Afrasianet - Chris Hedges - American military writer and correspondent - The latest United Nations reports show the involvement of hundreds of companies, financial and technological institutions, universities, pension funds and charities in profiting from the Israeli occupation and genocide of Palestinians.

In a report submitted by the Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanesi, 48 companies and institutions were named, including: Palantir Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, IBM, Caterpillar, Microsoft, and MIT, in addition to banks and major financial companies such as BlackRock, insurance companies, real estate and charities, all of which - in violation of international law - make billions from the occupation and genocide of Palestinians.

The report contains a database of more than a thousand business entities that cooperate with Israel, and calls on these companies to cut ties with it or face accountability for complicity in war crimes.

The report describes Israel's ongoing occupation as "an ideal environment for testing the weapons and technology of big business—  providing demand and supply, without oversight, and without accountability—while private and public institutions reap profits unhindered."

The report relies in its legal framework on the post-Holocaust industrial trials and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to establish the responsibility of companies and institutions implicated in international crimes. He notes that the ICJ's decisions oblige entities to "fully and unconditionally withdraw from any related dealings and ensure that Palestinians are able to self-determination."

"The genocide in Gaza has not stopped because it is rewarding, and profitable for many," Albanese said. It's a business. There are companies, even from countries considered friendly to the Palestinians, that have been profiting for decades from the occupation economy. Israel has always exploited Palestinian land, resources and life, and profits have continued to increase as the occupation economy has turned into an economy of annihilation."

It added that the Palestinians "have provided limitless fields to test the technology, weapons and surveillance techniques that are now being used against people from the South to the Global North."

The report attacks companies that "provide Israel with weapons and mechanisms to destroy homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship, livelihoods, and livelihoods, such as olive groves."

The report describes the Palestinian territories as a "captive market" due to Israeli restrictions on trade, investment, tree planting, hunting, and access to water for settlements.

The companies have profited from this market by "exploiting Palestinian labor and resources, diverting natural resources, building and operating settlements, and marketing their products and services within Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and globally."

The report states that Israel benefits from this exploitation, while "costing the Palestinian economy at least 35 percent of GDP."

The report notes that banks, asset managers, pension funds and insurance companies "pumped money into the economy of illegal occupation." "As centers of intellectual growth and power, universities have supported the political ideology underpinning the colonization of Palestinian territories, developed weapons, condoned or supported systemic violence, while international research projects have concealed the erasure of Palestinians under the guise of academic neutrality."

Surveillance and imprisonment techniques have also been developed into tools to indiscriminately target the Palestinian population. The report notes that heavy bulldozers previously used to demolish homes and infrastructure in the West Bank are now being used to destroy cities in Gaza, preventing residents from returning and rebuilding their communities.

The war on the Palestinians has also provided "a testing environment for sophisticated military capabilities: air defense systems, drones, AI targeting tools, and even the U.S.-led F-35 program." He then markets this technology as tested in battle."

Since 2020, Israel has become the world's eighth-largest arms exporter. Its two main companies,  Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), have numerous international partnerships with foreign arms companies, including the F-35 program led by Lockheed Martin.

Many international factories contribute to the manufacture of F-35 components in Israel, while Israel customizes and maintains these aircraft in cooperation with the American Lockheed Martin and local companies.

Since October 2023, Israel has used F-35 and F-16 fighter jets to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, most of them unguided, killing and injuring more than 179,411 Palestinians and devastating Gaza.

Drones and flying surveillance devices have also become daily killing tools in Gaza's skies. Developed by companies such as Elbit and IAI in collaboration with MIT, these aircraft have gained automatic capabilities and mass flight configurations over the past two decades.

Companies like Japan's  FANUC provide robots to produce weapons, used by companies such as Elbit, IAI, and Lockheed Martin.

Shipping companies such as Denmark's A.P. Muller Maersk have transported equipment, weapons and raw materials, ensuring a steady flow of U.S. military equipment to Israel after October 2023.

The report notes a 65 percent increase in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024, reaching $46.5 billion, one of the highest rates globally per capita. Foreign munitions producing companies have made huge profits from this.

At the same time, tech companies profited from the genocide by providing dual-use infrastructure for data collection and surveillance, leveraging the occupation environment as a testing ground. These technologies include: cameras, biometric surveillance, smart checkpoints, drones, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and data analytics to support military operations on the ground.

The report states that Israeli technology companies often emerge from military infrastructure, such as NSO Group, founded by former members of Unit 8200. Pegasus has been used to spy on Palestinian activists, and its technology has been sold globally to target leaders, journalists and human rights defenders.

