[dark_mode]

> The decision has not affected Microsoft’s wider commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services. The termination will raise questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.

It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.

[tick_tock_tick]

Doesn't every army conduct "mass surveillance"? What do you think all those satellites with cameras are doing orbiting the planet?

Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.

[lordofgibbons]

Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages, and possibly hacking their devices?

[Manuel_D]

Militaries do that too. Signals Intelligence has been thing since radios were used by the military. I bet you that in Ukraine the moment you fire up any RF emitter it's showing up on someone's spectrum analyzer. And if it's unencrypted or a broken encryption they'll probably be decoding and logging the transmission.

[AlecSchueler]

> bet you that in Ukraine the moment you fire up any RF emitter

The assertion was that "every army" is doing it, not that it's happening in active warzones.

[3form]

Given lackluster response to the recent attempts of the "democratic" governments to do very much the same to their own citizens, I daresay not many are particularly impressed.

[pcthrowaway]

Additionally, there is observation AI face tracking of all movements of Palestinians in the West Bank, who live under occupation. While other governments may also conduct monitoring of their citizens to varying degrees, the distinction is that they are monitoring citizens, not using monitoring to enforce military apartheid.

[holmesworcester]

And not in a war zone, even. (West Bank is governed by Israel.)

[dragonwriter]

The West Bank is occupied by Israel and Israel has overall control, but it is broken up into a whole bunch of tiny administrative regions, some of which are administered by the PA and some of which are administered directly by Israel.

[babu657]

Gee i wonder what happens if Israel just let the west bank be. Wait…i know what will happen

[tguvot]

Rocket factories, like the one that was discovered week ago https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjbqu9qolx

[raxxorraxor]

I case of Hezbollah it was very much worth it.

[kennywinker]

Perhaps the actual moral choice isn’t attacking blindly or mass surveillance of an occupied nation - it’s peace?

Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn’t take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and schools is going to kill innocent people.

[fjdjshsh]

You're assuming the objective is to lower the civilian casualties. From the statements of prominent Israeli ministers and the actual behavior of the bombardment it's pretty clear that, for the Israeli government, killing civilians is a feature, not a bug

[jameshilliard]

> Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll.

Keep in mind deaths published by the Gaza(Hamas) ministry of health do not differentiate civilian vs combatant deaths at all.

[kennywinker]

That’s true, but of the 65,063 deaths reported by the GHM, at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers.

And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble. Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war

[jameshilliard]

> at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers

From my understanding GHM numbers don't break these figures for those that are combatants either, the population overall is quite young and Hamas is known to use child soldiers as well. Journalists(along with doctors) in Gaza have even been themselves involved in holding hostages for Hamas[0]. There are many issues like this which significantly complicate separating combatant deaths from non-combatant deaths.

> And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble.

The 65k is AFAIU not even advertised by the GHM as confirmed deaths(i.e. deaths with confirmed identities), it's an estimate from an organization(Hamas) which is highly incentivized to report the highest figures that are believable internationally. There are not any incentives for them to underestimate casualties since they use casualties figures for propaganda purposes and will use the highest figures they can come up with while maintaining some level of credibility.

It's also unlikely there are many deaths that can be attributed directly to starvation, while there may be food insecurity issues there is still sufficient aid reaching Gaza to largely prevent deaths from starvation. There are countries in the world where there is actual famine and pictures/videos from those places(i.e. those taken out in the open on the streets) look nothing like those from Gaza. Even organizations like the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have been known to put out(and subsequently walk back) blatantly false information[1] to make it appear the situation is worse than it actually is.

> Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.

Numbers 10x those put out by the GHM(which is already highly incentivized to inflate casualty figures) are not remotely credible.

IMO the figures put out by the GHM are likely within the correct order of magnitude, keeping in mind that those figures include combatant deaths. For a conflict like this which involves urban warfare(where similar conflicts historically have had very high casualties) such casualty figures certainly don't appear to be unusually high.

Claims of genocide made against Israel simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Civilian deaths are largely in line with what would expect for a war like this, especially one where enemy combatants are not in uniform and intentionally hide amongst the civilian population and fight from civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). There are strong incentives both internationally and domestically for Israel to minimize civilian casualties as much as feasible.

If intelligence from surveillance increases combatant deaths then it could be expected that the death figures like those from the GHM(which include combatant deaths) may rise even if the actual civilian casualty rate decreases.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/middleeast/gaza-neighborhood-...

