Microsoft Encourages Employee Donations to Illegal West Bank Settlements, While Barring UNRWA

Aug 06, 2024

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Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images

Murtaza Hussain

Employees are petitioning the tech company to stop matching contributions to groups with an active role in the occupation, including one that provides support to the Israeli military.

Microsoft includes a number organizations based in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including at least one that fundraises to support the Israeli military, in its employee charitable giving platform. Yet the company has delisted the UN agency providing relief in Gaza, according to Microsoft employees petitioning the company internally to change its policy. The listing of the charities on the expansive platform means Microsoft will automatically match contributions.

Last week, a group of Microsoft employees began circulating a petition calling on the company to cease matching contributions to three organizations, the Ma’aleh Adumim Foundation, Ein Prat Academy for Leadership, and the Megilot Dead Sea Rescue Team, which they say “are in direct violation of international law,” citing the Geneva Conventions.

“Microsoft is directly funding these illegal and immoral settlements by allowing these organizations to remain,” the petition states, imploring the company to stop matching funding to the three organizations. “This is not only unethical, but also goes against our inclusive values as a company.”

They are still in the process of collecting signatures before approaching Microsoft’s management. Microsoft did not provide a statement for Drop Site’s story, and the West Bank charities were still available on the platform, Benevity, as of Tuesday.

Since October 7, Microsoft employees have been embroiled in a fierce conflict over the company’s response to Israel’s bombing of Gaza. A report by Business Insider last November described an acrimonious culture within the company, with divisions among employees and management emerging as a result of the war and ongoing humanitarian crisis. One point of contention has been the continued provision of Microsoft Azure cloud computing and AI software to the Israeli military, support that has been targeted by an employee led-campaign called No Azure for Apartheid.

The internal strife grew worse earlier this year when the company decided to delist the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the major United Nations program serving Palestinian refugees, as a beneficiary for matching donations for the company.

The internal strife grew worse earlier this year when the company decided to delist the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the major United Nations program serving Palestinian refugees, as a beneficiary for matching donations for the company. Israel accused UNRWA employees of participating in Hamas’s October 7 attacks—claiming in January that up to 10% of the agency had ties to Hamas—but those allegations have not been substantiated. Microsoft’s decision to delist UNRWA is now the subject of a separate petition by Microsoft employees to reinstate the organization for charitable giving.

The three organizations listed in the petition by Microsoft employees are all described online as having an active role in the occupation itself.

In particular, the Ma’aleh Adumim Foundation goal is to “promote and improve the cultural and social welfare of the residents of the city of Ma’aleh Adumim, Israel and its environs,” according to its 2020 tax documents. Located just outside Jerusalem, Ma’aleh Adumim is a particularly controversial settlement that some analysts blame for rendering the two-state solution impossible by physically blocking the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state emerging in the West Bank.

Another organization Microsoft encourages gifts to, the Ein Prat Academy, describes itself as a “pre-military leadership” program for Israeli youth. Its fundraising campaigns explain the academy’s mission as “training Israel’s next generation of IDF [Israel Defense Forces] officers and commanders of the highest caliber,” while adding that it is, “the sole pre-military institution with a formal agreement with the IDF.” Based in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Adumim, the academy is described on Benevity as a “volunteering organization who helps and support any one who got lost/wounded or any other problem in Judea desert area.”

Growing Tech Outcry

Workers across the tech world are pressuring their employers over the industry’s role in human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Dozens of employees of Google were fired in April after holding a protest against a program called Project Nimbus which they alleged helped bolster the surveillance capacity of the Israeli government over Palestinians. Earlier this year, a group of employees at Apple also circulated a petition that called on the company to cease making matching donations to organizations like Friends of the IDF and others involved in supporting the continued settlement of West Bank territories or Israeli military activities.

Ma’aleh Adumim is a particularly controversial settlement that some analysts blame for rendering the two-state solution impossible by physically blocking the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state emerging in future in the West Bank.

Both Microsoft and Apple make employer-matched contributions to settlement organizations via an internal charity-matching platform known as Benevity. According to employees at the company as well as publicly available documentation about its matching program, Microsoft states that it will match up to $15,000 per calendar year for each U.S. employee who gives to an organization registered on the platform. Donations to non-profits abroad are typically not tax-deductible, however.

On its corporate website, Microsoft says its approach to international affairs has been guided in part by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a document which says that companies must “comply with all applicable laws and respect internationally recognized human rights, wherever they operate,” as well as, “treat the risk of causing or contributing to gross human rights abuses as a legal compliance issue.”

The apparent disconnect between Microsoft’s proclaimed commitment to abide by international law and human rights standards and its real-world actions and partnerships has upset some employees who are now calling for the company to live up to its stated values.

“Microsoft has aided, abetted, and even accelerated this genocide by continuing to sell Azure services to the Israeli military, while disregarding and suppressing internal employee dissent and silencing Palestinian, Arab, and pro-Palestinian employees,” said Hossam Nasr, a software engineer at Microsoft and organizer in the No Azure for Apartheid Campaign. “It is as disappointing as it is unsurprising that Microsoft would withhold funding to UNRWA, the most crucial organization providing humanitarian support to Palestinians, while at the same time helping fund settlement projects that are universally recognized as being in violation of international law.”

