Report of UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories
Global Monopolies Supporting U.S./Israeli
Genocide Condemned
On July 3, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, presented her latest report to the 59th Session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). It is entitled From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide. It demands UN member states and private corporations based in these states, who are invested in and profiting from the U.S./Israeli genocide, take immediate action to end their complicity in the slaughter and displacement of the Palestinian people. In presenting her report to the 47-member Human Rights Council, Albanese pointed out: "This report shows why Israel's genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many."
The report is based on Albanese's investigation which shines a light on some of the biggest global monopolies who are doing business with Israel and profiting from the suffering of the Palestinian people. More than 200 submissions were received from member states of the UN, human rights groups, academics and researchers, and also the private sector on the activities of these monopolies. Her office established a database of more than 1,000 companies that provide what she terms "scaffolding" for the Israeli state and which have been instrumental in the deadly transformation of Israel's "economy of occupation" to "an economy of genocide."
In the report's Summary she notes: "While political leaders and Governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide. The complicity exposed by the report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives."
The report points out: "International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility -- each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people's self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it."
Speaking to the UNHRC, Albanese noted, among other things, "In the past 21 months, while Israel's genocide has devastated Palestinian lives and landscapes, the Tel Aviv stock exchange soared by 213 per cent, amassing U.S.$225.7 billion in market gains -- including $67.8 billion in the past month alone."
Albanese underscored how Palestine has become the "epicentre of a global reckoning, exposing the failure of international business and legal systems to uphold even the most basic rights of one of the world's most dispossessed peoples."
She pointed out: "Corporate actors are deeply entwined in the system of occupation, apartheid and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory. [...F]or decades, Israel's repression of the Palestinian people has been scaffolded by corporations, fully aware of and yet indifferent to decades of human rights violations and international crimes."
The report names more than 60 companies from arms manufacturers to oil and gas companies to heavy machinery manufacturers to companies in the tourism industry and others.
The report points out that the Israeli military has benefitted from "the largest ever defence procurement program" for the F-35 fighter jets, made by U.S.-based Lockheed Martin with the involvement of more than 1,600 other manufacturers and eight states, including Canada. Albanese informed the UNHRC that "companies supplying F-35s, drones and targeting technology, have enabled 85,000 tons of bombs -- six times the amount dropped on Hiroshima -- to be dropped on Gaza." The report names Elbit Systems in Israel, which is the biggest Israeli weapons manufacturer and the eighth largest weapons manufacturer in the world, and underscores that weapons manufacturing has become the "backbone of the Israeli economy."
The report also names energy companies such as Chevron in the U.S. and British Petroleum which supply corporations involved in the genocide. Construction equipment companies such as U.S.-based Caterpillar and south Korea-based HD Hyundai are also named for supplying the Israeli military with the heavy duty equipment used to bulldoze and destroy Palestinian homes and property and facilitate the theft and illegal settlement of Palestinian lands.
Technology companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM and others are named as "central to Israel's surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction." Palantir Technologies for example, has been providing AI tools to the Israeli military to identify Palestinian targets in the battlefield.
Large investment companies are identified as holding shares in companies directly involved in committing war crimes against the Palestinians. For example, Albanese's report notes that Blackrock is the second largest institutional investor in companies on the list including Palantir (8.6 per cent), Microsoft (7.8 per cent), Amazon (6.6 per cent), Alphabet (6.6 per cent) and IBM (8.6 per cent), and third largest in Lockheed Martin (7.2 per cent) and Caterpillar (7.5 per cent).
Albanese warned that the rulings of the International Court of Justice in 2024 and the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant, should put all actors including the corporations listed in her report on notice.
She added: "The serious, structural, and sustained nature of Israel's crimes and violations triggered a prima facie responsibility to disengage -- one that many corporations ignored. Corporate fixation on narrow technicalities and isolated violations rather than confronting the structural illegality of their ties to Israel's occupation is disingenuous."
Part of the report's Conclusions notes: "The entities named in the report constitute a fraction of a much deeper structure of corporate involvement, profiteering from and enabling violations and crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory. Had they exercised due diligence, corporate entities would have ceased involvement with Israel long ago. Today, the demand for accountability is all the more urgent: any investment sustains a system of serious international crimes."
The report calls on all member states of the UN to impose a full arms embargo on Israel, suspend trade agreements and hold to account all private corporations and institutions within their boundaries which are invested in and collaborating with Israel to end their complicity.
Albanese concludes her presentation to the Human Rights Council stating, "Palestine is a mirror held up to the world's moral and political failures." Recalling the consequences of corporate complicity in Nazi Germany, for example, Albanese said that "Palestine today represents a defining moment for humanity. Ending this genocide requires not only outrage but rupture, reckoning and the courage to dismantle what enables it."
The report itself ends with a call to action addressed to unions, legal professionals, civil and political organizations and ordinary citizens "to press for boycotts, divestments, sanctions, justice for Palestine and accountability at international and domestic levels; together we can end these unspeakable crimes."
To read the Special Rapporteur's report in full, click here.
(With files from UN, UNHRC, Press TV)
This article was published in
Volume 55
Number 16 - July 12, 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/TS55168.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca