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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

> TIL that Microsoft is the least Israel-friendly of the big three clouds

This is a good thing.

American companies should not be allowing their tech to be used to in the gross ongoing human rights violations in Israel/Gaza/West Bank.

Google and Amazon knew their tech could be used for human rights abuses in Israel (their lawyers warned them so) but ignored that in favour of $$$ per the EFF:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-and-amazon-ackn...

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Thanks for the link, I didn't realize the EFF spent their money on such things. I honestly thought they focused on free speech/privacy/open source.

I'm not trying to argue pro Israel or what not, I just wish they'd focus on their core mission.

Somewhat hard to be neutral when outgrowths of the Israeli state like the NSO Group and Canary Mission start taking a stand against privacy and free speech

The EFF's mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. That is verbatim off their website. It appears that this perfectly in line with their core mission.

Freedom is literally in their name. Can it be more core than that?

Unless I'm missing something, it literally is not?

Yep. These nonprofits have a tendency of being abused for the personal causes of their staff. Clearly this isn’t part of their mission unless you go through some mental gymnastics.

Well, reporting the largest abuses of non-free software companies could be seen as a corollary to that.

> I honestly thought they focused on free speech/privacy/open source.

Pointing complicity with a regime that killed over 260 journalists[1] has a very strong focus and serves well free speech.

[1] https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-04-24/israel-h...

this... is their core mission

> American companies should not be allowing their tech to ...

Do they have a choice?

In what dimension do you mean? Legally? Yes, unless based out of a place with an anti-BDS law. Politically? Sure, it's a bet against those currently in power and for the sentiment in the population. Practically? Yes, they can refuse business and contracts. I suppose they could also put killswitches in their hardware/software, but I wouldn't be a fan of that for digital-rights reasons. Economically? Who knows, the market makes no sense at all currently. They could probably get away with whatever.

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