BDS calls for Boycott of Microsoft Game Pass, Minecraft, New Xbox Consoles
No more Call of Duty. No more Minecraft. No more Xbox (unless you already own one).
The BDS National Committee (BNC) has decided to make Microsoft a “priority target” to pressure the company to end its support for Israel’s war effort, after revelations that its AI and cloud services have been heavily used in the genocidal assault, organizers told Drop Site News.
The decision follows an employee-led campaign called No Azure for Apartheid, a reference to Microsoft’s AI program, demanding that Microsoft sever contracts and partnerships with the Israeli military and government. Two Microsoft employees fired for their activism, Abdo Mohamed and Hossam Nasr, played key roles in driving the BNC’s decision. The pair organized a vigil outside the company’s headquarters in 2024. The BNC is the largest coordinating body for the worldwide coalition committed to the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement, which acts nonviolently to pressure Israel into ending its occupation and apartheid.
Beginning in 1986, Microsoft had once boycotted South Africa to oppose its apartheid. Now, its technology supports apartheid in Israel.
A statement from the BNC laid out the rationale:
Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinains in Gaza which is why Microsoft is a now priority BDS target. Microsoft partners with the apartheid regime of Israel and its prison system. It provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are central to accelerating Israel’s genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. After 34 years of deep complicity with Israel’s military, the Israeli army relies heavily on Microsoft to meet technological requirements of its genocide and apartheid regime.
The committee is asking all those who have taken its pledge to take three concrete steps, according to a statement provided to Drop Site:
1. Cancel your Xbox Game Pass subscription
2. Boycott Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Call of Duty—flagship videogame franchises owned by Microsoft
3. Boycott all Microsoft Gaming products, including Xbox-branded consoles, headsets, accessories, and all games published by Microsoft-owned publishing labels (such as Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Bethesda and Blizzard)
For those who already own the games or the console, the organizers said, the ideal move would be to stop playing, but the primary ask from organizers is to help deprive Microsoft of revenue. Therefore, players can be compliant with the boycott by avoiding future purchases of games or consoles and by avoiding transactions inside the games.
Asked to clarify whether the boycott included the beleaguered Microsoft Teams, Mohamed added that the overall goal is to boycott all Microsoft products, but he acknowledged that few people use some of the company’s trashier products of their own free will. "We are calling on everyone to boycott Microsoft products whenever feasible and possible. So, yes, boycott Microsoft Teams, too,” he said. “Although, I am not sure if anyone is using that willingly.” Drop Site could not independently verify whether anybody has ever used Teams willingly, though experts said it was unlikely.
While some of its products may be a joke, others are deadly serious: Microsoft products have been used in a campaign that has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since October 2023. “Microsoft and its executives have made it abundantly clear that they are choosing to maximize their profits by selling Cloud and AI technology to form the technological backbone of Israel’s automated apartheid and genocide systems,” Mohamed said. “At the same time, these executives are ignoring human rights commitments, avoiding to address the company's deep ties with the Israeli military when asked, and actively repressing workers who are speaking up internally through suppression, intimidation, and retaliation.”
Hossam Nasr said that Microsoft had effectively become a weapons manufacturer. “As we've learned more about the deadly blood-stained partnership between Microsoft and the genocidal Israeli military, there's been a growing recognition that cloud and AI provided by Microsoft is as essential to Israel's destruction in Gaza as physical munitions,” said Nasr. “Put simply, cloud and AI are the weapons of the twenty-first century, and Microsoft is effectively a weapons manufacturer powering a genocidal apartheid regime. We must treat it as such.”
Bella Jacobs, tech campaigns coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, said that the decision to target Microsoft was the culmination of thirty-four years of complicity. "It’s time to hold Microsoft accountable for its crucial role in backing Israeli apartheid for 34 years and selling AI for genocide in Gaza,” she said. “Palestinians are asking for solidarity through strategic, targeted boycotts, divestment and sanctions to protect human rights. Together, we can hold Microsoft accountable and build a better world in which technology is not a tool of oppression and genocide.”
I don't play vidio games. Guess I could sell the few stocks I own in my portfolio.
Isreali tentacles are long and deep. they probably have a naughty list given to them by our social media outlet broligarchs along with facial recognition, our words and actions and posts and pictures and buying habits and travel habits, our sex habits. If you are willing to pay social media data sets are available. This is in violation of my civil liberties, my rights to privay. Social media is watching you're every move in your domicile and out there in the world. No warrent required. This is the faustian bargin we all made to access the internet of things. Now we need to figure way of controlling it and if we can't do that we need to get our freedoms back. Otherwise we be the surfs and the lords of the internet our kings.