Microsoft finally blocked Israel from using its Azure cloud service over the weekend, according to a report by The Guardian. Last August, a report emerged revealing that Azure was being used by Unit 8200, an Israeli military intelligence unit, to spy on Palestinian phone conversations since 2022, with the data collected later being used to help carry out airstrikes and plan military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
After receiving pressure, protests and allegations of involvement in genocide in Palestine, Microsoft began investigating using a third party. At that time, Microsoft insisted that using Azure to store phone call data files obtained through widespread or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank was prohibited by its terms of service.
In the leaked documents, recordings of Palestinian phone calls were stored in Azure data centers located in the Netherlands and Ireland. In the Dutch database alone, more than 200 million hours of audio recordings were stored, taking up 11,500 TB of storage space.
Microsoft is among the companies included in the list of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement due to their involvement with the Zionist regime which is actively committing genocide in Palestine according to an official report by the United Nations.
The BDS movement in Malaysia has caused huge losses to Starbucks and McDonald’s, forcing a large number of restaurant closures since the boycott began.