This forensic audit evaluates the operational, technological, and logistical integration of Amazon.com Inc. and its subsidiary, Amazon Web Services (AWS), with the State of Israel’s defense establishment. The investigation was precipitated by specific intelligence requirements to determine the extent to which Amazon’s corporate infrastructure supports the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD), the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories. The scope of this inquiry transcends standard commercial relationships; it seeks to identify structural complicity where a corporate entity functions not merely as a vendor, but as a critical node in the military “kill chain.”
The analysis synthesizes leak-based intelligence regarding “Project Nimbus,” procurement records from the Israeli Ministry of Finance, technical deployment specifications of edge computing hardware in the il-central-1 region, and supply chain dependencies of major Israeli defense prime contractors. The audit distinguishes between “incidental” commercial availability of civilian goods and “systemic” integration where the vendor provides essential capabilities that enhance the lethality, survivability, or political entrenchment of the occupation apparatus.
Based on a rigorous synthesis of the available evidence, Amazon.com Inc. is assigned a Composite Complicity Score of 6.4 (High), with specific sub-sectors of its operation reaching into the Severe (Band 8.0+) and Systemic (Band 9.5) categories.
The classification is driven by three primary forensic findings. First, the Project Nimbus contract effectively nationalizes Amazon’s cloud infrastructure for Israeli state use, contractually stripping the company of its ability to enforce human rights-based terms of service against the IDF. Second, the provision of AWS Edge Computing (Snowball) and hyperscale processing power has allowed the IDF to externalize its computational load during high-intensity combat, effectively using Amazon as a “surge” capacity for algorithmic warfare in Gaza. Third, the company’s logistical operations in the West Bank, specifically through partnerships with local couriers like the “Bar Group,” facilitate the economic viability of illegal settlements, normalizing their status as seamless extensions of the Israeli domestic market.
| Operational Domain | Complicity Score | Audit Band | Primary Justification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct Contracting | 6.8 | High | Project Nimbus ($1.2B); “Sovereignty Shield” clauses preventing service denial to the IDF.1 |
| Technological Integration | 7.2 | High (Upper) | Use of AWS for “Surge” compute during Gaza operations; “Glass” strategy integration; AI targeting support.3 |
| Logistical Sustainment | 3.5 | Low-Mid | Supply chain normalization via “Bar Group” and discriminatory delivery policies supporting settlements.5 |
| Supply Chain Support | 5.5 | Moderate-High | Prime host for R&D and operational infrastructure of IAI, Rafael, and Elbit Systems.7 |
| Legal/Covert Ops | 9.2 | Extreme | Implementation of the “Winking Mechanism” to evade international legal discovery.1 |
| Weighted Composite | 6.4 | High | Tactical Support Components / Militarized Infrastructure |
The following sections detail the forensic evidence supporting these classifications, moving from the legal architecture of the relationship to the kinetic application of Amazon’s technology on the battlefield.
The foundational document governing Amazon’s relationship with the Israeli military is the Project Nimbus contract. Signed in 2021, this $1.2 billion agreement is not a standard enterprise service contract. It represents a strategic alliance designed to ensure the digital sovereignty of the Israeli state, specifically inoculating it against external political or legal pressure.
A critical differentiator in this audit is the discovery of specific contractual language that legally binds Amazon to the Israeli military apparatus regardless of operational conduct. Standard AWS Terms of Service typically reserve the right to suspend accounts involved in human rights abuses or violence. However, forensic review of leaked Finance Ministry documents confirms that Amazon and Google agreed to “highly unorthodox” controls demanded by Israel.
Under the terms of the Nimbus deal, Amazon is contractually prohibited from taking any action that would “discriminate” against the Israeli government or deny service to specific entities, including the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israel Prison Service (IPS).1 This clause effectively creates a “Sovereignty Shield.” By waiving the right to enforce its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), Amazon has transformed its status from a private vendor to a bound asset of the state. The Israeli Finance Ministry explicitly stated that these “stringent contractual obligations” were designed to “safeguard Israel’s vital interests,” anticipating potential boycotts or service withdrawals due to human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza.1
This contractual structure implies that even if the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or other bodies were to rule that specific IDF operations constitute war crimes, Amazon is contractually estopped from suspending the cloud services that support those operations. This moves the complicity score from “Incidental” to “Systemic,” as the company has pre-committed to unconditional support of the military’s digital infrastructure.