 IBM, which previously helped facilitate Nazi operations in Germany, today provides training to the Israeli military and intelligence, especially Unit 8200. Since 2019, the company has run a population and immigration database, enabling Israel to monitor Palestinians and support a discriminatory permit system.

Microsoft has been operating in Israel since 1989, integrated into prisons, police, universities and settlements. Since 2003, it has integrated its civilian and military technologies and acquired Israeli cybersecurity startups.

In 2021, Israel awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Alphabet and Amazon to provide cloud infrastructure for Project Nimbus, funded by the Defense Ministry.

Israel has developed artificial intelligence systems such as Lavender, Gosbel, and Where's My Father? , to analyze data and identify targets, reshaping modern warfare.

There are "reasonable grounds", according to the report, to believe that Palantir provided automated predictive police technologies and defense infrastructure to accelerate the development of military software, and an artificial intelligence platform for real-time decisions on the battlefield.

In April 2025, the company's director responded to the accusations, saying that those killed by his company in Gaza were "mostly terrorists, yes that's right."

Civic technology tools have long been used as dual-use colonial tools. Israeli military operations have relied heavily on equipment from international companies to destroy homes, infrastructure and farms. Since October 2023, this equipment has contributed to the destruction of 70 per cent of buildings and 81 per cent of Gaza's agricultural land.

For decades, Caterpillar has supplied Israel with bulldozers that have been used to demolish homes, mosques, hospitals, and even bury wounded alive, and killed activists like Rachel Corrie. Israel has turned the  D9 bulldozer into an automatic weapon used in almost every military operation since 2000.

Other companies involved include Korea's HD Hyundai, its subsidiary Doosan, and Sweden's Volvo Group, which provides equipment used to destroy Palestinian property.

These companies are also involved in settlement construction, including infrastructure, extracting and selling materials, energy and agricultural products, and even promoting tourism in settlements as if they were ordinary destinations.

More than 371 settlements and outposts were constructed, facilitated by these companies, in a process aimed at replacing the indigenous Palestinian population.

These projects include Hanson Israel, a subsidiary of Germany's Heidelberg Materials, which looted millions of tons of dolomite rock from quarries in the West Bank to build settlements.

Foreign companies have also contributed to the development of roads and infrastructure to connect settlements to Israel, while excluding Palestinians.

International real estate companies sell settlement real estate to Israeli and foreign buyers, such as Keller Williams Realty, which has set up branches in the settlements and organized real estate deals in Canada and America to sell thousands of apartments in the settlements.

Leasing platforms such as Booking.com and Airbnb also offer properties in illegal settlements.

Chinese dairy and food company Bright owns a majority stake in Israel's Tnova Company, which uses land confiscated from Palestinians in the West Bank.

In the energy sector, Chevron extracts natural gas from the Leviathan and Tamar fields, and the coalition paid $453 million in taxes to the Israeli government in 2023, supplying more than 70 percent of Israel's energy consumption.

Chevron and BP are the largest suppliers of crude oil to Israel, along with the Azerbaijani BTC  pipeline and the Kazakh CPC  pipeline.

These resources are used in installations serving the occupation, including military operations in Gaza.

International banks also supported the genocide by buying Israeli treasury bonds.

From 2022 to 2024, Israeli military spending increased from 4.2% to 8.3% of GDP, resulting in a deficit of 6.8%, financed by issuing bonds worth 8 billion in March 2024 and 5 billion in February 2025.

Key backers include BNP Paribas, Barclays and asset management funds such as BlackRock ($68 million), Vanguard ($546 million) and Allianz's PIMCO ($960 million).

Religious charities have also become instruments for financing illegal projects, despite legal restrictions on this type of funding. The report notes that the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and 20 of its subsidiaries funded military-related settlement projects. Since October 2023, platforms such as Israel Givez have provided funding to soldiers and settlers.

Organizations such as Christian Friends of Israel (US) and Dutch Christian Faure Israel (Netherlands) also supported $12.25 million in settlement projects in 2023.

The report criticizes universities collaborating with Israeli institutions and states that MIT  laboratories carry out research in the field of weapons and surveillance, funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, that includes drone control, pursuit algorithms, and maritime surveillance.

Genocide needs a global network and billions in funding. Israel could not have carried out this mass murder without this regime. Those who profit from industrial violence against Palestinians, and from their displacement, are criminals like Israeli military units. They must be held accountable as well.