A Microsoft worker in Italy spent his last day on the job doing something most people would never risk while still drawing a paycheck, let alone on the way out. On June 26, an employee known only as “Nour”—a Critical Environment Technician at a Microsoft data center—emailed thousands of colleagues across Europe announcing his resignation and laying out, in unsparing terms, why he was walking away. The campaign group No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA), which published the email, says he chose to leave rather than keep working for a company he accuses of being the technological backbone of Israel’s war in Gaza.“After nearly two years as a Critical Environment Technician at a Microsoft Italy data center, I choose to resign,” Nour wrote. He went further, telling colleagues that Microsoft is expanding its European data centers—which he reframed as “mass surveillance centers”—to use Palestine as a testing ground for experimental digital weaponry. “For the past 994 days, Microsoft has powered the genocide of our people in Palestine,” he wrote, describing those data centers as fundamental to how the company “abets crimes against humanity.“
What Nour’s email accuses Microsoft of doing
Much of what Nour cites traces back to real reporting. An August 2025 investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call revealed that Israel’s Unit 8200 had used Microsoft’s Azure platform to store intercepted Palestinian phone calls—roughly 11,500 terabytes, or about 200 million hours of audio, held mainly in Microsoft’s Netherlands data center with more in Ireland. Three Unit 8200 sources told those outlets the system helped shape military operations and prepare airstrikes. Nour repeats the description of that trove as one of the world’s largest and most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group.He also makes claims that go beyond what the original reporting established. Nour alleges the data feeds AI-targeting programs that “invent arbitrary justifications” to kill non-combatants and enable massacres of entire families. He says Israeli military use of Microsoft’s AI jumped 64-fold in the first six months of the war. These are his framings, not findings independently confirmed by the journalists who broke the story.
What Microsoft has actually said and done
Microsoft’s own account is more cautious, and in places it contradicts him. The company maintains it had no knowledge of civilian surveillance and that an earlier internal review found no evidence Azure was used to harm people. After the August exposé, it commissioned an outside law firm, and in September, president Brad Smith confirmed Microsoft had “ceased and disabled” a set of services to a unit within Israel’s defense ministry. “We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians,” Smith wrote.Nour reads that sequence very differently. He alleges that between August 6, when the story broke, and August 15, when Microsoft announced its review, the company colluded with the Israeli military to move the intercepted data out of the Netherlands and into an Israeli data center—expediting, in his words, the concealment of crimes against humanity from European regulators. Reporting did find the data appeared to be relocated out of the Netherlands within days of publication, though Microsoft frames its actions as enforcement of its own terms of service.
The bigger campaign behind one email
Nour’s resignation isn’t a one-off. NOAA, a network of Microsoft workers, has staged repeated protests, mass emails, and disruptions—including at the company’s Seattle headquarters, where activists set up what they called a “Liberated Zone.” The group credits that pressure with pushing Microsoft to end its contract with Unit 8200. In May 2026, Microsoft also removed its Israel general manager after the internal investigation, partly over EU regulatory exposure under GDPR.Nour closed by urging colleagues to “join the Worker Intifada,” pledge to divest their labor, and sign NOAA’s petition. “We are the ones building Microsoft’s technology,” he wrote. “We have both the power and the responsibility to reclaim our labor.” He signed off: “Free Palestine, Nour.”
Full text of Nour’s email, as published by No Azure for Apartheid:
After nearly two years as a Critical Environment Technician at aMicrosoft Italy data center, I choose to resign. This is because, right now, Microsoft is massively expanding its European data centers (aka mass surveillance centers) to use Palestine as a laboratory for its experimental digital weaponry. For the past 994 days, Microsoft has powered the genocide of our people in Palestine, and the company’s European data centers are fundamental to how Microsoft abets crimes against humanity.Microsoft has tried and failed to techwash the expansion of mass surveillance centers by pretending it is some worthwhile technological innovation. Meanwhile, the ones reaping the rewards are war criminals and tyrants. Palestinians continue to be murdered, tortured, and starved under the guise of a fake “ceasefire.”In our own backyards, data centers consume our water, land, and energy. As Microsoft capitalizes on our planet’s limited resources to power “hundreds of thousands” of GPUs per data center, the Israeli military uses Microsoft’s AI to spy on Palestinians and to translate, transcribe and search through surveillance data. During Israel’s first 6 months of genocide, the Israeli military’s usage of Microsoft’s AI increased by a factor of 64.On August 6, 2025, reports exposed how Microsoft hosted 11,500 terabytes of intercepted Palestinian phone call data in the Microsoft Netherlands data center, with additional data stored in the Irish data center, amounting to 200 million hours of audio. This trove of mass surveillance data has been described as “one of the world’s largest and most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group.” This data is used by the Israeli military to identify targets for airstrikes, arrests, and blackmail from the entire Palestinian population. It is also used as training data to build AI-targeting programs. These programs invent arbitrary justifications to murder non-combatants, intentionally adding civilian workers to the Israeli military’s generated “target bank”; the programs also facilitate massacres of entire families at once.While Microsoft claims to have launched (and concluded) an “investigation” into this mass surveillance in the Netherlands, we workers can see through their gaslighting and lies. Between August 6th, when exposed, and August 15th, when Microsoft announced its investigation launch, Microsoft colluded with the Israeli military to quickly transfer the intercepted Palestinian phone call data out of the Netherlands to the Microsoft Israel data center. In doing so, Microsoft expedited the concealment of crimes against humanity from any European regulator or international investigation.The Israeli military also uses the Irish data center to host the Al-Munasseq (or ‘The Coordinator’) application. Palestinians are forced to download the application to navigate Israel’s apartheid permit system, used to illegally and inhumanely restrict Palestinian movement.This application requires an obscenely unnecessary amount of personal information and control over the phone to function. This includes whether the phone can turn on or off, the ability to read personal files and messages, and much more to be used for “any purpose.” Hosting this application on Irish soil, when Palestine and Ireland have a shared history of occupation and forced starvation, is especially outrageous.While Microsoft touts the importance of empowerment, helping people achieve more, and “growth mindset,” they make us non-consenting accessories to their complicity in genocide. To my fellow colleagues, we are the ones building Microsoft’s technology; we are the ones keeping this company running. We have both the power and the responsibility to reclaim our labor.Our worker and local community’s resistance has proven to be successful.Microsoft workers and community protested at Microsoft headquarters last August, establishing a Liberated Zone on the Martyred Palestinian Children’s Plaza and the Mai Ubeid Building. As a result, Microsoft ended a major contract with the Israeli military spy agency, Unit 8200. And while this is a major win for workers and community, there is still so much work to do. We can, and must, choose to resist the exploitation of our labor and our finite resources for genocide.Today, I am making the choice to reclaim my labor from Microsoft’s genocide-profiteering claws by leaving. I understand this is not an option for so many people, and for this reason, I am calling on you to meet the urgency of this moment by joining the Worker Intifada however you can.
- Learn how Microsoft powers genocide in Palestine
- Take the pledge to divest your labor from Israel
- Sign No Azure for Apartheid’s petition to demand that Microsoft cut ties with the Israeli government and military
- Join No Azure for Apartheid
Free Palestine, Nour
