CONTACT:
Connease Warren, Abolitionist Law Center, 713-304-8990, connease@alcenter.org
Jen Nessel, Center for Constitutional Rights, press@ccrjustice.org
Joey Greene, GLAN (Global Legal Action Network), jgreene@glanlaw.org

PHILADELPHIA—A coalition of international legal and advocacy rights groups – Abolitionist Law Center, Avaaz Foundation, European Legal Support Center, SOMO, Center for Constitutional Rights, Ekō, and GLAN (Global Legal Action Network) – notified Microsoft Corporation and its executive leadership of its potential legal liability for aiding and abetting atrocity crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian population of Gaza.

Sent just days before the company’s Annual General Meeting, the letter outlines the intimate relationship between Microsoft and the Israeli military, and the significant role the company has played in advancing, and even accelerating, Israel’s genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people of Gaza. In doing so, Microsoft, its leadership, and its individual officers are exposing themselves to criminal and civil liability for serious violations of international and U.S. domestic law.

Big Tech companies providing technology to the Israeli military have been, and continue to be, integral in facilitating the unprecedented speed and scale of Israel’s crimes, recognized as the “world’s first AI-powered genocide.” As detailed in the legal and advocacy groups’ letter, powerful cloud storage and artificial intelligence tools, including from Microsoft, have allowed Israel to store surveillance and other data on nearly all Palestinians and use that stored data to develop “kill targets”—individuals and structures that Israel targets for strikes. Microsoft has been an active profiteer of Israel’s violence, with the company racing to provide tens of millions of dollars’ worth in increased services to the Israeli military in the weeks following Israel’s assault on Gaza. These efforts succeeded, and Israeli military usage of Microsoft technology skyrocketed as the genocide progressed.

Over the last few months, it has become exceedingly clear that Microsoft’s services and technologies have been used to violate Palestinian human rights, and shareholders should be aware of just how much this opens up the company to legal liability,” said Eric Sype, U.S. National Organizer at 7amleh – The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement. “However, ahead of the Annual General Meeting on December 5, shareholders have the opportunity to push for accountability to ensure Microsoft ends its complicity in occupation, apartheid, and genocide.”

For over two years, Israel has unrelentingly bombed, invaded, and besieged Gaza, killing over 68,000 Palestinians – at least 20,000 of whom are children – and injuring over 170,000 more. Palestinian journalists, medical professionals, and humanitarian workers have been specifically targeted and killed in the thousands. Israeli forces have destroyed nearly all essential infrastructure, leaving Palestinians in Gaza with no access to life-saving healthcare, electricity, or food, as disease and starvation rapidly spread among the population. A nominal ceasefire declared in October 2025 has not stopped these atrocities. Since the “ceasefire” declaration, Israel has continued to kill hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, destroy thousands of buildings, and hinder the entry of life-saving aid.

“As revealed by employee activists, journalists, and others, Israel’s genocide would be impossible without private Big Tech firms equipping the Israeli military with everything from cloud storage to surveillance technology,” said Bassel El-Rewini, Human Rights Fellow at Abolitionist Law Center. “Faced with an ever-growing body of evidence, implicated companies, including Microsoft, have no excuse for continuing their support to Israel and must be held accountable.”

Despite widespread international recognition that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, Microsoft continues to provide major services to dozens of units across the Israeli ground, air, and naval forces. Internal employee advocacy by No Azure for Apartheid, calling for an end to the company’s ties with the Israeli military, also continues to be suppressed by Microsoft. The company has fired dissenting workers as recently as August 2025.

“The EU dimension is devastatingly critical here–significant infrastructure powering Israel’s military targeting is hosted and processed in Europe, including by Microsoft,” said Gearóid Ó Cuinn, Director of GLAN (Global Legal Action Network). “European law is explicit: if your systems materially enable atrocity crimes or unlawful population-level surveillance, you inherit serious legal exposure. Tech-enabled violence at this scale is a European legal issue as much as a moral one.”

Microsoft’s knowing provision of services used to commit the gravest of atrocities opens it up to a broad spectrum of criminal and civil legal liability, both internationally and in the United States. In advance of Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting on December 5, 2025, the letter urges Microsoft to immediately terminate all services illegally deployed by Israel, work with stakeholders to identify other Microsoft contributions to human rights violations, and take measures to provide restitution to those harmed. As one of the world’s largest companies, with a market capitalization of nearly $3.8 trillion, Microsoft has continually prioritized profits above its responsibility to respect human rights law. It is now on notice of the potential legal implications of this choice.

For more information, read the full text of the Letter to Microsoft here.

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