radiofree.asia

Francesca Albanese tears into ‘racial capitalism’ for underpinning Israel’s genocide against Palestinians

UN expert Francesca Albanese has released a new report. In it, she tears into the “engine of racial capitalism” for enabling and propping up Israel’s transformation into an “economy of genocide”. And she calls out the world’s biggest corporations by name, saying they “must be held to account”.

Francesca Albanese

Francesca Albanese is the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. She explains in the report “why the genocide carried out by Israel continues”, insisting it’s:

because it is lucrative for many.

She adds that Israel’s:

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

Through dystopian developments, Israel has “automated” Palestinians’ repression more and more. And it’s through “United States tech giants establishing subsidiaries and research and development centres in Israel” that Israel has been able to make “unparalleled developments in carceral and surveillance services”.

Calling the kings of genocidal capitalism out by name

In a week where the UN has already called on the British government not to proscribe Palestine Action‘s non-violent disruption of Israel’s economy of genocide, Francesca Albanese names Palestine Action’s key target – Israeli arms company Elbit Systems – as one of the genocide profiteers. “The military-industrial complex has become the economic backbone” of the apartheid state, she says, and:

For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture

Large international corporations, meanwhile, have not been neutral on Israel’s genocide. They haven’t even been supportive of it from afar. They have overwhelmingly been active participants in the “joint criminal enterprise” of genociding Palestinians. Albanese insists:

Business continues as usual, but nothing about this system, in which businesses are integral, is neutral. The enduring ideological, political and economic engine of racial capitalism has transformed the Israeli displacement-replacement economy of occupation into an economy of genocide.

In particular, she calls out US accomplices Microsoft, Google (Alphabet Inc.), Amazon, Palantir Technologies, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Hewlett and Packard (HP), BlackRock, Vanguard, Chevron, Drummond, Caterpillar, Airbnb, Booking.com, Keller Williams Realty, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (USA). She names companies from other Western states too, several of which have become targets for disruption by Palestine Action and other anti-genocide groups. These include BP, Maersk, Allianz, AXA, Leonardo, Barclays, Hyundai, Volvo, Glencore, Heidelberg, CAF, BNP Paribas, Technical University of Munich, and the University of Edinburgh. She points out that a number of “faith-based charities have also become key financial enablers of illegal projects, including in the occupied Palestinian territory, often receiving tax deductions abroad”.

Albanese adds:

The complex web of corporate structures – and the often obscured links between parents and subsidiaries, franchises, joint ventures, licensees etc. – implicates many more. The investigation behind the present report demonstrates the lengths to which corporations will go to conceal their complicity

Other global corporate powerhouses she doesn’t mention in the report have also been supportive of Israel’s crimes in some way, such as Apple, Meta (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp), HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, Walmart, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, General Motors, Volkswagen, and Toyota.

The complicity of global capitalist forces in the Gaza genocide is seemingly even greater than the economic relations many powerful companies maintained with Nazi Germany both before and during the Holocaust.

The genocide couldn’t have happened without the backing of Western capitalists. There must be consequences.

Since October 2023, Francesca Albanese explains:

an international network of corporations has propped up the Israeli economy. Blackrock and Vanguard rank among the largest investors in arms companies pivotal to the genocidal arsenal of Israel. Major global banks have underwritten Israeli treasury bonds, which have bankrolled the devastation, and the largest sovereign wealth and pension funds invested public and private savings in the genocidal economy, all the while claiming to respect ethical guidelines.

If corporate bosses cared about acting ethically, though, this simply wouldn’t have happened. As she insists:

Had proper human rights due diligence been undertaken, corporate entities would have long ago disengaged from Israeli occupation. Instead, post-October 2023, corporate actors have contributed to the acceleration of the displacement-replacement process throughout the military campaign that has pulverized Gaza and displaced the largest number of Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967

She points out that corporate entities profiting from war crimes could be committing “an offence under money laundering and proceeds of crime legislation”. And she says “post-Holocaust industrialists’ trials” provide an important precedent “for recognizing the international criminal
responsibility of corporate executives for participation in international crimes”.

Calling for urgent action from companies, Albanese stresses that:

Corporate relations with Israel must cease until the occupation and apartheid end and reparations are made. The corporate sector, including its executives, must be held to account, as a necessary step towards ending the genocide and disassembling the global system of racialized capitalism that underpins it.

And she asserts that they should:

pay reparations to the Palestinian people, including in the form of an apartheid wealth tax along the lines of post-apartheid South Africa.

It’s rare to hear international institutions calling out capitalism’s close relationship with genocidal behaviour. But the fact is that big-business profiteering, with no interest in ethics, is the norm today. And if the world is to avoid a further slip into the type of dystopian future Israel has been modelling for us – with Western support and participation – there must be consequences.

The economy of genocide must fall, and so must those who have fuelled it and propped it up.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.