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Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

182 points by bhouston

by noworriesnate

5 subcomments

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.

by bhouston

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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...

by foruhar

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Apple also seems to be stirring some controversy around it's operations in Israel.
https://openletter.earth/apple-cease-funding-for-illegal-set...

by tradethedelta

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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.

by Animats

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So Israel is switching to Google and Amazon. Hm.

by aaa_aaa

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Too little too late.

by jksmith

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MSFT 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.

by tinfoilhatter

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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.

by basisword

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>> 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.

by shevy-java

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> 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?

by rolymath

1 subcomments

What exactly did he do?

by Fando

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~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.

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by tinfoilhatter

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[flagged]

by localhoster

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[flagged]

by deaux

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Lovely, but in character, to see a .co.il 403-block a broad swath of the world.

by computerex

3 subcomments

Okay, now I will be supporting Azure products and will try to bring them into my workplace over AWS/Google Cloud.