Perhaps the most damning evidence of active collusion is the existence of the so-called “Winking Mechanism.” This clandestine notification system was engineered to allow Amazon to comply with foreign legal orders (e.g., subpoenas from the US Department of Justice or European courts) while secretly alerting the Israeli government that its data had been compromised, thereby circumventing gag orders associated with those subpoenas.
Israel identified a strategic risk: data stored on AWS servers, even those physically located in the il-central-1 region, effectively falls under the jurisdiction of the US CLOUD Act or similar European statutes. To mitigate this, Amazon agreed to a system where financial transactions would serve as coded signals.1
Operational Mechanics of the “Winking” Code:
Instead of sending a formal notification—which might violate a gag order—Amazon processes a “special compensation” payment to the Israeli Ministry of Finance. The value of the payment serves as the cryptographic key to identify the inquiring jurisdiction:
The existence of this mechanism suggests a level of corporate complicity that borders on obstruction of justice. Amazon is not merely a neutral storage provider; it is an active participant in an intelligence-counterintelligence workflow designed to shield the Israeli state from international legal scrutiny.9 By agreeing to this mechanism, Amazon prioritized its commercial relationship with the Israeli defense establishment over its legal obligations to foreign judiciaries, effectively operating a covert signaling system to protect the state’s data sovereignty.
The physical construction of the AWS il-central-1 region in Israel (Tel Aviv) was a core requirement of Project Nimbus to ensure that “information stays within Israel’s borders under strict security guidelines”.2 This infrastructure was critical for the migration of classified data. The Israeli military and defense establishment were stakeholders from the inception of the contract, with the explicit goal of moving sensitive workloads—including those related to the “target bank” and aerial surveillance—onto a sovereign cloud infrastructure that could withstand external diplomatic pressure.3
The transition from “on-premises” servers to the hyperscale cloud represents a fundamental shift in military capability. The audit reveals that AWS is not just hosting emails; it is hosting the operational logic of the IDF’s war in Gaza.
Prior to October 7, 2023, the IDF relied heavily on an internal “operational cloud” for its command and control systems. However, testimony from Colonel Racheli Dembinsky, commander of the IDF’s Center of Computing and Information Systems (Mamram), confirms that this internal infrastructure collapsed under the load of the massive mobilization following the outbreak of war.3
The internal military systems became “overloaded due to the enormous number of soldiers and military personnel who were added to the platform,” threatening to slow down critical military functions. To resolve this bottleneck, the IDF activated “all available spare servers” and pivoted to the public cloud—specifically citing AWS, Google, and Microsoft.3
Forensic Insight: This event marks the moment Amazon moved from a “infrastructure provider” to a “direct participant in hostilities.” By absorbing the excess data load of the IDF during an active invasion, AWS provided Burst Capacity for the kill chain. Without this external computational capacity, the IDF’s ability to process intelligence and generate targets would have been throttled by its own hardware limitations. Amazon effectively served as the logistical reserve for the IDF’s digital operations.
Col. Dembinsky described the operational environment using the concept of “Glass”—the screens and interfaces through which commanders view the battlefield. She noted that operational orders were often carried out using “two screens”: one linked to classified internal military systems and the other to AWS/public cloud services.3
This “two-screen” reality belies the claim of separation between civilian cloud and military operations. The data flows between these systems are integrated by the human operator. AWS servers are used to store “masses of intelligence information” on the population of Gaza 13, effectively providing the “endless storage” required for the “Target Bank.” Intelligence sources have confirmed that this vast repository of data—stored on Amazon’s cloud—has been used to confirm aerial assassination strikes.4
The IDF’s reliance on AI systems like “Lavender” and “The Gospel” to generate targets at an industrial scale requires massive computational power (GPU clusters) that exceeds standard on-premise capabilities. Project Nimbus provides the IDF with access to the “full suite of machine-learning and AI tools available through Google Cloud Platform” and AWS.2
While Amazon does not publicly disclose specific military AI workloads, the sheer volume of data cited—”unlimited storage” for surveillance data—implies the use of AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service) and EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances for data lakes that feed these AI models.13 The “Target Bank,” creating tens of thousands of potential strike coordinates, relies on the high-speed query capabilities of cloud-native databases. Amazon’s infrastructure thus becomes the engine of the target generation process.
A critical finding of this audit is the availability of AWS Snow Family devices in the Israel region. These devices bridge the gap between the hyperscale data centers in Tel Aviv and the tactical edge of the battlefield in Gaza or the West Bank.
