Legal groups warn Microsoft could face criminal liability for role in Israel’s Gaza genocide

A coalition of international legal and advocacy groups has warned Microsoft that its provision of services to Israel during the genocidal war in Gaza could expose the US tech giant to criminal liability before American and European courts, as well as global bodies.

In a letter sent to the company on Tuesday, Abolitionist Law Center, Avaaz Foundation, European Legal Support Center, Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), Center for Constitutional Rights, Ekō, and Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) slammed Microsoft for aiding, abetting, and contributing to Israel’s commission of atrocity crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians in Gaza.

They said that Microsoft’s provision of services—including cloud technology, artificial intelligence, and data processing—to the Tel Aviv regime opens the company up to wide-ranging civil and criminal liability.

“There exists a reasonable and credible basis to believe that Microsoft has, through its provision of technology and services to the Israeli military, played a direct role in Israel’s commission of grave crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza, including, but not limited to, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity,” the letter read.

“Additionally, there is a further basis to conclude that Microsoft’s technology supports Israel’s commission of illegal, extensive, and oppressive surveillance of the Palestinian population.”

The legal organizations also said Israeli sources have themselves confirmed that the regime’s military relies on Microsoft’s products to analyze and develop "kill targets" in Gaza, as well as to spy on Palestinians.

They further urged Microsoft’s top executives to terminate the company’s provision of services unlawfully deployed by Israel and take the necessary measures to support accountability for those harmed, including by providing restitution.

Israel has killed at least 70,117 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since October 7, 2023, when it waged its genocidal war on Gaza.

Israel was forced to agree to a Gaza ceasefire, which took effect on October 10, 2025, but has since violated the truce with near-daily attacks on the besieged Palestinian territory.

Additionally, in their letter, the groups said that after Israel’s genocide began, Microsoft became a major provider of cloud services to the occupation’s army.

In April 2024, they noted, the Israeli military usage of Microsoft cloud storage had increased by more than 155 percent, compared with usage before the brutal onslaught on Gaza.

Meanwhile, the legal groups referred to recent investigations, which found that Israel's cyber-spying Unit 8200 stored large volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft's Azure cloud servers.

The mass surveillance enabled the usurping regime to collect and retain recordings of daily phone calls from Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, they pointed out.

By July 2025, around 11,500 terabytes—equivalent to 200 million hours of audio—of Israeli military data were stored mainly in Microsoft's Netherlands data centers, with a smaller amount also held in Ireland.

Microsoft forced to block Israel’s use of its cloud, AI in mass spying of Palestinians

US tech giant Microsoft has been forced to terminate the Israeli military’s access to some of its services, which the illegal regime uses for espionage activities and data surveillance against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

“The EU dimension is devastatingly critical here — significant infrastructure powering Israel’s military targeting is hosted and processed in Europe, including by Microsoft,” said GLAN founding director Gearóid Ó Cuinn. “European law is explicit: if your systems materially enable atrocity crimes or unlawful population-level surveillance, you inherit serious legal exposure.”

In another development on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that the Irish Council for Civil Liberties activist group had filed a complaint against Microsoft, saying the tech giant is violating the European Union’s data protection law by helping Israel remove evidence of the regime’s surveillance of Palestinians from data centers located on the continent.

“Microsoft’s servers form part of a chain contributing to ongoing violations of international criminal, humanitarian and human rights law against millions of Palestinians,” the complaint said.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir