BDS-1000 Dossier: Amazon.com, Inc.

Key Findings

• Military/Digital: Amazon and Google’s Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion cloud and AI contract (May 2021–May 2028, extendable 132 months) that Israel’s military helped design; its terms bar Amazon from restricting or suspending Israeli government, security-service or military use even where its own terms of service are violated, and reportedly require a coded “winking” payment when user data is disclosed to foreign law enforcement.¹²
• Military: IDF Unit 9900, an Israeli geospatial-intelligence unit, used AWS in Gaza-strike-related work; Israel’s Ministry of Defense purchased Amazon Rekognition access and received a 35% Nimbus discount; and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries used AWS Bedrock, Titan and Anthropic’s Claude in 2024–2025.³
• Economic/Political: Amazon offered free shipping to Israeli West Bank settlements from November 2019 while charging Palestinian customers delivery fees, reversing the policy in March 2020 after public backlash, and continues to carry settlement-manufactured goods - including Achdut/Achva tahini from the Ariel settlement - through third-party marketplace listings.⁴⁵⁶
• Not found: No public evidence that Amazon is a licensed manufacturer or prime contractor of lethal weapons platforms, and Amazon does not appear in the UN OHCHR settlement-business database despite its documented settlement- and defense-cloud activity.⁷

Target Profile

Key Facts:

• Project Nimbus: $1.2 billion, running May 2021–May 2028, with an option to extend 132 additional months.²
• AWS “il-central-1” (Tel Aviv) region: opened August 2023 across three availability zones, with up to $7.2 billion in planned investment through 2037.⁸⁹
• Listed by Who Profits under “Settlement Enterprise,” “Services to the Settlements,” “Population Control,” and “Specialized Equipment and Services.”⁷
• Named among the corporations cited in UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July 2025 report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23).¹⁰

Executive Summary

Amazon’s documented Israel/Palestine nexus centers on Amazon Web Services’ role as one of the Israeli government’s primary commercial cloud providers. Since 2021, Amazon and Google have jointly held Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud-computing and AI contract whose design the Israeli military helped shape from inception, and whose terms - as reported - forbid Amazon from restricting or suspending any Israeli government agency’s, security service’s, or military unit’s use of its cloud services, even in the event of a terms-of-service violation.¹² Reporting further describes a “winking mechanism” requiring coded payments to Israel when user data is disclosed under foreign legal compulsion.¹ This contractual architecture, combined with confirmed downstream use by IDF Unit 9900 in Gaza-strike-related geospatial work, Ministry of Defense purchase of Amazon Rekognition, a documented 35% Ministry of Defense discount, and 2024–2025 sales of AWS Bedrock, Titan and Claude access to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, constitutes the strongest and most extensively corroborated vector in this dossier.³

The economic and political vectors reinforce this picture without independently rivaling it. AWS has committed up to $7.2 billion in Israeli infrastructure investment through 2037, centered on its Tel Aviv-region data centers, and Amazon’s marketplace carries goods manufactured in West Bank settlements, including Achdut/Achva tahini produced in the Ariel settlement industrial zone - a fact independently corroborated by a separate FDA-linked salmonella recall notice confirming the same Ariel manufacturing location.⁹⁶¹¹ Politically, Amazon’s most consequential documented conduct is the November 2019–March 2020 shipping-fee disparity, under which Israeli settlement customers received free delivery while Palestinian customers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory were charged, until public exposure and Palestinian Authority pressure prompted a reversal.⁴⁵ Amazon is also named among the corporations identified in the UN Special Rapporteur’s 2025 report on corporate actors sustaining Israel’s occupation and military operations.¹⁰

Several allegations commonly associated with “Big Tech and Gaza” narratives are not supported by the evidence assembled here and are excluded or flagged accordingly. No public evidence identifies Amazon as a manufacturer, licensor, or prime contractor of any lethal weapons platform; its documented role is limited to cloud infrastructure and software services purchased by defense manufacturers and the Ministry of Defense.³ Despite this extensive settlement- and defense-linked commercial activity, Amazon does not appear in the UN OHCHR settlement-business database, a discrepancy the underlying audits flag explicitly rather than resolve.⁷ No public evidence in these audits documents U.S. export-control (EAR/ITAR) licensing determinations specific to AWS sales to Israeli defense entities, nor does the evidence establish that Amazon itself developed, trained, or hosted Israel’s internally-built AI targeting systems as distinct from general-purpose cloud and storage provision.

Civil society scrutiny of Amazon’s Nimbus role has been sustained and largely unanswered: employee open letters in 2021 and subsequent years, the September 2025 suspension of Palestinian engineer Ahmed Shahrour after he urged colleagues to oppose the contract, a shareholder resolution representing $59 million in Amazon stock requesting a report on AWS’s use in Gaza, and Amazon’s exclusion of related shareholder proposals in the 2025–2026 cycle.^1213141516 Amazon has not publicly terminated Project Nimbus or announced a substantive policy change in response.