ISRAELI OCCUPATION: HOW MICROSOFT, IBM, CISCO AND DELL ENABLE SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL IN PALESTINE

JUNE 23RD, 2023

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By Jessica Buxbaum

In September, Israel installed an AI-powered gun at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. Now, that same technology has been deployed at the entrance of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Across occupied East Jerusalem, you can find surveillance cameras strategically placed on street corners. And throughout the West Bank, Palestinians’ encounters with Israeli soldiers often include not only violence but face-scanning apps designed to capture their personal data.

Technology has become integral to our modern lives, but for Palestinians, Big Tech has also become another way Israel enacts control.

Who Profits, an Israeli research center documenting the private sector’s links to Israeli occupation, released a report in May on multinational tech companies’ role in facilitating Israel’s human rights violations. The impact of each company ranges, with some overseeing a major project while others provide equipment to a system already in place.

Who Profits wrote in its analysis:

Regardless of scale, the work of these companies bolsters the capacity of an already highly technological and data-oriented Israeli occupation economy and its capacity to dispossess, repress, control and subject Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line to pervasive surveillance.” 

While countless Israeli and international companies are involved in the Israeli occupation, Who Profits highlighted four American tech corporations in its report: Microsoft, IBM, Cisco Systems, and Dell Technologies.

BIG TECH’S ROLE

According to Who Profits, multinational tech firm Microsoft – one of the world’s largest IT companies – has a long history of collaboration with the Israeli military and tech industry.

The “Al Munaseq” (the coordinator in Arabic) application runs on Microsoft Azure, the company’s platform for cloud computing services. It was developed by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and is used to manage permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza when entering 1948-occupied Palestine or modern-day Israel. The app can access a permit holder’s phone’s IP address, camera, files, and location.

Microsoft has immersed itself in the Israeli military’s ties to the education sector. The company currently offers AI courses for officers in the “military fighting methods and innovation” unit. It also recently launched free cybersecurity training courses for veterans and is partnering with the military on a program helping female high school students enter high-tech units in the military.

The company’s main business alliance is with the Israeli military, yet it also provides services to the settlements and government. Its applications are used by students and teachers in Ma’ale Adumim settlement schools. Microsoft also works with Ariel University, the only Israeli college located in a settlement, to provide free use of its applications and email services. Ariel University is also a recognized college of Microsoft, offering a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate course to students.

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Microsoft Israel, the corporation’s local subsidiary, is currently contracted with the Israel Police to provide cloud services for six months from January and to provide licensing for Microsoft products until December 2025.

This year, after much delay, Microsoft plans to open its first cloud data center in the Modi’in Technology Park, located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The corporation is estimated to spend $1-1.5 billion on the data center.

IT and computer firm IBM works with Israel’s Population, Immigration, and Borders Authority to operate the Eitan System for the government’s Population Registry database. This computer system stores the personal information of Palestinian and Syrian people living under Israeli occupation. The data stored is often used to implement Israel’s discriminatory policies.

IBM’s Israeli subsidiaries — Red Hat Israel and IBM Israel — collaborate extensively with the IDF. Red Hat provides edge computing and software-based storage data centers to several Israeli military units and is involved in joint projects in the Computer Service and Cyber Defense divisions. In 2020, IBM Israel became the main IT provider for three new military regional logistics centers.

The American multinational works with the military and Education Ministry to boost high schoolers’ interests in technology, with the goal of improving Israel’s defense and hi-tech capabilities. Often this means its staff lecture at schools alongside military officers. The company has also participated in events at Ariel University.

IBM has also partnered with the Israel Police, providing computer and software equipment since 1975. More recently, in 2018, the company set up a cyber research center in Be’er Sheva, a city in the Naqab desert, next to a military telecommunication base and Computer Service Directorate campus. The center and its location are part of the Defense Ministry’s plan to transition Cyber Unit officers into the high-tech industry after they finish their service.

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Tech giant Cisco Systems has also launched tech hubs in the Naqab, with two located in the Palestinian Bedouin towns of Hura and Ar’arat al-Naqab. These hubs, along with IBM’s cyber center, are part of Israel’s efforts to settle the Naqab with Jewish Israelis while pushing out the native Bedouin community. As part of plans to Judaize the area, the Israeli military built its biggest information and communication technology underground data center in the desert, complete with Cisco Systems’ computing, communication, cybersecurity, and load-balancing systems in place.

Additionally, Cisco Systems has opened three other tech hubs on occupied land in the Syrian Golan Heights and West Bank and plans to open another five in these occupied territories.

This year, electronics giant Dell Technologies won a more than $150 million tender from the Defense Ministry to provide the military with servers, maintenance services, and other equipment. In 2021, Dell’s Israeli subsidiary, VMware Israel, secured a contract to supply the Israeli Police with its products from August 2021 to January 2027.

VMware’s virtual services help run the Israel Police’s system of surveillance in East Jerusalem, known as the Mabat System. Around 400 security cameras have been installed across Jerusalem’s Old City, with the video surveillance monitored 24/7 by a police command and control center.

Labeled the “startup nation,” Israel’s technological advancements have attracted tech companies across the world. But as Big Tech becomes more and more involved with Israel’s military and tech industries, the more they actively collaborate with apartheid and the more Palestinians and Syrians under occupation are digitally exploited.