‘For some, genocide is profitable’: UN’s Francesca Albanese
“There have been people and organisations that have profited from the violence, the killing, the maiming, the destruction in Gaza and other parts of the occupied Palestinian territory,” the UN’s special rapporteur told reporters in Geneva.
“In the past 20 months … the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange soared by 213 percent, amassing over $220bn in market gains, including [a] $76.8bn [gain] in the past month alone; so clearly, for some genocide is profitable,” Albanese stated.
She said her latest report “exposes a system, something that is so structural and so widespread and so systemic that there is no possibility to fix it”, adding that if the corporate sector had observed due diligence, it “would have disengaged completely and totally from its entanglement with the Israeli economy”.
She added that if Palestine were a “crime scene”, it would have “the fingerprints of all of us through what we purchase … the banks where we put our money, the investments we make”.
Tech giants ‘making very clear’ products can be used for military purposes
We’ve spoken to Samer Abdelnour, a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Business School, about UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report on corporate complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
Abdelnour noted that the report alludes to “how companies, especially in Big Tech, are using and utilising the experience of the genocide in Gaza to enter into new markets”.
“That’s a massive market providing states and weapons companies with AI and cloud-computing services,” Abdelnour told Al Jazeera, explaining that companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft are producing “dual-use” technologies.
“Big Tech companies have shown that they’re willing and in fact already utilising their technology for the development of specifically autonomous weapons systems, or what’s known in the international community as killer robots,” he said.
“By participating in the genocide, companies like Google – also Amazon and Microsoft – are making very clear that they’re willing to pivot their technologies … for military purposes.”
In her report, Albanese said Microsoft, Alphabet – Google’s parent company – and Amazon have granted Israel “virtually government-wide access to their cloud and AI technologies”, enhancing its data processing and surveillance capacities.
Firms ‘central to Israel’s apartheid and settler colonial regime’: Rights group
Palestinian human rights group Al Haq has welcomed the report from Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, on corporate complicity in Israeli abuses against Palestinians.
“Corporations continue to service Israel’s settlement enterprise, surveillance regime, and war economy,” the group said in a statement.
Al Haq noted that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the UN’s court – found in July of last year that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful.
“Nearly a year later, and over 21 months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, states have yet to act in accordance with these findings,” the group said. “What persists is a system of impunity, sustained not only by military force, but by a global economy that profits from Palestinian dispossession.”