Taken together - a foundational, IDF-shaped cloud contract with no exit clause for misuse, direct sales to defense manufacturers and the Ministry of Defense at a documented discount, a large and growing sovereign-cloud investment, and a documented (if reversed) settlement-preferential logistics policy - this evidentiary record yields the FINAL V4 scores below and a BRS of 846, placing Amazon in Tier A (Extreme).

Timeline of Relevant Events

Corporate Overview

Amazon.com, Inc. is a US-founded and US-incorporated company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with no dual or legacy Israeli headquarters identified in the audits.⁷ Its principal Israel-facing business line is Amazon Web Services (AWS), operated in Israel through two Israel-registered entities - Amazon Web Services Israel Ltd. and Amazon Data Services Israel Ltd. - both relating to cloud infrastructure rather than retail or goods importation; separately, AWS EMEA SARL’s Israel branch is registered only as a local VAT “authorised dealer,” not as an importer of record.⁷²⁰ AWS’s physical Israeli footprint consists of the “il-central-1” region’s data centers at Truvot, Shoham and Beit Shemesh.⁸ Whole Foods Market, wholly owned by Amazon since 2017, is the business unit in which suspended engineer Ahmed Shahrour worked.¹² Amazon’s retail marketplace operates as a third-party seller platform in relevant instances documented here - for example, both Israeli-grown and Palestinian-grown (Jericho-origin, Ziyad brand) Medjool dates are listed for sale by third-party sellers, and settlement-manufactured goods such as Achdut/Achva tahini reach Amazon’s platform via third-party or brand-storefront listings rather than direct corporate procurement.^2122236 No dedicated Amazon subsidiary or joint venture functioning as importer of record for Israeli or settlement-origin goods is documented in the audits.

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion cloud-services contract (May 2021–May 2028, extendable 132 months) that the Israeli Defense Forces helped shape from inception and in which the IDF is a documented user; its terms bar Amazon from restricting or withdrawing service to any Israeli government, security, or military unit, and reportedly include a coded “winking mechanism” payment triggered when user data is disclosed to foreign law enforcement.¹² IDF Unit 9900, Israel’s geospatial-intelligence unit, used AWS cloud services in work connected to strike planning in Gaza, with username patterns referencing “9900” identified in AWS system logs.³ The Israeli Ministry of Defense’s Central Command purchased access to Amazon Rekognition, including for an open-source-intelligence project, and internal documents reference a 35% discount for services sold to the Ministry of Defense under Project Nimbus.³ The state-operated Soreq Nuclear Research Center is confirmed as an Amazon customer through Project Nimbus.³ AWS’s Israel region supports Snowball Edge and Snow Family devices offering tactical storage and compute capability.²⁴ Rafael Advanced Defense Systems purchased generative-AI tools - Anthropic’s Claude and Amazon’s own Titan model - via AWS Bedrock in 2024–2025, and Israel Aerospace Industries is required to use AWS and Google cloud under Project Nimbus tender terms.³¹⁹ Separately, Amazon’s 2019–2020 free-shipping policy extended a logistical benefit to Israeli West Bank settlements before Palestinian customers received equivalent treatment.⁴⁵

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No public evidence identifies Amazon as a prime contractor or licensed manufacturer of any lethal weapons platform; its documented role is the provision of general-purpose cloud infrastructure and software to defense manufacturers, not weapons design, production or export. Despite this documented settlement- and defense-cloud activity, Amazon is not included in the UN OHCHR settlement-business database.⁷ No public evidence identified of a specific US export-license (EAR/ITAR) determination governing AWS’s sales to Israeli defense customers. Amazon has not been shown to have solicited or initiated Project Nimbus beyond winning a competitive government tender, and has also not publicly terminated the contract in response to civil-society pressure.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

IDF Unit 9900; Israeli Ministry of Defense (Central Command, Digital and IT Division); Soreq Nuclear Research Center; Rafael Advanced Defense Systems; Israel Aerospace Industries; Who Profits designations (“Settlement Enterprise,” “Services to the Settlements,” “Population Control,” “Specialized Equipment and Services”)⁷; UN Special Rapporteur report A/HRC/59/23¹⁰; 300+ employee protest signatories and Ahmed Shahrour¹³¹²; $59 million shareholder resolution¹⁵; excluded 2025–2026 shareholder proposals¹⁶.

