seems to be stirring some controversy around it's operations in Israel. https://openletter.earth/apple-cease-funding-for-illegal-settlements-and-israeli-military-d5e63fa8 https://openletter.earth/apple-cease-funding-for-illegal-set...
- tinfoilhatter 5mo ago[flagged]
- SPCECDET 5mo agoThank you. So happy to finally see a shift in attitude on the this site. The initial silence literally had me leave this site for awhile. So glad to be back.
- Hikikomori 5mo agoI can't hear you over the sounds of Israel is the only democracy in the region.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]