Digital Audit: Oracle

Enterprise Technology Stack & Vendor Relationships

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) uses Palo Alto Networks’ VM-Series Next-Generation Firewall as the engine powering its native “OCI Network Firewall” service, a core rather than peripheral infrastructure-security integration ¹. This relationship has continued into a broader partnership extending the reach of Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SASE offering across OCI ². No public evidence identified of direct Oracle licensing or procurement relationships with Check Point, Wiz, SentinelOne, CyberArk, NICE, Verint, or Claroty as vendors to Oracle itself; available material shows only third-party market comparisons or NICE CXone’s product-level integration with Oracle Service Cloud, which reflects a partner-ecosystem interoperability arrangement rather than Oracle procurement of NICE technology. No public evidence identified of named systems integrators or IT consultancies that mandated Israeli-origin technology within Oracle’s own enterprise stack. Separately, Oracle acquired two Israeli technology companies in 2016 - Ravello Systems (cloud virtualization, ~$500M) ³⁴ and Crosswise (big-data/ad-tech device mapping, ~$50M) ⁵⁴⁶ - with the roughly 400-person Ravello team subsequently folded into Oracle’s own cloud engineering organization, constituting integrated Israel-based engineering capacity rather than a third-party vendor relationship ⁷.

Surveillance, Biometrics & Retail Technology

No public evidence identified of Oracle Retail deploying Trigo, BriefCam, AnyVision/Oosto, or Trax facial-recognition or biometric technology; available sources indicate these firms operate as competitors or peers to Oracle in the broader image-recognition-in-retail market rather than as vendors to Oracle. No public evidence identified of Oracle use of Israeli-origin predictive-policing, sentiment-analysis, or workforce-surveillance tools. No public evidence identified of indirect or bundled third-party delivery of Israeli biometric or surveillance tools into any Oracle business unit.

Cloud Infrastructure, Data Residency & Sovereign Cloud Participation

Oracle operates an underground cloud-region data center at the Har Hotzvim tech hub in Jerusalem - a roughly 14,000 sqm facility built approximately 50 meters below ground with Israeli integrator Bynet Data Communications, its construction overseen by Israel’s national cyber administration and the Shin Bet, and its ceiling engineered to withstand a car-bomb blast ⁸⁹. Oracle was the first hyperscaler to open an in-country cloud region in Israel, launched in 2021 ⁸⁹; CEO Safra Catz underscored Israel support at the launch ¹⁰ and reaffirmed commitment to a second Israeli data center during a wartime visit in January 2024 ¹¹. Oracle was rejected from Israel’s Project Nimbus government-cloud tender (ultimately won by Google/AWS for roughly $1.2bn) after being disqualified over information-security shortcomings, including lack of VDI support, insufficient AI/ML analytics capability, and inadequate encryption ¹²¹³; Oracle petitioned the Jerusalem District Court to overturn the disqualification and lost ¹²¹⁴. Oracle recruited Ezra Cohen, former Acting U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, as VP Corporate Strategy, and deployed him alongside CEO Safra Catz to Israel in mid-2021 to lobby Knesset members to disqualify Google and Amazon from the Nimbus tender on security grounds ¹⁵¹⁶. Oracle Israel country leader Eran Feigenbaum publicly stated in August 2021 that storing Israeli government data outside Israel is “dangerous,” citing exposure to foreign-jurisdiction access including the International Criminal Court, in the context of promoting Oracle’s in-country cloud offering ¹⁷. No public evidence identified that Oracle’s Jerusalem cloud region is explicitly marketed for Israeli-military “resilience” purposes beyond the general defense/government-sector framing documented in the Defence section below.

