BDS-1000 Dossier: Netflix, Inc.

Key Findings

• Economic: Netflix’s Israeli distribution partner since 2017, Partner Communications, operates over 200 cellular antennas on occupied West Bank and Golan land and pays recurring rent to the settlements of Beit El and the Migron outpost; Who Profits lists Netflix by name as a “partner” of the carrier.¹²
• Cultural/Production: Netflix’s Israeli-produced series Fauda, created by IDF Special Forces veterans, received IDF production assistance - including helicopters and use of the Tze’elim urban-warfare training base - and episodes were later used by the IDF’s Kfir Brigade as an Arabic-language training aid for roughly 50 soldiers.³
• Political: Netflix removed roughly 19-25 titles from its “Palestinian Stories” collection in October 2024, three years into a licensing arrangement, prompting an open letter from more than 30 human-rights organizations demanding reinstatement; Netflix attributed the removals to routine licence expiry.⁴⁵
• Not found: No military-industrial, defence-contracting, or dedicated digital-infrastructure nexus was identified - Netflix is absent from Israel’s SIBAT defence-and-HLS directory, the PAX inventory of companies arming Israel and their financiers, and the UN OHCHR settlement-business database, and holds no Israeli subsidiary, office lease, cloud contract, or state contract of any kind.⁶⁷⁸

Target Profile

Key Facts:

• Netflix launched in Israel in January 2016 as part of a 130-country expansion; full Hebrew-language, shekel-priced service with Israeli content followed in July 2017¹³¹⁴
• CEO Reed Hastings stated in January 2016 that Netflix would not open Israeli offices, a position the company has maintained - no registered Netflix subsidiary exists in the Israeli corporate registry¹³¹⁵
• Netflix’s first and continuing Israeli distribution partner, Partner Communications, was announced in May 2017¹⁶
• Mathias Döpfner, Netflix board member since 2018, is Chairman/CEO and ~22% shareholder of Axel Springer SE, whose Yad2 subsidiary lists West Bank settlement real estate¹⁷

Executive Summary

Netflix, Inc. is a US-headquartered subscription streaming company with no Israeli subsidiary, no Israeli office lease, no defence-sector contracts, and no documented cloud, cybersecurity, or surveillance-technology relationship with Israeli state or security bodies. The audit record across all four domains is dominated by “No public evidence identified” findings for the categories that typically drive higher BDS-1000 scores: direct defence procurement, dual-use or tactical technology, construction/demolition equipment, and enterprise or biometric technology vendor relationships.⁶⁷ Netflix does not appear in Israel’s SIBAT defence-and-homeland-security exporter directory, PAX’s 2024 inventory of companies arming Israel and their financiers, or the UN OHCHR’s database of businesses tied to Israeli settlements.⁶⁷⁸

Where a documented Israel/Palestine nexus exists, it runs through three narrower, largely indirect channels. First, Netflix’s Israeli market access since 2017 runs through Partner Communications, a telecom carrier that Who Profits and the American Friends Service Committee document as operating cellular infrastructure - over 200 antennas - on occupied West Bank and Golan land, paying rent to the settlement of Beit El and the Migron outpost, and holding a West Bank/East Jerusalem service licence valid to January 2027.¹² Netflix’s Open Connect content-delivery appliances are embedded within Partner’s network alongside other Israeli ISPs, meaning Netflix’s technical delivery pipeline into Israeli households sits inside infrastructure that NGOs separately document as extending into settlements; no evidence indicates Netflix itself owns, funds, or maintains that settlement-facing infrastructure.¹¹⁸ Second, Netflix has licensed and produced Israeli content - most notably Fauda, created by IDF Special Forces veterans Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, which received production assistance from the IDF (helicopters and use of the Tze’elim training base) and was subsequently used by the IDF’s Kfir Brigade as a training aid.³¹⁹ Third, Netflix’s October 2024 removal of dozens of titles from its “Palestinian Stories” collection drew sustained civil-society criticism, including a coalition letter from more than 30 organizations and continued tracking by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre; Netflix’s explanation - that content-licensing periods had simply expired - was disputed by at least one industry distributor source but could not be independently disproven in the audit record.⁴⁵²⁰

Two Netflix board members carry Israel-related exposure through roles entirely outside Netflix: Mathias Döpfner’s Axel Springer SE owns Yad2, an Israeli classifieds platform documented by The Intercept and Who Profits as hosting West Bank settlement property listings and generating profit from paid settlement-business advertisements - a matter of Axel Springer’s corporate conduct, not Netflix’s.¹⁷²¹ Brad Smith, in his role as Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President, oversaw Microsoft’s 2025 response to reporting that Israel’s Unit 8200 stored intercepted Palestinian communications data on Microsoft Azure - again a matter attributable to Microsoft’s corporate conduct rather than any Netflix engagement. No public evidence identified ties either director’s other-company conduct to any Netflix corporate decision, contract, or investment.