AWS offers a line of ruggedized hardware called “Snowball Edge.” These are portable, suitcase-sized data centers designed to be air-dropped or carried into combat zones. They are explosion-resistant, tamper-proof, and capable of operating without an internet connection.17
Technical Capabilities Relevant to the IDF:
The presence of this specific service in the Israel region is a strong indicator of military utility. There are few civilian use cases in a geographically small, highly connected country like Israel that would require ruggedized, offline data transport devices. The primary use case is tactical military deployment in “denied, disrupted, intermittent, and limited” (DDIL) environments—exactly the conditions of urban warfare in Gaza.
Further investigation into Amazon’s defense offerings reveals the AWS Snowblade, a device explicitly designed for the US Department of Defense’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC). The Snowblade meets MIL-STD-810H standards for ruggedization (shock, vibration, temperature) and offers extreme compute density.20
While Snowblade is currently restricted to US defense customers, the technological transfer protocols between the US and Israel (a Major Non-NATO Ally) often allow for the acquisition of such dual-use technology. Furthermore, the underlying architecture of the “Golden Dome” missile defense concept—marketed by AWS—relies on this type of edge compute to link sensors and shooters.21 The “Iron Dome” requires similar low-latency data fusion, suggesting that if Snowblade itself is not deployed, a functional equivalent within the Snowball line likely is.
Amazon’s technology plays a pivotal role in the “Panopticon” that governs the Palestinian population. This involves the integration of consumer surveillance tech with military-grade biometric analysis.
Corsight AI is a facial recognition company that boasts of its ability to identify individuals even when they are wearing masks, employing extreme angles, or in low-light conditions.22 Corsight’s technology has been reported as being used by the Israeli military to conduct mass surveillance in Gaza, including at checkpoints where Palestinians fleeing combat zones were scanned and cataloged.16
The Amazon Link:
Corsight AI is an AWS Partner and is distributed via the AWS Marketplace.24 This is not a passive relationship; Amazon actively incentivizes the sale of partner software through programs like “ISV Accelerate”.25 By hosting Corsight’s SaaS (Software as a Service) platform on AWS infrastructure, Amazon acts as the distribution and hosting vector for this surveillance capability. The IDF can procure and deploy Corsight’s capabilities seamlessly through their existing AWS enterprise agreements, streamlining the acquisition of these authoritarian control tools.
While Amazon’s “Ring” doorbells are consumer products, the company’s strategic direction involves deep integration with law enforcement. In the US, Ring has partnered with Flock Safety, a company specializing in AI-driven license plate readers (ALPR) and wide-area surveillance.26
In the context of the West Bank, the “settler security” apparatus relies heavily on similar civilian-military fusion. Settlement security coordinators often utilize civilian surveillance networks that feed directly into IDF situational awareness systems. Amazon’s “Neighbors” app and the capability to share footage with law enforcement 26 create a framework for Distributed Surveillance. If deployed in illegal settlements, these devices function as additional sensor nodes for the occupation forces, effectively crowd-sourcing the monitoring of the Palestinian population.
Amazon’s own facial recognition service, Rekognition, has been utilized by Israeli cyber experts. Following the October 7 attacks, these tools were used to identify missing persons.23 However, the “Blue Wolf” initiative—the IDF’s project to capture biometric images of all West Bank residents—requires a backend capable of matching millions of faces in real-time. The migration of military intelligence data to AWS under Nimbus 13 strongly implies that the biometric database of the Palestinian population is now hosted on Amazon’s cloud, with Rekognition or similar AWS-hosted tools (like Corsight) providing the matching logic.
Amazon is not merely a supplier to the military; it is the Prime Systems Integrator (PSI) for the Israeli defense industry. The major manufacturers of lethal hardware—Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael, and Elbit Systems—are all deeply integrated into the AWS ecosystem.
IAI, the manufacturer of the “Heron TP” drone (which IAI CEO Boaz Levy confirmed played a “pivotal role” in Gaza strikes), utilizes AWS for its technological infrastructure.7 The migration of IAI’s operations to AWS 30 allows the company to utilize High-Performance Computing (HPC) to run aerodynamic simulations, test AI algorithms for autonomous flight, and manage the logistics of weapon production.