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

AWS’s contractual relationship under Project Nimbus bars restricting or suspending Israeli government, military, or security-service cloud access “even if it’s found to have violated” terms of service, and reportedly includes the coded “winking” payment mechanism.¹ Who Profits characterizes AWS as “a main provider of comprehensive cloud infrastructure and services to the Israeli government, including to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the Israeli military, the Israel Police, and Israel Prison Service.”⁷ AWS’s Israel region (“il-central-1,” Tel Aviv), opened August 2023 with three availability zones, anchors up to $7.2 billion in investment through 2037 and a projected ILS 51.7 billion GDP contribution.⁸⁹ Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate reportedly stores mass surveillance and intelligence data on the Gaza population on AWS servers, in use since at least the end of 2022, with security sources describing this intelligence as having “on rare occasions” helped confirm aerial strikes; Amazon’s on-record response stated that “AWS is focused on making the benefits of our world-leading cloud technology available to all our customers, wherever they are located.”¹⁷¹⁸ AWS sold cloud-computing services - including Elastic Compute Cloud, Rekognition, Bedrock, Claude and Titan G1 - to Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries under the Nimbus tender requirement, with Rafael’s unclassified information environment migrating to AWS in June 2023 at a disclosed but unquantified discount.³

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No public evidence identified that Amazon is a customer or licensee of Israeli-founded cybersecurity firms for its own internal enterprise security; the documented commercial relationships with such firms run in the opposite direction, as vendor/marketplace partners selling through AWS. No public evidence identified that Amazon itself developed, trained, or provided Israel’s internally built “Lavender” or “Habsora/Gospel” AI targeting systems; independent reporting attributes their development to internal Israeli military units. No public evidence identified that Amazon trained its own AI models on intercepted communications or surveillance-derived datasets from Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territory - the documented relationship is the Israeli military storing and processing its own surveillance data on AWS infrastructure, not Amazon originating or training on that data. No public evidence identified of Amazon providing autonomous target-generation, automated threat-detection, or autonomous-tracking systems, as distinct from general-purpose cloud, storage and generative-AI-platform provision.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Israeli Ministry of Defense (Digital and IT Division, Central Command); IDF Military Intelligence Directorate; Rafael Advanced Defense Systems; Israel Aerospace Industries; AWS “il-central-1” region; Amazon Rekognition, Bedrock, Titan and Claude (via AWS); Who Profits⁷; UN Special Rapporteur report¹⁰.

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

AWS has committed approximately $7.2 billion (ILS 26.6 billion) in Israeli capital investment from 2023 through 2037, with an AWS-commissioned study projecting an ILS 51.7 billion (~$13.9 billion) GDP contribution and roughly 7,700 full-time-equivalent jobs annually.⁹ The Israel region opened in August 2023 at Truvot, Shoham and Beit Shemesh.⁸²⁵ The 35% Ministry of Defense discount extended to Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries functions as an in-kind commercial subsidy alongside the direct cloud-service revenue relationship.³ Amazon’s marketplace carries Israeli-origin Medjool dates from third-party sellers alongside Palestinian-origin Ziyad-brand dates grown at the Ziyad Family Farm in Jericho - a documented coexistence of Israeli- and Palestinian-origin goods on the same platform rather than an exclusive sourcing preference.²¹²²²³ Amazon’s marketplace also carries Achdut/Achva tahini and halva manufactured in the Ariel settlement industrial zone, built on land attributed to the Palestinian village of Salfit; a 2018–2019 FDA-linked salmonella recall notice independently corroborates that Achdut Ltd.’s tahini is manufactured in Ariel, Israel, and the same products are also distributed through Walmart, Sainsbury’s and Tesco.⁶¹¹ Amazon’s only Israel-registered entities relate to cloud infrastructure - Amazon Web Services Israel Ltd. and Amazon Data Services Israel Ltd. - and AWS EMEA SARL’s Israel branch is registered solely as a local VAT authorised dealer, not as a goods importer.⁷²⁰

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No public evidence identified of a direct corporate procurement or supply contract between Amazon, as purchaser, and Israeli produce exporters; the documented relationship is limited to third-party-seller marketplace listings rather than confirmed first-party Amazon procurement. No public evidence identified of a dedicated Amazon subsidiary or joint venture acting as importer of record for Israeli or settlement-origin retail goods. No public evidence identified of a DEFRA, EU, or US customs enforcement action naming Amazon specifically for mislabeled “Produce of Israel” settlement goods. No public evidence identified of any Amazon-published corporate policy governing the sourcing or labeling of goods originating in occupied territories. Amazon does not appear in the UN OHCHR settlement-business database.⁷

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Amazon Web Services Israel Ltd.; Amazon Data Services Israel Ltd.; AWS EMEA SARL Israel branch; Achdut Ltd./Achva (Ariel settlement)⁶¹¹; Rafael Advanced Defense Systems; Israel Aerospace Industries; Who Profits⁷; UN Special Rapporteur report naming Amazon among corporations described as granting Israel “virtually government-wide access” to cloud and AI technologies.¹⁰