What is not supported by the evidence is any form of direct military, defence-industrial, or dedicated digital-infrastructure nexus: no SIBAT listing, no PAX inventory listing, no Elbit/IAI/Rafael supply relationship, no Project Nimbus involvement, no Israeli data-centre operation, no biometric or surveillance-technology sale, and no settlement-business listing in the UN OHCHR database.⁶⁷⁸ Netflix’s principal cloud vendor, Amazon Web Services, opened a Tel Aviv AWS region in 2023 tied to Israel’s Project Nimbus programme, but this is a fact about AWS as a vendor, not a documented Netflix engagement with Nimbus itself.²² Weighed together, the evidence record supports a narrow, largely indirect and commercially-mediated nexus, consistent with the vetted BRS 189, Tier E (Minimal) score below.

Timeline of Relevant Events

Corporate Overview

Netflix, Inc. is a US-incorporated, NASDAQ-listed streaming company headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Its FY2024 Form 10-K subsidiary exhibit lists entities in the United States, Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and South Korea; no Israeli entity is identified, and Netflix’s 10-K does not break out Israel as a separate geographic reporting segment.⁹¹⁰ Netflix’s disclosed engineering hubs are in the United States and Poland, and its published office-location database lists 30 global offices, none in Israel.³³ Netflix’s 2020-2024 acquisition history (Next Games, Animal Logic, Boss Fight Entertainment, Spry Fox, Thinkin) includes no Israeli technology or media company.³⁴

Netflix’s Israeli market presence is entirely franchise/distribution-based rather than corporate: it operates via Open Connect content-delivery appliances embedded in the networks of Israeli internet service providers, principally Partner Communications, alongside Bezeq International and Cellcom.¹⁸ Partner Communications, Netflix’s first and continuing Israeli distribution partner since May 2017, is separately documented by Who Profits and AFSC Investigate as holding a West Bank/East Jerusalem telecommunications licence (valid to January 2027), operating over 200-208 cellular antennas on occupied West Bank and Golan land, maintaining service centers in East Jerusalem, paying rent to the settlement of Beit El and the Migron outpost for approximately 12 years, and sponsoring Israeli military combat units.¹²¹⁶ No public evidence identified that Netflix itself owns, funds, or operates any of this infrastructure; the relationship is a commercial distribution and CDN-hosting arrangement, not an ownership or joint-venture structure.

On content, Netflix has licensed multiple Israeli-produced series, including Fauda (produced by yes TV/yes Studios), When Heroes Fly (Keshet International), Shtisel, and Hostages.³⁵³⁶ Faraway Road Productions, founded by IDF Special Forces veterans Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, holds an overall production deal with Netflix, renewed in August 2021.¹⁹ Fauda’s production has used filming locations in Israel including Kfar Qasim and the Tze’elim IDF training zone, employed as a West Bank stand-in.³⁷³

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of any direct contract, tender, or defence-cooperation arrangement between Netflix and Israel’s Ministry of Defense, the IDF, the Israel Prison Service, or Israel Border Police; Netflix does not appear in Israel’s SIBAT Defense and HLS Industries Directory.⁶ Netflix has no hardware product line, no tactical/mil-spec variants, no construction or infrastructure equipment presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and no supply relationship with Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael, or IMI Systems/Elbit Land; Netflix is absent from PAX’s June 2024 inventory of companies arming Israel and their financiers.⁷ The one documented commercial nexus is indirect: Who Profits’ company profile for Partner Communications, Netflix’s Israeli telecom and set-top-box distribution partner since May 2017, names Netflix alongside Apple and Juniper Networks in its “Partners” field; Who Profits and +972 Magazine separately document Partner Communications as maintaining cellular infrastructure on land leased from Israeli settlement councils.²¹⁶

