Microsoft Encourages Employee Donations to Illegal West Bank Settlements, While Barring UNRWA

Employees are petitioning the tech company to stop matching contributions to groups with an active role in the occupation, including one that provides support to the Israeli military.

Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images

Microsoft includes a number organizations based in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including at least one that fundraises to support the Israeli military, in its employee charitable giving platform. Yet the company has delisted the UN agency providing relief in Gaza, according to Microsoft employees petitioning the company internally to change its policy. The listing of the charities on the expansive platform means Microsoft will automatically match contributions.

Last week, a group of Microsoft employees began circulating a petition calling on the company to cease matching contributions to three organizations, the Ma'aleh Adumim Foundation, Ein Prat Academy for Leadership, and the Megilot Dead Sea Rescue Team, which they say "are in direct violation of international law," citing the Geneva Conventions.

"Microsoft is directly funding these illegal and immoral settlements by allowing these organizations to remain," the petition states, imploring the company to stop matching funding to the three organizations. "This is not only unethical, but also goes against our inclusive values as a company."

They are still in the process of collecting signatures before approaching Microsoft's management. Microsoft did not provide a statement for Drop Site's story, and the West Bank charities were still available on the platform, Benevity, as of Tuesday.

Since October 7, Microsoft employees have been embroiled in a fierce conflict over the company's response to Israel's bombing of Gaza. A report by Business Insider last November described an acrimonious culture within the company, with divisions among employees and management emerging as a result of the war and ongoing humanitarian crisis. One point of contention has been the continued provision of Microsoft Azure cloud computing and AI software to the Israeli military, support that has been targeted by an employee led-campaign called No Azure for Apartheid.

The internal strife grew worse earlier this year when the company decided to delist the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the major United Nations program serving Palestinian refugees, as a beneficiary for matching donations for the company. Israel accused UNRWA employees of participating in Hamas's October 7 attacks—claiming in January that up to 10% of the agency had ties to Hamas—but those allegations have not been substantiated. Microsoft's decision to delist UNRWA is now the subject of a separate petition by Microsoft employees to reinstate the organization for charitable giving.

The three organizations listed in the petition by Microsoft employees are all described online as having an active role in the occupation itself.

In particular, the Ma'aleh Adumim Foundation goal is to "promote and improve the cultural and social welfare of the residents of the city of Ma’aleh Adumim, Israel and its environs," according to its 2020 tax documents. Located just outside Jerusalem, Ma'aleh Adumim is a particularly controversial settlement that some analysts blame for rendering the two-state solution impossible by physically blocking the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state emerging in the West Bank.

Another organization Microsoft encourages gifts to, the Ein Prat Academy, describes itself as a "pre-military leadership" program for Israeli youth. Its fundraising campaigns explain the academy's mission as "training Israel’s next generation of IDF [Israel Defense Forces] officers and commanders of the highest caliber," while adding that it is, "the sole pre-military institution with a formal agreement with the IDF." Based in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Adumim, the academy is described on Benevity as a "volunteering organization who helps and support any one who got lost/wounded or any other problem in Judea desert area."

Growing Tech Outcry

Workers across the tech world are pressuring their employers over the industry's role in human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Dozens of employees of Google were fired in April after holding a protest against a program called Project Nimbus which they alleged helped bolster the surveillance capacity of the Israeli government over Palestinians. Earlier this year, a group of employees at Apple also circulated a petition that called on the company to cease making matching donations to organizations like Friends of the IDF and others involved in supporting the continued settlement of West Bank territories or Israeli military activities.

Ma'aleh Adumim is a particularly controversial settlement that some analysts blame for rendering the two-state solution impossible by physically blocking the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state emerging in future in the West Bank.

Both Microsoft and Apple make employer-matched contributions to settlement organizations via an internal charity-matching platform known as Benevity. According to employees at the company as well as publicly available documentation about its matching program, Microsoft states that it will match up to $15,000 per calendar year for each U.S. employee who gives to an organization registered on the platform. Donations to non-profits abroad are typically not tax-deductible, however.

On its corporate website, Microsoft says its approach to international affairs has been guided in part by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a document which says that companies must "comply with all applicable laws and respect internationally recognized human rights, wherever they operate," as well as, "treat the risk of causing or contributing to gross human rights abuses as a legal compliance issue."

The apparent disconnect between Microsoft's proclaimed commitment to abide by international law and human rights standards and its real-world actions and partnerships has upset some employees who are now calling for the company to live up to its stated values.

"Microsoft has aided, abetted, and even accelerated this genocide by continuing to sell Azure services to the Israeli military, while disregarding and suppressing internal employee dissent and silencing Palestinian, Arab, and pro-Palestinian employees," said Hossam Nasr, a software engineer at Microsoft and organizer in the No Azure for Apartheid Campaign. "It is as disappointing as it is unsurprising that Microsoft would withhold funding to UNRWA, the most crucial organization providing humanitarian support to Palestinians, while at the same time helping fund settlement projects that are universally recognized as being in violation of international law."