Earlier this month, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese released another damning report titled From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide (PDF) which names over 60 companies profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories.
Amid the rising Palestinian death toll of Israeli-manufactured starvation, the report dissects how corporate interests underpin Israel’s settler-colonial project turned genocidal. It places these private profits from and contributions to these atrocities in the broader context of the UN’s principles on business and human rights, as well as the long history of private corporations driving colonial genocides, which the report refers to as “colonial racial capitalism”.
The report lays out in detail how companies across a range of sectors profit either from the displacement and eradication of Palestinians or from their replacement by Israeli settlements. Concretely, the sectors under investigation include “arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities.”
The role of major technology companies is discussed primarily under the header of “surveillance and carceralality: the dark side of the ‘start-up nation’”. There, the report collates many of the ways tech companies profit from Israeli apartheid and genocide that we have also been writing on for the past years.
For example, it outlines how Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM, and HP are among the companies identified as providing critical infrastructure and services that enable Israeli military and surveillance operations. How Microsoft operates its largest development centre outside the US in Israel, providing services across military, police, prison systems, and educational institutions. How Amazon and Google’s Project Nimbus represents a $1.2 billion cloud storage deal supporting Israeli operations. And how AI systems including Lavender, Gospel, and “Where’s Daddy” are being used as tools in military targeting operations.
How the genocidal violence and blatant disregard for any international humanitarian norm can continue so unfettered cannot be explained better than the report itself does:
While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, the present report shows why the genocide carried out by Israel continues: because it is lucrative for many. By shedding light on the political economy of an occupation turned genocidal, the report reveals how the forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech – providing boundless supply and demand, little oversight and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.
The clarity of the report, as well as the indefensible nature of the crimes it exposes, has made Albanese and her work a direct threat to the unhampered continuation of the genocide. The powerful nature of her reporting is exemplified by the US sanctioning Albanese personally and lobbying the UN to revoke her status as special rapporteur.
Building on the report’s bleak conclusions, Albanese ends the report with a burning plea to all of us:
The Special Rapporteur urges trade unions, lawyers, civil society and ordinary citizens to press for boycotts, divestments, sanctions, justice for Palestine and accountability at the international and domestic levels; together, the people of the world can end these unspeakable crimes. (…) What comes next depends on everyone.
See: UN special rapporteur report: “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide” at the United Nations.