A new report from the United Nations exposes the deep involvement of hundreds of corporations, financial institutions, tech giants, universities, pension funds, and even charities in profiting from Israel’s occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.
In her latest report, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, named 48 companies and institutions — including Palantir Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, IBM, Caterpillar, Microsoft, and MIT — alongside major banks, financial firms, insurance companies, and real estate developers. All are accused of making billions from Israel’s illegal occupation and genocidal operations in direct violation of international law.
The report features a database of over 1,000 business entities cooperating with Israel’s war economy and calls for these corporations to sever ties or face accountability for complicity in war crimes.
Albanese describes Israel’s enduring occupation as “an ideal laboratory to test weapons and big tech innovations — a market that guarantees demand and supply in the absence of oversight and accountability, while private and public institutions reap profits unimpeded.”
Legally, the report draws on precedents like the post-Holocaust trials of industrialists and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to demonstrate corporate responsibility in international crimes. It references International Court of Justice rulings that obligate all entities to “fully and unconditionally withdraw from any related dealings and ensure Palestinians can exercise their right to self-determination.”
Albanese warned: “The genocide in Gaza continues because it is lucrative — it’s a business. Companies, including those from states that claim to support Palestinians, have profited for decades from the occupation economy. Israel has always exploited Palestinian land, resources, and lives, with profits growing as the occupation economy became an economy of extermination.”
A Profitable War Economy
The report explains how Palestinians have provided “limitless grounds” for testing new weapons, surveillance systems, and security technologies that are later deployed globally — from the Global South to the North.
It criticises companies that supply Israel with the weapons and machinery used to destroy Palestinian homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship, and vital livelihoods like olive groves.
Palestinian territories are described as a “captive market” because of severe Israeli restrictions on trade, investment, agriculture, fishing, and water access — all to benefit illegal settlements.
Global corporations profit by exploiting Palestinian labour and natural resources, building and operating settlements, and marketing these products and services both inside Israel and worldwide. This exploitation costs the Palestinian economy at least 35% of its GDP, the report notes.
The Financial and Academic Networks
Banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers have pumped billions into Israel’s unlawful occupation economy. Universities — as centers of intellectual growth and influence — have propped up the colonial ideology, developed weapons, ignored or endorsed systematic violence, and hidden the erasure of Palestinians behind claims of academic neutrality.
Research projects have advanced surveillance and prison technologies now used for mass targeting of Palestinians. Bulldozers once used to demolish homes in the West Bank are now tearing down entire cities in Gaza, preventing survivors from rebuilding their communities.
Israel’s war on Palestinians has also created a live laboratory for testing advanced military capabilities: air defense systems, drones, AI targeting tools, and the US-led F-35 fighter jet program — all marketed globally as “battle-tested.”
Since 2020, Israel has become the world’s eighth largest arms exporter. Its leading companies, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), have international partnerships with foreign arms manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin for the F-35 project.
The Tech and Supply Chain Machine
Many global factories contribute components for F-35 jets assembled and maintained in Israel in collaboration with Lockheed Martin. Since October 2023, Israel’s F-35 and F-16 fighters dropped an estimated 85,000 tonnes of mostly unguided bombs, killing and wounding over 179,411 Palestinians and destroying much of Gaza.
Drones and airborne surveillance devices have become daily tools of death in Gaza. Firms like Elbit, IAI, and MIT have advanced these drones to feature automatic capabilities and swarm flight formations over the past two decades.
Japanese robotics firm FANUC provides the robots used by Elbit, IAI, and Lockheed Martin to manufacture weapons. Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller–Maersk shipped arms, equipment, and raw materials to ensure a steady flow of U.S. military supplies into Israel after October 2023.
Israeli military spending jumped 65% from 2023 to 2024, hitting $46.5 billion — among the world’s highest per capita rates — while foreign munitions makers pocketed enormous profits.
Big Tech profits too: companies provide dual-use data collection and surveillance infrastructure, exploiting the occupation as a testbed. Tools include cameras, biometric monitoring, smart checkpoints, drones, cloud computing, AI, and data analytics that feed real-time ground operations.
How Silicon Valley Enables Occupation
Many Israeli tech startups emerge directly from the military. For example, NSO Group, founded by Unit 8200 veterans, developed the Pegasus spyware used to target Palestinian activists and later sold worldwide to spy on journalists and human rights defenders.
