Microsoft has fired Alon Haimovich, the general manager of Microsoft Israel, along with several other senior managers after an internal investigation found they were involved in a massive spying scandal involving Palestinians using Azure infrastructure.
Although the scandal was reported last year, Microsoft only began an investigation last month over concerns that it exposed them to legal liability in Europe. While Microsoft searches for a new general manager, Microsoft Israel has been placed under the management of Microsoft France.
Microsoft blocked Israel from using its Azure cloud services in October last year. In August, reports emerged that Azure was being used by Unit 8200, an Israeli military spy unit, to spy on Palestinian phone conversations since 2022, with the data collected later 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 conducting investigations using third parties. At the time, Microsoft insisted that using Azure to store phone call data files obtained through extensive 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 for their involvement with the Zionist regime, which is actively committing genocide in Palestine, according to an official United Nations report.
