UN Expert: Corporate Profiteering Sustains Israel’s Occupation and Genocide

A searing new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, has drawn global attention to what she describes as the corporate entrenchment of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians. The report links the machinery of occupation and war to a vast web of corporate profiteering, arguing that economic gain has actively enabled and legitimised Israel’s prolonged and illegal presence in Palestinian territories.

Albanese’s report comes amid intensified international scrutiny over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, its expanding settlement enterprise in the West Bank, and allegations of systematic human rights abuses since the 7 October 2023 escalation. According to the report, the humanitarian cost of the violence is staggering — but for some global corporations, it is also profitable.

Occupation for Profit: A Stock Market Surges Amid Ruins

In a stark juxtaposition, Albanese pointed to Israel’s economic boom in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe.

“In the past 21 months, while Israel’s genocide has devastated Palestinian lives and landscapes, the Tel Aviv stock exchange soared by 213 percent (USD), amassing $225.7 billion in market gains—including $67.8 billion in the past month alone. For some, genocide is profitable.”

The report paints a grim picture of a financial ecosystem built atop repression and impunity, calling it not merely a byproduct of conflict, but a strategically embedded and monetised occupation economy, reliant on corporate actors across sectors — from defense and technology to construction, finance, tourism, and academia.

48 Corporate Actors Named for Roles in Israel’s Economy of Genocide

Albanese’s report identifies 48 distinct corporate actors, along with their parents, subsidiaries, franchisees, licensees, and consortium partners, who are directly implicated in profiting from, facilitating, or normalising Israel’s ongoing military occupation and systematic human rights abuses.

Key categories include:

• Weapons manufacturers supplying F-35 fighter jets, drones, and targeting technologies used to deliver an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs on Gaza — a payload six times larger than the Hiroshima bombing.

• Tech giants operating AI labs, R&D hubs, and cloud data centers in Israel, leveraging Palestinian digital data for military targeting, what Albanese calls a “livestreamed genocide.”

• Construction firms providing machinery and materials used to demolish Palestinian homes, infrastructure, and cultural landmarks, particularly in Gaza.

• Energy companies sustaining Israel’s blockade and energy control over Palestinian territories.

• Financial institutions investing in or underwriting these sectors while ignoring the risks of complicity in international crimes.

• Seemingly neutral actors such as tourism platforms, universities, and retailers, who Albanese says have normalized apartheid and erased the Palestinian presence from their narratives.

Corporate Complicity and Legal Responsibility

According to the report, most of these entities have ignored their legal responsibilities under international human rights and humanitarian law. Many have failed to conduct proper human rights due diligence, and have instead treated Israel’s occupation as routine economic activity, despite clear and well-documented evidence of systemic abuses.

“These actors have entrenched and expanded Israel’s settler-colonial logic of displacement and replacement – and this is not accidental,” said Albanese. “It is the function of an economy built to dominate, dispossess, and erase Palestinians from their land.”

She added that the 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings and International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants relating to Gaza should serve as a wake-up call for businesses and governments alike.

“The serious, structural, and sustained nature of Israel’s crimes and violations triggered a prima facie responsibility to disengage — one that many corporations ignored.”

A Call to Action: Embargoes, Accountability, and Ethical Trade

Albanese urged UN Member States to take concrete steps, including:

• Imposing a full arms embargo on Israel

• Suspending trade and investment agreements

• Holding corporate entities legally and financially accountable for complicity in international crimes

She emphasized that corporate neutrality is a myth in the face of systemic injustice:

“Corporations cannot claim neutrality: they are either part of the machinery of displacement—or part of dismantling it.”

Palestine as a Mirror of Global Moral Reckoning

Albanese’s report is not only a condemnation of specific corporate and state actions; it also serves as a wider moral indictment of global systems that continue to profit from repression. She draws historical parallels with apartheid-era South Africa and corporate complicity in Nazi Germany, framing Palestine as a contemporary litmus test for the ethical accountability of modern markets.

“Palestine is a mirror held up to the world’s moral and political failures. Ending this genocide requires not only outrage but rupture, reckoning, and the courage to dismantle what enables it.”

As international legal proceedings gather momentum and civil society pressure mounts, the Albanese report adds yet another urgent voice to the growing demand for transparency, disengagement, and structural change in how the world’s most powerful economic actors conduct business amid occupation and war.