Brian Eno pledges fee from Windows 95 chime to Palestine aid as he speaks out on Microsoft’s support of Israel military

Brian Eno has urged Microsoft to cut ties with Israel in an open letter, in which he also pledged to donate his fee from the Windows 95 chime he composed for them to aid for Palestine.

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The musician composed the iconic seven-second start up chime that plays when you load up Windows 95. At the time, he offered the tech company 80 different chimes to choose from.

In his open letter, he wrote that he “never would have believed” that the company that once represented “a promising technological future” would be complicit in “the machinery of oppression and war”.

Last week, Microsoft admitted that it sold artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military during the war in Gaza and aided in efforts to locate and rescue Israeli hostages. The BDS movement describes them as “perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime”.

Eno’s letter, posted to social media, read: “In the mid-1990s, I was asked to compose a short piece of music for Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system. Millions — possibly even billions — of people have since heard that short start-up chime — which represented a gateway to a promising technological future. I gladly took on the project as a creative challenge and enjoyed the interaction with my contacts at the company. I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.

“Today, I’m compelled to speak, not as a composer this time, but as a citizen alarmed by the role Microsoft is playing in a very different kind of composition: one that leads to surveillance, violence, and destruction in Palestine.

“In a blog post dated May 15, 2025, Microsoft acknowledged that it provides Israel’s Ministry of Defence with “software, professional services, Azure cloud services and Azure AI services, including language translation.” It went on to state that “It is important to acknowledge that Microsoft does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.” These “services” support a regime that is engaged in actions described by leading legal scholars and human rights organisations, United Nations experts, and increasing numbers of governments from around the world, as genocidal. The collaboration between Microsoft and the Israeli government and army is no secret and involves the company’s software being used in lethal technologies with “funny” names like “Where’s Daddy?” (- guidance systems for tracking Palestinians in order to blow them up in their homes).

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“Selling and facilitating advanced AI and cloud services to a government engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing is not “business as usual.” It is complicity. If you knowingly build systems that can enable war crimes, you inevitably become complicit in those crimes.

“We now live in an age where corporations like Microsoft often command more influence than governments. I believe that with such a power comes an absolute ethical responsibility. Accordingly, I call on Microsoft to suspend all services that support any operations that contribute to violations of international law.

“My new start up chime is this: stand in solidarity with the brave Microsoft workers who have done something truly disruptive and refused to stay silent. They risk their livelihoods for people who have lost and will continue to lose their lives.

“I invite artists, technologists, musicians, and all people of conscience to join me in this call.

“I also pledge that the fee I originally received for that Windows 95 chime will now go towards helping the victims of the attacks on Gaza. If a sound can signal a real change then let it be this one.”

Earlier this week, the United Stations gave a warning about the potential for “genocide” in the Middle East. Action against the Israeli government from the West over the humanitarian crisis could reportedly escalate, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer urged to end arms sales to Israel and impose sanctions.

Eno has been vocal in his support for Palestine. He was also part of a cohort of artists that also included Massive Attack who signed an open letter to Field Day, urging it to distance itself from global investment firm KKR. The firm owns the festival’s parent company Superstruct Entertainment and invests “billions of pounds in companies which, for example, develop Israeli underground data centres, and advertise real estate on illegally occupied land in Israeli settlements in the West Bank”.

Last October, the artist implored the International Criminal Court to “exercise the mandate it has been given to prosecute war crimes” in an open letter.

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