Chris Hedges
The
latest United Nations report names hundreds of corporations, banks, technology
firms, universities, pension funds and charities that profit from the Israeli
occupation and genocide.

War is a business. So is
genocide. The latest report submitted by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur
on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, lists 48 corporations and
institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet
Inc., Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar
Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT),
along with banks and financial firms such as Blackrock, insurers, real estate
firms and charities, which in violation of international law are making
billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.
The report, which includes a
database of over 1,000 corporate entities that collaborate with Israel, demands
these firms and institutions sever ties with Israel or be held accountable for
complicity in war crimes. It describes “Israel’s “forever-occuption” as “the
ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech - providing
significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability -
while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.”
The post-Holocaust
industrialists’ trials and the South African Truth and ReconciliationCommission laid the legal framework for recognizing the criminal responsibility
of institutions and businesses that participate in international crimes. This
new report makes clear that decisions made by the International Court of
Justice place an obligation on entities “to not engage and/or to withdraw
totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings, and to ensure that
any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination.”
“The genocide in Gaza has not
stopped because it's lucrative, it's profitable for far too many,” Albanese
told me. “It's a business. There are corporate entities, including from
Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits
out of the economy of the occupation. Israel has always exploited Palestinian
land, resources and Palestinian life. The profits have continued and even
increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of
genocide.”
In addition, she said,
Palestinians have provided “boundless training fields to test the technologies,
test weapons, to test surveillance techniques that now are being used against
people everywhere from the Global South to the Global North.”
You can see my interview with
Albanese here.
The report lambasts corporations
for “providing Israel with the weapons and machinery required to destroy homes,
schools, hospitals, places of leisure and worship, livelihoods and productive
assets, such as olive groves and orchards.”
The Palestinian territory, the
report notes, is a “captive market” because of Israeli-imposed restrictions on
trade and investment, tree planting, fishing and water for colonies.
Corporations have profiteered from this “captive market” by “exploiting Palestinian
labour and resources, degrading and diverting natural resources, building and
powering colonies and selling and marketing derived goods and services in
Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory and globally.”
“Israel gains from this
exploitation, while it costs the Palestinian economy at least 35 per cent of
its GDP,” the report notes.
Banks, asset management firms,
pension funds and insurers have “channeled finance into the illegal
occupation,” the report charges. In addition, “universities — centres of
intellectual growth and power — have sustained the political ideology
underpinning the colonization of Palestinian land, developed weaponry and
overlooked or even endorsed systemic violence, while global research
collaborations have obscured Palestinian erasure behind a veil of academic
neutrality.”
Surveillance and incarceration
technologies have “evolved into tools for indiscriminate targeting of the
Palestinian population,” the report notes. “Heavy machinery previously used for
house demolitions, infrastructure destruction and resource seizure in the West
Bank have been repurposed to obliterate the urban landscape of Gaza, preventing
displaced populations from returning and reconstituting as a community.”
The military assault on the
Palestinians has also “provided testing grounds for cutting-edge military
capabilities: air defense platforms, drones, targeting tools powered by
artificial intelligence and even the F-35 programme led by the United States of
America. These technologies are then marketed as ‘battle proven.’”
Since 2020, Israel has been the
eighth largest arms exporter in the world. Its two biggest weapons companies
are Elbit Systems Ltd and the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd
(IAI). It has a series of international partnerships with foreign weapons
firms, including “for the F-35 fighter jet, led by United States-based Lockheed
Martin.”
“Components and parts constructed
globally contribute to the Israeli F-35 fleet, which Israel customizes and
maintains in partnership with Lockheed Martin and domestic companies.” the
report reads. Since October 2023, F-35s and F-16s jets have been “integral to
equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated
85,000 tons of bombs, much of it unguided, to kill and injure more than 179,411
Palestinians and obliterate Gaza.”
“Drones, hexacopters and
quadcopters have also been omnipresent killing machines in the skies of Gaza,”
the report reads. “Drones largely developed and supplied by Elbit Systems and
Israel Aerospace Industries have long flown alongside fighter jets, surveilling
Palestinians and delivering target intelligence. In the past two decades, with
support from these companies and collaborations with institutions such as the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drones used by Israel acquired automated
weapons systems and the ability to fly in swarm formation.”
Japan’s FANUC companies sell
automation products and “provide robotic machinery for weapons production
lines, including for IAI, Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin.”
“Shipping companies such as the
Danish A.P. Moller — Maersk A/S transport components, parts, weapons and raw
materials, sustaining a steady flow of United States-supplied military
equipment post-October 2023.”
There was a “65 per cent surge in
Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one
of the highest per capita worldwide.” This “generated a sharp surge in their
annual profits,” while “Foreign arms companies, especially producers of
munitions and ordnance, also profit.”