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...

[amscanne]

Even the Gaza Health Ministry claims only 68,000, so I presume that your 600,000 is a typo.

[tkel]

Gaza Health Ministry only counts those that show up at hospitals. The first big Lancet study a year ago estimated 200k. I've seen more recent studies estimate higher, with an additional year of killings.

Also, Israel has attacked or destroyed most hospitals in Gaza. So the Health Ministry's counting is obviously hindered.

[amscanne]

I don't believe that what you're saying is correct at all.

Only 34,344 of the GHM estimate are confirmed identities. The rest of either missing but presumed dead or gross adjustments. They are open about using "media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza".

The Lancet study published in January 2025 estimated 70,000 as of October, 2024. This is higher than the GHM estimate, but I can't find anything close to your 200k estimate.

So you may believe in your estimates, but they are many multiples larger than any other credible source that I can find... so it's odd to wave these figures around without any sources, links, etc.

[anramon]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israeli-ex-com...

Or maybe that man is a hamas spy, right?

[nimih]

The Lancet article the GP is probably referencing is probably this one: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[kennywinker]

Unfortunately not a typo:

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/press-briefing-francesca...

“65,000 is the number of Palestinians are certain killed, including over, of which 75% are women and children.

In fact, we shall start the thinking of 680,000, because this is the number that some scholars and scientists claim being the real death toll in Gaza.

And it would be hard to be able to prove or disprove this number, especially if investigators and others remained banned from entering the occupied Palestinian territory, and particularly the Gaza Strip.”

The death toll could be that high. I hope to hell it isn’t. But we don’t know and won’t know until the killing stops. We do know that tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed, and at least 150,000 people injured.

[amscanne]

I don’t think her statements aren’t even factual: the current estimates aren’t the confirmed identities, they include estimates for missing and presumed dead. You don’t think the GHM would publish larger estimates if 1/3 of every living person in Gaza was missing or dead? It’s hard to have an objective conversation when numbers are just made up.

[kennywinker]

I am not asserting a specific number. There have been between 65,000 and 680,000 gazans murdered by the idf directly and indirectly. I think it’s unlikely the number is as high as 680k, but there is absolute chaos on the ground, doctors and hospitals and records destroyed. We won’t know until the slaughter stops what number is real.

If you want to let the lack of a specific number hold you up while the killing continues, that’s up to you.

[AtlasBarfed]

While I agree the "who is more morally right" is owned to a higher degree by the Palestinians than the Israelis at the moment, I think people are missing a key shift in global politics.

Virtually all of the discourse on Israel-Palestine concerns moral righteousness or moral shame. I think the era of moral arguments in geopolitics is coming to an end, because the unipolar or Communist-Capitalist bipolar world combined with the Holocaust that enabled geopolitical moral arguments is basically dead.

It might just be my interest in global affairs spiking to avoid the constant bad news from the Trump administration, but I think we are entering a much more turbulent (and historically normal) period of realist/self-interest directed foreign policy. The US isn't around to be "good cop" (I can't emphasize the quotes around "good" enough).

I think this is why we are surrounded by the sense that authoritarianism is on the rise. The US won't care if you are democratic or authoritarian. The US won't care if you invade your neighbor if it doesn't disrupt them too much. Or the US just plain doesn't care at all.

So it's my general opinion that even if the Palestinians are more morally righteous in the great moral book-pounding, history-pointing, casualty-counting endless debate ... the era where that mattered has come to an end. Alas, I think we are entering a might-makes-right era of world politics, especially in the Middle East, and especially since the US has its own oil now from the Dakota shale fracking.

[dark_mode]

> Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.

The concern is who gets to decide what is or isn't a legitimate target? Today's heroes might be tomorrow's victims. I'd rather no one have that much power over others.

[Sporktacular]

Arguing that mass surveillance is not unethical but actually a way to save lives is pretty disingenuous, absurdly so considering how little the country wielding it cares about collateral damage.

[ycombigators]

It would be pretty difficult for the IDF to increase their level of collateral damage.

[sir0010010]

In 1945, about ~90k people died over 2 days from the Tokyo Firebombing. Do you think it would be difficult for any modern millitary - that intentionally wanted to cause as much collateral damage as possible - to greatly exceed that number?

[fjdjshsh]

Not sure what is your point. The Israeli military could throw a few atomic bombs and wipe out the entire population in Gaza. That they don't is a sign of restraint for you?