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

Project Nimbus is Amazon’s flagship political-exposure vector: a $1.2 billion contract (2021–2028, extendable) whose reported terms bar restricting or suspending Israeli military and security-service cloud access and include the “winking mechanism” coded-payment arrangement.¹² Amazon’s November 2019 free-shipping policy extended free delivery to Israeli West Bank settlements while charging Palestinian customers delivery fees, a policy reversed in March 2020 following public backlash and Palestinian Authority pressure, after which free shipping was extended to Palestinian West Bank addresses.⁴⁵ The UN Special Rapporteur’s July 2025 report names Amazon among corporations providing tools, technologies and logistical support fueling Israel’s military operations.¹⁰ Sustained employee and shareholder dissent constitutes a further documented political dimension: a 2021 open letter from over 300 Amazon and 90 Google employees calling for Nimbus withdrawal;¹⁴ the September 2025 suspension of Ahmed Shahrour after he distributed flyers and posted in Slack channels urging colleagues to oppose the contract;¹²¹³ a shareholder resolution representing $59 million in Amazon stock requesting a report on AWS’s use in Gaza;¹⁵ and Amazon’s exclusion of related shareholder proposals, including one on AI alignment tied to Project Nimbus, in the 2025–2026 cycle.¹⁶ Amazon is listed by Who Profits under “Settlement Enterprise,” “Services to the Settlements,” “Population Control,” and “Specialized Equipment and Services.”⁷

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Amazon reversed its settlement/Palestinian shipping-fee disparity within roughly four months of public exposure, demonstrating documented responsiveness to reputational pressure on at least this occasion.⁴⁵ Amazon has not, however, publicly terminated Project Nimbus or announced a substantive policy change in response to sustained subsequent civil-society and shareholder pressure - a documented gap rather than an escalation. Amazon does not appear in the OHCHR settlement-business database despite its documented settlement- and defense-linked activity.⁷ No public evidence identified within the reviewed record of Amazon signing a state anti-BDS certification as a condition of any contract, or of Amazon formally sponsoring an official Israeli government “Brand Israel” public-diplomacy campaign.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Israeli government bodies (Ministry of Defense, IDF, Israel Police, Prison Service, per Who Profits characterization)⁷; Palestinian Authority (2020 shipping-policy complaint)⁵; UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese / report A/HRC/59/23¹⁰; Ahmed Shahrour¹²; 2021 Amazon/Google employee signatories¹⁴; shareholder coalition behind the $59 million AWS-in-Gaza resolution¹⁵.

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

• V_MAX: 9.00 Sum_OTHERS: 22.70
• BRS Score: 846 Tier: A (Extreme)

V_MAX is set by Digital (9.00), reflecting AWS’s contractually unrestrictable cloud relationship with the Israeli government and military, its multibillion-dollar Israel-region infrastructure, and its documented role hosting Israeli military intelligence storage - the single most scale- and proximity-weighted vector in the record. Political (8.20) and Economic (8.00) sit close behind, driven respectively by the Project Nimbus political-exposure architecture and by direct commercial investment, discounted defense sales, and settlement-goods marketplace presence; Military (6.50), while still substantial, is the lowest of the four because Amazon’s military-adjacent role is confined to infrastructure and software provision rather than weapons manufacture. These four scale-free Impact × Magnitude/Proximity domain scores combine, per the fixed BDS-1000 method, into a BRS of 846, placing Amazon in Tier A (Extreme). All figures above are the final, human-vetted V4 scores and are reproduced without alteration.

Methodology Note

• Every claim in this dossier is drawn exclusively from the four domain audits (Military, Digital, Economic, Political); no external facts were introduced.
• Each domain score is scale-free: Impact (I) reflects the type of activity, Magnitude (M) reflects its scale, and Proximity (P) reflects directness of the nexus to Israeli military/state action; the V-Domain score is not a simple average of I, M and P.
• A temporal mitigation rule applies: divested, exited, or reversed operations (e.g., Amazon’s 2020 shipping-policy reversal) are carried with that context rather than scored as ongoing at full weight.
• Entity attribution follows a no-transitive-guilt standard: findings are tied to Amazon/AWS-specific conduct, not imputed from the conduct of customers, marketplace sellers, or unrelated corporate peers.
• Settlement-linked commercial operations (e.g., Achdut/Achva marketplace sales) are dual-counted across Economic and Political where the underlying audits document both an economic and a political/legal dimension to the same conduct.
• Where the underlying audits’ checks found no supporting material, this dossier states “No public evidence identified” rather than inferring or hardening a claim; unresolved or unverified findings (e.g., the OHCHR database discrepancy) are carried with their original caveats.

End Notes