At the same time, tech companies
have profited from the genocide by “providing dual-use infrastructure to
integrate mass data collection and surveillance, while profiting from the
unique testing ground for military technology offered by the occupied Palestinian
territory.” They enhance “carceral and surveillance services, from
closed-circuit television (CCTV) networks, biometric surveillance, advanced
tech checkpoint networks, ‘smart walls’ and drone surveillance, to cloud
computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics supporting on-the-ground
military personnel.”
“Israeli tech firms often grow
out of military infrastructure and strategy,” the report reads, “as the NSO
Group, founded by ex-Unit 8200 members, did. Its Pegasus spyware, designed for
covert smartphone surveillance, has been used against Palestinian activists and
licensed globally to target leaders, journalists and human rights defenders.
Exported under the Defense Export Control Law, NSO group surveillance
technology enables ‘spyware diplomacy’ while reinforcing State impunity.”
IBM, whose technology facilitated
Nazi Germany’s generation and tabulation of punched cards for national census
data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management and
concentration camp capacity, is once again a partner in this current genocide.
It has operated in Israel since
1972. It provides training for Israeli military and intelligence agencies,
especially Unit 8200, which is responsible for clandestine operations, the
collection of signal intelligence and code decryption, along with counterintelligence,
cyberwarfare, military intelligence and surveillance.
“Since 2019, IBM Israel has
operated and upgraded the central database of the Population and Immigration
Authority, enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data
on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel,”
the report notes.
Microsoft, active in Israel since
1989, is “embedded in the prison service, police, universities and schools —
including in colonies. Microsoft has been integrating its systems and civilian
tech across the Israeli military since 2003, while acquiring Israeli
cybersecurity and surveillance start-ups.”
“As Israeli apartheid, military
and population-control systems generate increasing volumes of data, its
reliance on cloud storage and computing has grown,” the report reads. “In 2021,
Israel awarded Alphabet Inc. (Google) and Amazon.com, Inc. a $1.2 billion
contract (Project Nimbus) — largely funded through Ministry of Defense
expenditure — to provide core tech infrastructure.”
Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., and
Amazon “grant Israel virtually government-wide access to their cloud and
artificial intelligence technologies, enhancing data processing,
decision-making and surveillance and analysis capacities.”
The Israeli military, the report
points out, “has developed artificial intelligence systems such as ‘Lavender,’‘Gospel’ and ‘Where’s Daddy?’ to process data and generate lists of targets,
reshaping modern warfare and illustrating the dual-use nature of artificial
intelligence.”
There are “reasonable grounds,”
the report reads, to believe that Palantir Technology Inc., which has a long
relationship with Israel, “has provided automatic predictive policing
technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction
and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform,
which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated
decision-making.”
Palantir’s CEO in April 2025
responded to accusations that Palantir kills Palestinians in Gaza by saying,
“mostly terrorists, that’s true.”
“Civilian technologies have long
served as dual-use tools of settler-colonial occupation,” the report reads.
“Israeli military operations rely heavily on equipment from leading global
manufacturers to ‘unground’ Palestinians from their land, demolishing homes,
public buildings, farmland, roads and other vital infrastructure. Since October
2023, this machinery has been integral to damaging and destroying 70 per cent
of structures and 81 per cent of cropland in Gaza.”
Caterpillar Inc. has for decades
provided the Israeli military with equipment used to demolish Palestinian
homes, mosques, hospitals as well as “burying alive wounded Palestinians,” and
killed activists, such as Rachel Corrie.
“Israel has evolved Caterpillar’s
D9 bulldozer into automated, remote-commanded core weaponry of the Israeli
military, deployed in almost every military activity since 2000, clearing
incursion lines, ‘neutralizing’ the territory and killing Palestinians,” the
report reads. This year, Caterpillar “secured a further multi-millionaire
dollar contract with Israel.”
“The Korean HD Hyundai and its
partially-owned subsidiary, Doosan, alongside the Swedish Volvo Group and other
major heavy machinery manufacturers, have long been linked to destruction of
Palestinian property, each supplying equipment through exclusively licensed
Israeli dealers,” the report reads.
“As corporate actors have
contributed to the destruction of Palestinian life in the occupied Palestinian
territory, they have also helped construction of what replaces it: building
colonies and their infrastructure, extracting and trading materials, energy and
agricultural products, and bringing visitors to colonies as if to a regular
holiday destination.”
“More than 371 colonies and
illegal outposts have been built, powered and traded with by companies
facilitating the replacement by Israel of the Indigenous population in the
occupied Palestinian territory,” the report concludes.
