The international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement are calling on people to cancel Game Pass subscriptions, avoid Microsoft-owned video game properties such as Minecraft and Call Of Duty, and boycott all Microsoft Gaming and Xbox-branded products in protest at the company’s reported business connections with the Israeli military.
The call follows allegations this January about the Israeli military’s usage of Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology and artificial intelligence products in the course of its bombardment and invasion of Gaza.
According to a joint investigation between the Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, with additional reporting from Drop Site News, Microsoft have “deepened” their relationship with Israel’s defence establishment since 7th October 2023, when several Palestinian militant groups struck across the border and massacred over a thousand people. Israel responded to the attack by mounting a ground offensive and airstrikes that have destroyed much of Gaza and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In their January 2025 write-up, the Guardian claim that Microsoft have supplied the Israeli Defense Forces with storage and computing services and struck “at least $10m in deals to provide thousands of hours of technical support”. The piece continues that “while the IDF has used some Microsoft services for administrative purposes, such as email and file management systems, documents and interviews suggest Azure has been used to support combat and intelligence activities.”
The joint investigation alleges the use of Microsoft technology by Israeli security forces to manage the population registry and movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It further claims that Microsoft have supplied a “suite of communications and messaging systems” for managing databanks of potential airstrike targets. Microsoft have also reportedly given the Israeli military “large-scale access” to OpenAI’s GPT-4 “in recent years”.
Neither the Israeli military nor Microsoft commented on the Guardian report at the time of its publication.
According to Drop Site, two former Microsoft employees, Abdo Mohamed and Hossam Nasr, have been instrumental in driving this week’s BDS call for a boycott of Microsoft’s gaming offerings. As reported by the Guardian, Microsoft fired the pair in October 2024 after they organised a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza outside the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
This isn’t the first time BDS have protested Microsoft’s alleged connections to Israeli military or security organisations. In 2020, they and other civil liberty groups spoke out against Microsoft’s stake in AnyVision, an Israeli start-up whose face recognition technology has been used at checkpoints in border crossings between Israel and the West Bank. Microsoft later sold their stake and announced that they would exit the business of investing in facial recognition startups altogether.
BDS are now making the games publisher a “priority target” in response to this January’s allegations. You can read more about the boycott over on the BDS website. I’ve asked Microsoft for comment.