Defence, Intelligence & Security Sector Technology Relationships

Oracle Israel, a wholly owned subsidiary, has maintained a continuous, multi-decade licensing and support relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Defence, Israeli Air Force, Ground Forces, and Israel Police, including a roughly NIS 100M ERP tender (2001), an Air Force Exadata database deployment worth more than NIS 10M (2012), a Military Intelligence Directorate Oracle cloud-based system worth tens of millions of NIS (2013), and a NIS 140M three-year licensing renewal (2015) ¹⁸. Internal Slack disclosures reported by The Intercept describe “Project Menta,” a four-year, “highly confidential” data-engineering project between Oracle Israel and the Israeli Air Force, internally characterized as enabling “important military stuff that we can’t share” ¹⁹. The same disclosures describe a three-year procurement-automation program between Oracle and Unit 81, a technology-solutions division of Israeli military intelligence, reported to be in its “final stage” as of 2022 ¹⁹. Oracle donated seven tons of auxiliary and medical-environmental equipment, valued at over $500,000, to Israeli military units - including units operating in Gaza - in January/February 2024, following the October 2023 war onset ¹⁸²⁰. Oracle software constitutes the sole-supplier backbone of the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority’s “Rotem-Reut” border-control system, running on an Oracle 11.2 database in place since 2006 and deployed across 25 border crossings and 20 government ministries, including checkpoints in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Allenby Bridge crossing; the same infrastructure underpins the “Matash” Palestinian-worker permit-issuing system, with the Authority holding over 380 Oracle licenses by November 2023 ¹⁸. Oracle also provides servers supporting the Israeli Civil Administration’s construction-monitoring system in the occupied West Bank, with maintenance tenders issued in October and November 2024 ¹⁸. In September 2024, Oracle and Israeli state-owned defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced a partnership making Rafael’s IMILITE AI-based imagery/geospatial-intelligence system and FIRE WEAVER - a system the companies describe as a “sensor-to-shooter” real-time situational-awareness tool - available on Oracle Government Cloud, Oracle Cloud Isolated Region, Oracle National Security Regions, and Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure, with Oracle becoming the first cloud provider to host these Rafael combat systems ²¹²². Oracle CEO Safra Catz met Israeli PM Netanyahu, President Herzog, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and war-cabinet minister Benny Gantz during a 2024 visit to discuss security assistance and AI/cloud opportunities ¹⁸, following a separate June 2023 meeting with Netanyahu on expanding Oracle’s Israel investment and AI cooperation ²³²⁴. No public evidence identified of Oracle developing or selling offensive cyber capabilities, zero-day exploits, or other “digital weapons” to Israeli state actors.

AI, Algorithmic & Autonomous Systems

The Oracle-Rafael partnership announced in September 2024 provides cloud hosting for Rafael’s AI-based IMILITE imagery/geospatial-intelligence system and the FIRE WEAVER sensor-to-shooter system, positioned by the companies as serving real-time battlespace situational awareness and sensor-fusion functions for “warfighters” ²¹²². Oracle and Palantir announced a strategic partnership on 4 April 2024 making Palantir’s Foundry, Gotham, and AI Platform products deployable across Oracle’s distributed cloud, including OCI Dedicated Regions, Oracle Alloy, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, Oracle Government Cloud, Roving Edge, and air-gapped defense/intelligence regions, with joint sales and support aimed at the defense industry ²⁵. Palantir’s own AI platforms have separately been reported by press coverage as used by Israeli security forces for surveillance and predictive-policing purposes in Gaza and the West Bank ²⁶; Oracle’s own direct role in Palantir’s Israel-facing deployments has not been independently confirmed in available sources and is treated here as an unconfirmed adjacency rather than an established fact. Internal Slack messages reported by The Intercept describe “Words of Iron,” a project developed by Oracle in collaboration with Israeli government ministries beginning approximately November 2023 to elevate pro-Israel content and counter critical narratives on TikTok, Instagram, and X/Twitter ¹⁹. No public evidence identified that Oracle’s AI models were trained on intercepted communications or surveillance-derived datasets from Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The same Intercept reporting describes a February 2024 hackathon convened by Oracle and the Israeli military’s cyber department that reportedly sought technology solutions for rehabilitating Israeli settlements near Gaza using Oracle’s technology ¹⁹. No public evidence identified of Oracle directly providing autonomous target-generation or automated threat-detection/tracking systems, as distinct from the Rafael-designed, Oracle-hosted systems described above.