These building projects have used
Caterpillar, HD Hyundai and Volvo excavators and heavy equipment. Hanson
Israel, a subsidiary of the German Heidelberg Materials AG, “has contributed to
the pillage of millions of tons of dolomite rock from the Nahal Raba quarry on
land seized from Palestinian villages in the West Bank.” The quarried dolomite
is used to construct Jewish colonies in the West Bank.
Foreign firms have also
“contributed to developing roads and public transport infrastructure critical
to establishing and expanding the colonies, and connecting them to Israel while
excluding and segregating Palestinians.”
Global real estate companies sell
properties in colonial settlements to Israeli and international buyers. These
real estate firms include Keller Williams Realty LLC, which has “had branches
based in the colonies” through its Israeli franchisee KW Israel. Last year
through another franchisee called Home in Israel, Keller Williams “ran a real
estate roadshow in Canada and the United States, jointly sponsored with several
companies developing and marketing thousands of apartments in colonies.”
Rental platforms, including
Booking.com and Airbnb, list properties and hotel rooms in illegal Jewish
colonies in the West Bank.
Chinese Bright Dairy & Food
is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which
utilizes land seized from Palestinians in the West Bank.
In the energy sector, “Chevron
Corporation, in consortium with Israeli NewMedEnergy (a subsidiary of the OHCHR
database-listed Delek Group), extracts natural gas from the Leviathan and Tamar
fields; it paid the Government of Israel $453 million in royalties and taxes in
2023. Chevron’s consortium supplies more than 70 per cent of Israeli energy
consumption. Chevron also profits from its part-ownership of the East
Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through Palestinian maritime
territory, and from gas export sales to Egypt and Jordan.”
BP and Chevron also serve as “the
largest contributors to Israeli imports of crude oil, as major owners of the
strategic Azeri Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Kazakh Caspian Pipeline
Consortium, respectively, and of their associated oil fields. Each conglomerate
effectively supplied 8 per cent of Israeli crude oil between October 2023 and
July 2024, supplemented by crude oil shipments from Brazilian oil fields, in
which Petrobras holds the largest stakes, and military jet fuel. Oil from these
companies supplies two refineries in Israel.”
“By supplying Israel with coal,
gas, oil and fuel, companies are contributing to civilian infrastructures that
Israel uses to entrench permanent annexation and now weaponizes in the
destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza,” the report reads. “The same infrastructure
that these companies supply resources into has serviced the Israeli military
and its energy-intensive tech-driven obliteration of Gaza.”
International banks and financial
firms have also sustained the genocide through the purchase of Israeli treasury
bonds.
“As the main source of finance
for the Israeli State budget, treasury bonds have played a critical role in
funding the ongoing assault on Gaza,” the report reads. “From 2022 to 2024, the
Israeli military budget grew from 4.2 per cent to 8.3 per cent of GDP, driving
the public budget into a 6.8 per cent deficit. Israel funded this ballooning
budget by increasing its bond issuance, including $8 billion in March 2024 and
$5 billion in February 2025, alongside issuances on its domestic new shekel
market.”
The report notes that some of the
world’s largest banks, including BNP Paribas and Barclays, “stepped in to boost
market confidence by underwriting these international and domestic treasury
bonds, allowing Israel to contain the interest rate premium, despite a credit
downgrade. Asset management firms — including Blackrock ($68 million), Vanguard
($546 million) and Allianz’s asset management subsidiary PIMCO ($960 million) —
were among at least 400 investors from 36 countries who purchased them.”
Faith-based charities have “also
become key financial enablers of illegal projects, including in the occupied
Palestinian territory, often receiving tax deductions abroad despite strict
regulatory charitable frameworks,” the report reads.
“The Jewish National Fund
(KKL-JNF) and its over 20 affiliates fund settler expansion and military-linked
projects,” the report reads. “Since October 2023, platforms such as Israel
Gives have enabled tax-deductible crowdfunding in 32 countries for Israeli
military units and settlers. The United States-based Christian Friends of
Israeli Communities, Dutch Christians for Israel and global affiliates, sent
over $12.25 million in 2023 to various projects that support colonies,
including some that train extremist settlers.”
The report criticizes
universities that partner with Israeli universities and institutions. It notes
that labs at MIT “conduct weapons and surveillance research funded by the
Israeli Ministry of Defense.” These projects include “drone swarm control — a distinct
feature of the Israeli assault on Gaza since October 2023 — pursuit algorithms,
and underwater surveillance.”
You can see my interview with the
MIT students who exposed the collaboration between the university Israeli
military here.
Genocide requires a vast network
and billions of dollars to sustain it. Israel could not carry out its mass
slaughter of the Palestinians without this ecosystem. These entities, which
profit from industrial violence against the Palestinians and mass displacement,
are as guilty of genocide as the Israeli militray units decimating the people
in Gaza. They too are war criminals, They too must be held accountable.
No comments:
Post a Comment