The most substantive military-adjacent finding concerns content rather than commerce: Netflix’s Israeli series Fauda, distributed via an overall deal with Faraway Road Productions (founded by IDF veterans Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff), received IDF production assistance including helicopters and use of the Tze’elim urban-warfare training base to simulate Gaza combat conditions; the IDF’s Kfir Brigade later used episodes as an Arabic-language training aid for roughly 50 soldiers.³¹⁹ Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos publicly referenced the 7 October 2023 attack and paid tribute to a Netflix-affiliated sound technician killed in it.²⁸

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Netflix’s core defence is structural: it is a content-streaming company with no hardware, weapons, or infrastructure-construction business, making most Military categories (munitions, dual-use platforms, base logistics, heavy machinery) inapplicable by business model rather than by documented divestment. Netflix’s only on-record public statement on Israel/Palestine content criticism - “we’re in the business of entertainment, not media or politics” - frames the company’s posture as deliberately apolitical.³⁸ A widely circulated 2023 report that Netflix would “double-match” employee donations to an Israeli EMS service was subsequently corrected by the publishing outlet, and no verified Netflix-Israel charitable-matching policy has been identified.³⁹ The UN OHCHR settlement-business database update reported in September 2025 (158 firms) did not name Netflix among covered companies in secondary reporting, though the full primary-source annex could not be independently reviewed.⁸ Netflix is not mentioned in Al-Haq’s business-and-human-rights advocacy materials.⁴⁰

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Partner Communications - Israeli distribution partner since 2017; documented by Who Profits as operating settlement-adjacent cellular infrastructure; named as a Netflix “partner” but not owned or operated by Netflix.¹²
• Faraway Road Productions / Lior Raz & Avi Issacharoff - IDF veterans; overall production deal with Netflix; Fauda received IDF training-base access.¹⁹³
• Mathias Döpfner - Netflix board member since 2018; Chairman/CEO of Axel Springer SE, whose Yad2 subsidiary is separately scrutinized for West Bank settlement listings; no Israeli defence-industry ties documented for Döpfner personally.¹⁷
• Susan Rice, and other named board members - no Israeli defence-industry directorship, equity, or FIDF donation identified for any.¹²

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

Netflix’s core infrastructure vendor is Amazon Web Services, on which it runs “the vast majority” of its computing per SEC risk-factor disclosures.⁹ AWS opened a Tel Aviv region in August 2023 as part of a $7.2 billion investment tied to Israel’s Project Nimbus government cloud-migration programme - a fact about AWS as a vendor, with no public evidence identified that Netflix’s own consumer or corporate workloads route through that region, and no public evidence identified of Netflix directly contracting under Nimbus.²² Netflix’s Israel-facing digital footprint consists of Open Connect content-delivery appliances embedded within Partner Communications’ and other Israeli ISPs’ networks rather than any Netflix-operated facility; this places Netflix’s technical delivery pipeline inside infrastructure that Who Profits and AFSC separately document as extending into West Bank and Golan settlements via the same carrier.¹¹⁸ No public evidence identified of a licensing or integration relationship between Netflix and Israeli-origin cybersecurity or enterprise-technology vendors (Check Point, Wiz, SentinelOne, CyberArk, NICE, Verint, Claroty), and no public evidence identified of Israeli-origin biometric, facial-recognition, or retail-surveillance technology in Netflix’s fraud-detection stack, which Netflix’s own published methodology describes as behavioral/statistical rather than biometric.

A separate, indirect governance-level matter: Netflix board member Brad Smith, in his capacity as Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President, oversaw Microsoft’s response to 2025 reporting that Israel’s Unit 8200 used Microsoft Azure cloud storage to hold a large volume of intercepted Palestinian communications data collected via mass surveillance in Gaza and the West Bank; following the exposure, Microsoft stated it had curtailed certain services to an Israeli Ministry of Defense unit. This is documented as Microsoft’s corporate conduct, attributable to a Netflix board member’s separate executive role, not as a Netflix corporate act.