[Jensson]

It shows the poster they responded to was wrong when they said "It would be pretty difficult for the IDF to increase their level of collateral damage.".

It wouldn't be difficult at all to increase collateral damage, just fight like they did during ww2 and collateral damage would skyrocket.

[jlawson]

The point is that they could do similar attacks to the Tokyo firebombing (or much worse), but choose not to.

Yes, that is a sign of restraint, obviously.

[tfourb]

80% of buildings in Gaza are destroyed. There are well documented cases of arbitrary killings of civilians and attacks on hospitals. IDF is routinely demanding entire cities to be evacuated, knowing that not all people can comply with such an order. Multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity investigations have been opened by national and international prosecutors.

It is very obvious that the only restraint that the IDF is showing is that they do not kill every single civilian on sight.

[clanky]

The only thing it's a sign of is that the Israelis face restraints from political and PR pressures that did not apply to bombing Tokyo.

[samirillian]

Holy crap you’re totally right

[nashadelic]

Two things: 1. The death toll has shown that this is the most indiscriminate bombings (Biden's own words) and deaths of civilians in recent memory. So, you could argue the tech is aiding in killing key civil infra staff

2. Sure, they can surveil, let them do it on their own data centers. It's actually strange that they would put such data/tech on a 3rd party data center to begin with.

[StanislavPetrov]

>Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.

That would only be true if your goal was not to completely obliterate the population you are attacking and bombing, as Israel has demonstrated.

[jlawson]

Since the Oct 7 attacks the Palestinian population has not shrunk. War deaths have roughly equalled births.

Are you claiming that the IDF is trying their hardest to kill all the Palestinians they can, and that this is the best they can do? Really?

[swores]

I'm too late to edit my previous reply, but wanted to add a few sources so here we go -

Fact checking services debunking the claim of population not shrinking since October 2023:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...

https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/gaza-population-growth-proj...

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' population estimates, as of July 2025 - down 6% in one year since 2024, which is 10% below original forecasts for 2025:

https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_... (3rd section of page 2; though the whole document is worth reading)

[jlawson]

You are confusing emigration with death. We are not concerned with who is physically in Gaza, we are concerned with births and deaths.

There are less people physically in Gaza now because a bunch of people emigrated. Not because of deaths.

The overall group of families who lived in Gaza on Oct 7 2023 is about the same number of humans now. A few hundred thousand have emigrated. About 40-60k were killed. About 50k were born.

[swores]

Actually a few hundred thousand have been killed, the ~60k figure from the Gaza health ministry is just the deaths they've been able to actually confirm, which is just deaths at hospitals (which is why that number has grown so little this year, because the vast majority of hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed by the IDF).

See for example this July 2024 estimate of close to 200k deaths (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...) or this more recent estimate of over 600k (https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/ )

Sure, they're estimates not proven statistics, but the situation on the ground means it's impossible for anyone to have an accurate count. What's important is that we don't look at the relatively small (yet still depressingly large) number of confirmed deaths of known named people, tracked by the Gaza health ministry, as if it's a count of the actual number of deaths. Hell, even the IDF recently claimed that there have been 90k deaths (when they were boasting that they had killed 30k Hamas fighters and that they had "only" killed 2 civilians to every 1 Hamas) - and, setting aside the IDF's track record of lying and their incentive to claim less civilian deaths than reality, even if they were telling the truth that would still be limited to deaths they were actually able to track and confirm, not the many other deaths that weren't officially recorded.

[swores]

You're spreading misinformation (quite likely unintentionally). No data has been released supporting the claim that the population has stayed the same, what was wrongly spread was a US intelligence assessment of expected population which was made before the October 7th attack predicting future population growth, and used by many people as if it had remained accurate despite all the killing,

[Capricorn2481]

> It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.

Well, why wouldn't they? It's Microsoft, they're not exactly stewards of privacy.

[AzzyHN]

Where does "most moral" come from?

[reverius42]

Per Wikipedia, the idea that the IDF is the "most moral army in the world" comes from Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_of_arms

[thrance]

It's a throwaway line Israeli officials have been using for a long time. I heard Netanyahou himself use it to describe the IDF and explain it can't possibly do wrong.

https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1745501858611786029?lang=en

[xg15]

"Finding out" in the "shocked! shocked!" Casablanca sense.

The IDF's "Wolf" system have been well known for years.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facia...

[wolvesechoes]

I mean, there are other reasons to not provide them services. Really, mass surveillance is quite low on the list.