Rafael, responsible for the “Spike” missile and the “Iron Dome” interceptor, is required by government procurement mandates to use the Nimbus cloud.8 Rafael’s “Digital Transformation” strategy relies on AWS for computer vision and AI workloads.31 This means the algorithms that guide a Spike missile to its target may have been trained and refined on Amazon’s GPU clusters.
Elbit Systems, a key supplier of artillery and surveillance drones, partners with AWS to “optimize cloud performance”.33 Elbit’s innovation strategy involves “dual-use” technologies, leveraging the civilian cloud to accelerate military R&D.34 Amazon features these partnerships in case studies, highlighting how its cloud enables these manufacturers to “reduce time to market”—in this context, the time to market for new lethal capabilities.35
Beyond the high-tech sector, Amazon’s logistics division plays a crucial role in the economic normalization of illegal settlements in the West Bank.
To service the Israeli market, Amazon requires a sophisticated logistics network. The audit identifies that Amazon does not rely solely on the Israel Postal Company but has contracted with private logistics firms. Specifically, Amazon executives have met with and utilized the Bar Group, Cheetah Deliveries, and international couriers like DHL and UPS to solve the “Last Mile” problem in Israel.6
The Bar Group is a significant player in Israeli distribution. By utilizing these third-party logistics (3PL) providers, Amazon ensures that packages are delivered directly to homes in illegal settlements like Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim, and remote outposts. This bypasses the friction of international borders; a settler ordering from Amazon receives the same service level as a resident of Tel Aviv, reinforcing the state’s narrative that the settlements are an integral part of Israel.
The audit highlights a systemic bias in Amazon’s historical shipping policies. In 2020, it was revealed that Amazon offered free shipping to Israeli settlements for orders over $49, while charging Palestinian customers in the same geographic vicinity shipping fees upwards of $24.5
Crucially, the mechanism for Palestinians to access the free shipping involved a form of Digital Coercion: they were required to list their country as “Israel” rather than “Palestinian Territories”.5 While this policy was ostensibly corrected following threats of legal action by the Palestinian Authority 37, the infrastructure remains. Amazon’s system was designed to recognize settlement addresses as “domestic” Israel while categorizing indigenous Palestinian addresses as “international” or “restricted,” thereby economically penalizing the occupied population while subsidizing the occupier.
The UN and various NGOs have identified that trading with settlements sustains their economic viability.38 Amazon’s seamless delivery network allows settlers to access global markets, reducing the isolation that international law intends to impose on these illegal entities. By normalizing the logistics of the occupation, Amazon provides Logistical Sustainment (Band 3.1–3.9) to the settlement enterprise.
The IDF’s transition to AWS creates a strategic vulnerability known as Vendor Lock-In. The military is now operationally dependent on Amazon’s infrastructure. If the il-central-1 region were to go offline, or if Amazon were to sever the connection, the IDF’s C4I capabilities would be severely degraded. This dependency confirms that Amazon is now Critical Infrastructure for the State of Israel. The IDF cannot easily “switch” back to on-premise servers during a conflict, as evidenced by the collapse of their internal cloud in October 2023.13
The “Winking Mechanism” 1 exposes Amazon executives to potential criminal liability. By engineering a system to circumvent foreign judicial orders, the company may be complicit in obstruction of justice. Furthermore, if the ICJ rules that Israel is committing genocide or war crimes in Gaza, Amazon’s continued provision of the “nervous system” for those operations—specifically the AI targeting support—could lead to charges of aiding and abetting war crimes under the principle of mens rea (knowledge of the crime) and actus reus (material contribution).
The audit notes a significant and growing rift between Amazon’s workforce and its leadership. The “No Tech For Apartheid” campaign, organized by employees, has explicitly condemned Project Nimbus.40 Over 300 Amazon employees signed anonymous letters demanding the company cut ties with the IDF.42 This internal dissent poses a reputational and operational risk, as insider threats (leaks, sabotage) become more likely when the workforce views the company’s contracts as immoral.
The evidence collected in this audit supports the conclusion that Amazon.com Inc. has successfully integrated itself into the core of the Israeli military-industrial complex. It is no longer accurate to view Amazon as a passive vendor of “dual-use” technology. Through Project Nimbus, Amazon has designed, built, and operated a custom-purpose cloud environment that:
Final Score: 6.4 (High).
Amazon provides the digital ecosystem without which the modern Israeli war machine cannot function at its current tempo or lethality. The company is, forensics suggest, an essential organ of the occupation.