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Netflix’s strongest defence in this domain is the near-total absence of any direct technology-provision relationship with Israeli state, military, or intelligence bodies: no contract, partnership, or service agreement with the IDF or Israeli intelligence agencies was identified, and no evidence indicates Netflix’s AI/recommendation systems have been trained on or given access to any surveillance-derived or intercepted-communications dataset.⁶ Netflix’s Tel Aviv presence is commercial and content-localization in character (customer support, marketing, creative/post-production roles) rather than a dedicated engineering R&D lab, and Reed Hastings’ 2016 statement that Netflix would not open local offices reflects the company’s historically minimal footprint in the country.¹³ Netflix does not appear in the UN OHCHR settlement-business database or in the searchable text of the UN Special Rapporteur’s July 2025 “economy of occupation to economy of genocide” report.⁸⁴¹

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Amazon Web Services - Netflix’s principal cloud vendor; separately a Project Nimbus prime contractor for the Israeli government; no documented Netflix workload routing through the Nimbus-linked Tel Aviv region.⁹²²
• Partner Communications - hosts Netflix’s Open Connect CDN appliances within a network NGOs document as extending into settlements.¹¹⁸
• Brad Smith - Netflix board member since 2015; Microsoft Vice Chair/President; oversaw Microsoft’s 2025 Azure/Unit 8200 response as a Microsoft corporate matter.

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

Netflix launched streaming service in Israel in January 2016 and completed full localization (Hebrew interface, shekel pricing, Israeli content) by July 2017.¹³¹⁴ Its Israeli market access runs through Partner Communications, its distribution partner since May 2017, which operates over 200 cellular antennas on occupied West Bank and Golan land and pays rent to the settlements of Beit El and the Migron outpost under a West Bank/East Jerusalem licence valid to January 2027.¹¹⁶ Netflix licenses Israeli-produced content - Fauda, When Heroes Fly, Shtisel, Hostages - and holds an overall production deal via Faraway Road Productions (Raz/Issacharoff).³⁵³⁶¹⁹ Mathias Döpfner, Netflix board member since 2018, is Chairman/CEO and roughly 22% shareholder of Axel Springer SE, whose Yad2 Israeli classifieds subsidiary publishes approximately 1,300 West Bank settlement property listings, including over 1,000 paid broker advertisements generating profit from settlement activity; Döpfner received the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor in October 2025 for his support of Israel, an honour tied to his Axel Springer role.¹⁷³¹³²

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Netflix’s FY2024 10-K subsidiary list shows no Israeli entity, and Netflix holds no Israeli tax residency or Preferred Technology Enterprise status.⁹¹⁰ No public evidence identified of Netflix disclosing Israel-specific revenue, paying Israeli corporate taxes, holding Israeli sovereign-bond investments, or maintaining any owned office or data-centre in the country; Reed Hastings explicitly stated in January 2016 that Netflix’s strategy was not to open Israeli offices.¹³ Netflix is not listed on the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global exclusion list and does not appear in the UN OHCHR settlement-business database.⁴²⁸ No public evidence identified of Netflix commercial relationships with Israeli agricultural exporters or aggregators, consistent with its business model as a pure streaming service rather than a physical-goods retailer. Netflix’s Employee Giving Program offers standard 2:1 charitable matching with no identified Israel-specific allocation.⁴³ The 2024 Palestinian Stories removal was attributed by Netflix to license expiry (a 2021-2024 three-year licence) rather than any political or economic motive, though the removals’ timing drew scrutiny.⁴²⁰

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Partner Communications - distribution and CDN-hosting partner; documented settlement-infrastructure operator independent of the Netflix relationship itself.¹²
• Axel Springer SE / Yad2 / Mathias Döpfner - board-level indirect exposure via a director’s separate company; not a Netflix asset or subsidiary.¹⁷
• Faraway Road Productions / yes Studios - Israeli production partners for Fauda and related content.¹⁹³⁷

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

Netflix has issued no corporate statement specifically addressing the Israel-Gaza conflict since October 2023, a posture consistent with its lack of public statements on other major conflicts such as Ukraine or Sudan.⁴⁴ Its Israeli distribution partner, Partner Communications, is documented by Who Profits and AFSC as operating settlement-adjacent infrastructure and sponsoring Israeli military combat units; Netflix is listed as a “partner” company in Who Profits’ database.¹² Netflix’s 2022 release of Farha, depicting the 1948 Nakba, was condemned by then-Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman as “incitement against Israeli soldiers,” while some Arab commentators separately criticized Netflix when it was seen as promoting Israeli-produced content.²⁵²⁶ The BDS Movement targeted Netflix in 2018 over its distribution of Fauda, calling it an “anti-Arab racist, Israeli propaganda tool,” a campaign Creative Community for Peace publicly countered; a renewed BDS-aligned campaign emerged in 2024 around the Palestinian Stories removal.²³⁴⁵⁴⁶ Reed Hastings made a $1.1 billion donation in January 2024 to a donor-advised education fund with no documented FIDF, JNF/KKL, or Israeli reservist-fund allocations identified; Netflix made a $50,000 corporate political donation to a Utah gubernatorial campaign, with no Israel-specific political spending identified in FEC/OpenSecrets records.⁴⁷⁴⁸

