You’re sipping a light, aromatic coffee when your friend brings up the topic of boycotting Israel. He hands you a report by Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, and begins describing the findings.
The study opens by highlighting how commercial interests historically led to the dispossession of indigenous peoples and the crushing of their rights, or “colonial racial capitalism”. Greed paved the path for colonisation, but the commercial onslaught was also an instrument to further inferiorise the subaltern.
We soon learn that racial capitalism is alive in Palestine today. Albanese’s investigation does not shy away from naming the corporations that have become stakeholders in genocide.
Microsoft, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Amazon provide Israel with government-wide access to cloud and AI systems — the electronic backbone of Palestinian displacement. These collaborations are shielded from accountability by “data sovereignty,” the claim that secrecy is required for national security.
Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer has been modified “into automated, remote-commanded core weaponry of the Israeli military, deployed in almost every military activity since 2000… ‘neutralising’ the territory and killing Palestinians.”
Since October 2023, Caterpillar equipment has carried out mass demolitions of Palestinian homes and mosques, damaged hospitals, and even crushed civilians to death. Instead of divesting, Caterpillar signed another multi-million-dollar contract with Israel in 2025.
You notice a mention of Korea, and the first thing that comes to mind is K-pop. But Korean companies like HD Hyundai (distinct from the carmaker), its subsidiary Doosan, and even Sweden’s Volvo, better known for stylish cars and trucks, are all implicated in the report for razing Palestinian homes and farmland.
The company behind the ubiquitous shipping containers we see on highways, A.P. Moller–Maersk, provides logistics services to Israel, making it central to sustaining the illegal economies of settlements.
Similarly, Amazon, your no-nonsense, go-to stop for buying things with minimal human interaction, not only works with the Israeli Ministry of Defence through Project Nimbus, but also operates directly in settlements, often offering preferential services to Israelis and operationalising apartheid.
All these businesses are sustained by an unholy nexus of the Israeli state and the global financial sector.
Barclays and BNP Paribas underwrote Israeli treasury bonds that shored up the state’s finances as its military budget nearly doubled from 4.2% to 8.3% of GDP between 2022 and 2024.
Asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, and PIMCO (an Allianz subsidiary) were among the buyers. Universities, pension funds, and ordinary savers rarely realise how their hard-earned money can end up underwriting massacres.
Many so-called “ethical” investors are, in fact, facilitators and beneficiaries of the occupation. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), for example, despite boasting the “world’s most comprehensive ethical guidelines,” raised its investment in Israeli companies by 32% after October 2023, just as the carnage unfolded. Your savings may well be tied up in one of these “ethical” funds.
But then your friend offers some relief. As of mid-2025, he tells you, the GPFG has begun reversing course: divesting from 11 Israeli firms, including Caterpillar, and cutting several billion kroner from its holdings.
Am I complicit? You wonder. Even universities and research institutions have forged alliances with Israel — not only providing it with historical, archaeological, and legal legitimacy, but also partnering with arms firms such as Elbit Systems, IAI, IBM, and Lockheed Martin to produce the tools of surveillance, crowd control, urban warfare, facial recognition, and targeted killing.
Strikingly, the otherwise towering MIT, the dream destination for countless students, is conducting research funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defence. In fact, Israel is the only foreign military that MIT accepts funding from.
The University of Edinburgh, meanwhile, maintains partnerships with Leonardo S.p.A and Ben Gurion University, contributing to research directly connected to the targeting of Palestinians.
You wonder why some countries must file elaborate reports to avoid blacklisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), while others — aiding, facilitating, and effectively engineering ethnic cleansing in the heart of the once-fertile crescent — are left free to savour the blood-stained bonanza with impunity.
Albanese’s report is only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it lies a vast, dark economy of genocide, extending across the globe.
The gore and indiscriminate killings that Israel has unleashed in Gaza, 85,000 tonnes of explosives, six times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, are unimaginable. Appallingly, 70 percent of the victims are women and children.
Amid the abundance of the rich world, the UN’s declaration of an Israeli-made famine in Gaza, capitalised on by the global military-industrial complex, is an insult to our collective existence.
The least we can do today is boycott what we can, and stand resolutely for divestment and sanctions against Israel.
The question is not how it will affect the occupation. The question is our own humanity.
Usman Masood is an assistant professor of economics at SZABIST University, Islamabad.
Follow him on X: @Masood_u
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.