Microsoft has included several 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 but has delisted the UN agency providing relief in Gaza, according to Microsoft employees petitioning the company internally to change its policy. 

That listing on the expansive platform means Microsoft will automatically match contributions as some weeks back an alliance of Microsoft employees launched a petition calling their company to stop matching funds provided to three organizations: Ma’aleh Adumim Foundation, Ein Prat Academy for Leadership, and Megillot Dead Sea Rescue Team. These are, according to the workers, “in direct violation of international law,” referring mainly to the Geneva Conventions.

“Microsoft is directly funding these illegal and immoral settlements by allowing these organizations to remain,” the petition says, urging the company to stop matching funding to the three organizations. “This is unethical and against our inclusive values as a company.” They still need to present it to Microsoft management and collect signatures. Microsoft did not state Drop Site’s story; as of Tuesday, the West Bank charities remain listed on the platform Benevity.

Since Oct 7, Microsoft employees have been in a heated debate about how the company should respond to Israel’s bombing of Gaza. A report by Business Insider last November portrayed an abusive culture within the company, wherein divisions among employees and management have emerged 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, supporting an employee-led campaign called No Azure for Apartheid. The three organizations listed in the petition by Microsoft employees are all described online as having an active role in the occupation.

In particular, the Ma’aleh Adumim Foundation’s 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,” its 2020 tax documents read. 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.

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 at Google were fired in April following a protest against a program called Project Nimbus, which they claimed helped to augment the surveillance capacity of the Israeli government over Palestinians. Earlier this year, a group of Apple employees circulated a petition calling on the company to stop 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.”

Microsoft has aided, abetted, and even accelerated this genocide by continuing to sell Azure services to the Israeli military, all while ignoring and suppressing internal employee dissent and silencing Palestinian, Arab, and pro-Palestinian employees,” Hossam Nasr, a Microsoft software engineer and an organizer in the No Azure for Apartheid Campaign, told Insider. “It is as unsurprising as it is disappointing that Microsoft would withhold funding from UNRWA, the most critical organization providing humanitarian services to Palestinians, all while simultaneously helping fund settlement projects universally recognized as violating international law.”