IBM, which once helped the Nazi regime, now trains Israeli military and intelligence units — especially Unit 8200 — and since 2019, it has run the population and immigration database, enabling Israel to monitor Palestinians and enforce its discriminatory permit system.
Microsoft, operating in Israel since 1989, is deeply embedded in prisons, police, universities, and settlements. Since 2003, it has merged its civilian and military technologies, acquiring multiple Israeli cybersecurity startups.
In 2021, Israel awarded Alphabet (Google) and Amazon a $1.2 billion contract for cloud infrastructure under Project Nimbus, funded by the Ministry of Defense.
Israel has also developed AI targeting systems like Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy? to process vast datasets and generate kill lists — reshaping modern warfare.
Palantir, the report notes, likely provided predictive policing and defensive infrastructure, accelerating battlefield software and AI-powered decision platforms. Palantir’s CEO responded to the allegations in April 2025, saying: “Most of the people we kill in Gaza are terrorists — yes, that’s true.”
Industrial Machines of Occupation
For decades, civilian technologies have doubled as colonial tools. Israeli operations heavily rely on machinery from global companies to flatten homes, infrastructure, and farmland. Since October 2023, such equipment has contributed to the destruction of 70% of Gaza’s buildings and 81% of its agricultural lands.
Caterpillar has supplied Israel with bulldozers used for decades to demolish homes, mosques, hospitals, and even bury wounded alive — and for killing activists like Rachel Corrie. The D9 bulldozer has been converted into a semi-autonomous weapon used in almost every major military operation since 2000.
Other companies complicit include HD Hyundai and its subsidiary Doosan (Korea), and Sweden’s Volvo Group, all supplying heavy machinery to destroy Palestinian property.
These corporations also help build settlements — constructing infrastructure, extracting and selling resources, producing agricultural goods, and even promoting tourism in illegal settlements marketed as normal destinations.
Settlements, Energy, and Blood Money
More than 371 settlements and outposts have been built with the help of these companies in a process aimed at replacing indigenous Palestinians.
The report names Hanson Israel, a subsidiary of Germany’s Heidelberg Materials, for plundering millions of tons of dolomite rock from West Bank quarries to build settlements.
Foreign companies have also developed roads and infrastructure linking settlements to Israel while excluding Palestinians. Global real estate companies like Keller Williams Realty operate branches in settlements, organizing property shows in Canada and the U.S. to sell thousands of illegal settlement apartments.
Rental platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb list properties inside illegal settlements.
China’s Bright Dairy & Food holds a majority stake in Tnuva, an Israeli dairy company using land confiscated from Palestinians in the West Bank.
In energy, Chevron extracts natural gas from Israel’s Leviathan and Tamar fields, paying $453 million in taxes to the Israeli government in 2023 — covering over 70% of Israel’s domestic energy consumption. Chevron and BP are among Israel’s largest crude suppliers, alongside the BTC pipeline from Azerbaijan and the CPC pipeline from Kazakhstan. These resources power facilities that sustain the occupation, including military operations in Gaza.
How Banks and Charities Sustain Genocide
Global banks fuel the war by buying Israeli government bonds. Between 2022 and 2024, Israel’s military spending jumped from 4.2% to 8.3% of GDP, driving a 6.8% deficit. To plug it, Israel issued $8 billion in bonds in March 2024 and $5 billion in February 2025.
Major backers include BNP Paribas, Barclays, and asset managers like BlackRock ($68 million), Vanguard ($546 million), and PIMCO (owned by Allianz, $960 million).
Religious charities have become financial pipelines for illegal projects, circumventing legal restrictions. The report cites the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and 20 affiliates funding military-linked settlement projects. Platforms like Israel Gives have funnelled donations to soldiers and settlers since October 2023.
Groups like Christian Friends of Israel (U.S.) and Dutch Christians for Israel (Netherlands) contributed $12.25 million in 2023 alone to settlement expansion.
The Global Machine Behind Genocide
Universities working with Israeli institutions have also been complicit. MIT’s labs, for instance, conduct research on weapons and surveillance funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense — covering drone swarming, target-tracking algorithms, and maritime surveillance.
Genocide needs a global network and billions in funding. Israel could not have waged this campaign of mass killing without this system. Those who profit from industrial-scale violence against Palestinians and their dispossession are criminals — just like the Israeli military units carrying out these atrocities — and must be held accountable.
