Profiting from 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 Institute 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 that these firms and institutions sever ties with Israel or be held accountable for complicity in war crimes. It describes “Israel’s “forever–occupation” 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 Reconciliation Commission laid the legal framework for recognising 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–self-determination.”

“The genocide in Gaza has not stopped because it’s lucrative; it’s profitable for far too many.” “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.”

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.”

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.

The report lambasts corporations for providing Israel with weapons and machinery required to destroy homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship and leisure, livelihoods, and productive assets. The Communist Party–ruled China is not far behind, as Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which utilises land seized from Palestinians in the West Bank.

International banks and financial firms have also sustained the genocide through the purchase of Israeli treasury bonds.

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 Palestine.

[Contributed]

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Frontier
Vol 58, No. 5, Jul 27 - Aug 2, 2025