Technology Ecosystem & R&D Footprint

Oracle Israel’s R&D presence was built substantially through acquisition: the roughly 400-person team acquired with Ravello Systems in 2016 (~$500M, cloud virtualization) became a core Oracle Cloud engineering unit in Israel ³⁴, with approximately 80 of those roles cut in June 2019 as part of a global reorganization ⁷. Oracle also acquired Crosswise in April 2016 for approximately $50M, a machine-learning big-data firm specializing in device-identity mapping for ad tech and founded by two Unit 8200 alumni, Jonathan Seidner and Ron Reiter ⁵⁴⁶. No public evidence identified of a formal Oracle R&D or co-development partnership with the Technion, Hebrew University, or the Weizmann Institute. Global Oracle layoffs of up to 20,000–30,000 roles have been documented for 2024–2025, but No public evidence identified quantifying an Israel-office-specific impact for that period; only the 2019 Ravello-unit cuts are Israel-specific and dated in available sources ⁷.

Civil Society Scrutiny & Regulatory History

Who Profits, an Israeli research NGO, maintains an active company dossier on Oracle documenting Ministry of Defence contracts, the Rotem-Reut/Matash border and permit systems, and West Bank Civil Administration server support ¹⁸. The BDS Movement published an “Oracle Company Complicity Profile” in March 2025 compiling sourced claims on Oracle’s Israel data-center plans, TikTok ties, and calls for boycott under an “economy of genocide” framing ²⁷. The AFSC Investigate database references Oracle Corp as a named defendant, alongside G4S, Motorola, HPE, RE/MAX, Volvo, Bank Leumi, and Bank Hapoalim, in the 2016 Al-Tamimi et al. v. Adelson et al. civil suit in U.S. District Court, a $34.5B claim alleging civil conspiracy and aiding-and-abetting of war crimes tied to funding of West Bank settlement activity ²⁸²⁹³⁰. The suit was dismissed at the district-court level on political-question grounds but reversed in part by the D.C. Circuit on 19 February 2019, which held the genocide-related question justiciable and remanded the case ³¹. The Intercept’s February 2025 investigation is the primary source documenting internal Oracle dissent, including a 68-employee open letter criticizing Israel partnerships, reports that staff raising Gaza-related concerns were directed to “mental health services” rather than HR channels, an employee terminated over a Palestinian-themed Slack post, and removal of Medical Aid for Palestinians and UNRWA from Oracle’s employee donation-matching platform during the war ¹⁹³². No public evidence identified of an organized, named boycott or divestment campaign targeting Oracle specifically prior to 2024; BDS Movement’s Oracle-specific profile and associated campaign activity date to 2024–2025, coinciding with Oracle’s TikTok acquisition bid and the Gaza war ³³²⁶. No public evidence identified of any regulatory inquiry, export-control action, or sanctions-related investigation by OFAC, BIS, or a foreign equivalent into Oracle’s technology sales to Israeli state entities. Oracle’s presence on the OHCHR database of business enterprises operating in connection with Israeli settlements could not be confirmed in available sources ³⁴, and the UN Special Rapporteur’s July 2025 report on the “economy of genocide” discusses Project Nimbus, Palantir, and Google/Amazon cloud infrastructure without naming Oracle in the sections reviewed ³⁵. Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison, holding approximately 40.6% of Oracle shares as of September 2025 filings ³⁶, has donated over $26M cumulatively to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces since 2014, including a $16.6M gift in 2017 described as FIDF’s largest single gift on record, funding IDF training-campus wellbeing facilities ³⁷³⁸. CEO Safra Catz stated in 2023/2024 interviews that “for us, it’s the U.S., Israel, and then the rest of the world. We don’t hide it” ²⁰, and Oracle Sales Division head Shmulik Hauser stated, “we knew we might lose customers because of our support for Israel, but it didn’t matter to us” ²⁰; related commentary on Oracle executives’ posture toward Israel has been published in industry and policy press ³⁹. Oracle’s board includes Leon Panetta, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, and Renée James, former Intel President and Vice Chair of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, both cited in Oracle’s own FY2025 proxy statement for national-security and cybersecurity expertise rather than Israel-specific ties ⁴⁰. Oracle’s FY2026 Form 10-K constitutes an additional primary corporate filing reviewed for this audit ⁴¹. Oracle’s pending role as part of an investor group set to take over TikTok’s U.S. operations has drawn press scrutiny alleging suppression of pro-Palestinian dissent and reduced charity support amid the transaction ³³⁴²⁴³.

End Notes