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Netflix maintains a global political-advertising ban applicable to both campaign and issue advertising, though this policy is not specific to Israel/Palestine.⁴⁹ No public evidence identified of Netflix providing free cloud services, credits, or infrastructure to the Israeli military or government during the post-October 2023 conflict, in documented contrast to Microsoft, Google, and Amazon’s Project Nimbus involvement.⁴⁴ No documented Netflix PAC contributions or lobbying activity tied to Israel-Palestine issues were found in FEC or OpenSecrets records, and no direct connections between Netflix board members and FIDF, JNF, or AIPAC were identified.⁴⁷ The UN’s July 2025 report identifies Vanguard and BlackRock - Netflix’s two largest institutional shareholders - as major investors in companies supplying Israel’s military, including Elbit Systems; this is a fact about diversified index-fund ownership patterns at the shareholder level, not a Netflix corporate decision or targeted investment.⁴⁷ Netflix’s stated explanation for the Palestinian Stories removal - expired licences, characterized as “standard practice” - was maintained consistently in its public responses, and no documentary evidence of lobby-group pressure behind the removal was identified, though critics noted the timing (one year into the Gaza military campaign) raised unverifiable questions.⁴²⁰

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Partner Communications - settlement-linked telecom partner and combat-unit sponsor, independent corporate entity.¹²
• Vanguard Group (9.26%) / BlackRock (8.27%) - largest institutional shareholders; separately documented as major investors in Israeli-military-supplying firms at the portfolio level.¹¹⁴⁷
• Reed Hastings - Executive Chairman; no verified public statement on Israel-Palestine; $1.1B philanthropic donation with no documented Israel-specific allocation.⁴⁷
• BDS Movement / Creative Community for Peace - opposing civil-society actors in the 2018 Fauda campaign.²³

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

• V_MAX: 2.65 Sum_OTHERS: 1.87
• BRS Score: 189 Tier: E (Minimal)

V_MAX is driven by Political, reflecting the 2018 and 2024 BDS-campaign attention, the Palestinian Stories removal controversy, and shareholder-level (not corporate-level) exposure to Israeli-military-linked index funds - the highest-proximity documented vector, though still moderate in absolute terms. Economic is the second-largest contributor, reflecting the Partner Communications distribution relationship and Döpfner/Axel Springer board-level exposure. Military and Digital are near-zero, reflecting the almost complete absence of direct defence, cloud, or surveillance-technology engagement. The resulting BRS of 189 places Netflix in Tier E (Minimal), the lowest severity band. The method is scale-free (Impact × Magnitude/Proximity per domain, combining V_MAX with a fractional contribution from other domains), evidence-only, and reflects human-vetted scores that were not altered from the fixed V4 figures supplied.

Methodology Note

• Every claim in this dossier traces to the four domain audits (Military, Digital, Economic, Political); where those audits found nothing, this dossier states “No public evidence identified” rather than inferring an absence of a relationship as evidence of concealment.
• Scoring is scale-free: I (Impact) reflects the type of activity documented (e.g., indirect distribution partnership vs. direct defence contract), M (Magnitude) reflects documented scale, and P (Proximity) reflects directness of the company’s connection to the conflict or occupation.
• A temporal/divestment rule applies: relationships documented as terminated, expired, or divested are mitigated in scoring rather than treated as ongoing; Netflix’s 2021-2024 Palestinian Stories licence, for example, is treated per its documented expiry rather than as an active suppression policy.
• Entity attribution follows a no-transitive-guilt rule: conduct by Axel Springer (Döpfner) or Microsoft (Smith) is attributed to those companies, not imputed to Netflix, because it occurs through a board member’s separate executive or ownership role rather than a Netflix corporate decision.
• Where a documented relationship touches both economic and political dimensions (e.g., the Partner Communications settlement-infrastructure nexus), it is dual-counted across the relevant Economic and Political domain summaries rather than scored once.
• “No public evidence identified” is used deliberately throughout wherever the underlying audits’ searches (SIBAT, PAX, UN OHCHR database, SEC filings, NGO trackers) returned no matching result, rather than being silently omitted.

End Notes