The Global Economic Benefit From the Genocide of Palestinians

By Ubai al-Aboudi and Vijay Prashad  –  Aug 1, 2025

On June 16, 2025, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, Francesca Albanese, published a new report titled From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide. Spanning over thirty-nine pages, the report indicts several major multinational corporations of profiting from the  occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Among the implicated are familiar names: Amazon, Blackrock, Google, Lockheed Martin, and Volvo. Each of these firms, and many universities (particularly the Massachusetts Institute for Technology), have differential investments in the displacement of Palestinians and their replacement by Israeli settlers. Albanese ends her report with reasonable requests: stop profiting from the genocide and cut ties with Israel.

On July 9, the United States State Department sanctioned Albanese for her work, which prevents her from any access to her own property in the United States. The US State Department claimed that “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West”. The United Nations responded that this imposition of sanctions sets a “dangerous precedent”. “The use of unilateral sanctions against Special Rapporteurs or any other UN expert or official is unacceptable,” said UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. Albanese is not the first person to be sanctioned in this way. In June 2025, the US sanctioned International Criminal Court judges based on the same US Executive Order.

The furore around US sanctions against high United Nations officials and its institutions distracts people from the fundamental arguments laid out in the report by Albanese and her team. It is almost as if US Secretary of State Marco Rubio decided to use the sanctions weapon to make it the  centre of attention. In many ways, Rubio succeeded. The central argument of the report was set aside, as the main issue became whether or not it was acceptable for the United States to sanction UN officials.

Genocide in the clouds
Albanese’s report indicates that several major multinational firms are involved in profiting from the genocide. These firms are from the following areas: construction, education, finance, service provision, and weapons production. There are names one would expect: the major arms manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin. A full list of these arms companies is maintained by the American Friends Services Committee (AFSC). The AFSC section on Amazon is worth reading:

Israeli military intelligence uses AWS [Amazon Web Services] servers to store masses of intelligence information on almost everyone in Gaza. Since 2021, Amazon has been providing cloud services to the Israeli government under Project Nimbus, a USD 1.2 billion contract it shares with Google. It provides cloud services to all branches of the Israeli government, including the military, the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak/”Shin Bet”), Police, and Prison Services; weapons manufacturers Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael; and government agencies related to Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank.

Albanese’s report mentions Project Nimbus and informs us that it is mainly funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Then her report dives deeper:

Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon grant Israel virtually government-wide access to their cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, enhancing data processing, decision making and surveillance and analysis capacities. In October 2023, when the Israeli internal military cloud overloaded, Microsoft, with its Azure platform, and the Project Nimbus consortium stepped in with critical cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Their Israel-located servers ensure data sovereignty and a shield from accountability, under favourable contracts offering minimal restrictions or oversight. In July 2024, an Israeli colonel described cloud tech as a weapon in every sense of the word, citing these companies.

It is clear that these tech companies not only provide information for the Israeli occupation and genocide, but they also provide a “shield from accountability” since they protect key information that would be actionable in an international war crimes tribunal. Albanese referred to Colonel Racheli Dembinsky, the commander of Israel’s Center of Computing and Information Systems, which provides data processing for the Israeli armed forces. At a conference called IT for IDF at Rishon Lezion, near Tel Aviv, Colonel Dembinsky said that Israel’s army relied upon the cloud storage and artificial intelligence services from these multinational tech giants (which, in her lecture slides, are Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure). Colonel Dembinsky stated that her army unit – known as Mamram – used an “operational cloud” in its internal servers that she said is a “weapons platform”. There is no public information of the total amount that these firms have made from the genocide.

In 2024, employees from Amazon and Google created the No Tech for Apartheid campaign. At an event in New York, as Barak Regev of Google Israel was speaking, a Google employee interrupted him and said, “I am a Google Cloud software engineer and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance.” Scores of Google engineers were fired for their association with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign. It has not stopped the group from organizing more protests.

The blind one
In 2003, Peter Thiel and others founded a tech company called Palantir. The name comes from Lord of the Rings and refers to the crystal ball that can see from afar. Thiel, a deeply conservative libertarian who fundamentally believes in “Western Civilization”, made his money in PayPal and Facebook before entering the highly lucrative world of military and intelligence contracts (Palantir’s first major investor was the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel). In 2015, Palantir began to do business in Israel, particularly with its military and intelligence complex, by providing data integration, data analysis, and the use of artificial intelligence. In December 2023, during the first phase of the Israeli genocide, Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp told Fox Business, “We are well known in Israel.”

On January 12, 2024, Palantir formed a partnership with the Israeli military industry to assist in the genocide. Palantir’s Executive Vice President Josh Harrish said at that time, “Both parties have mutually agreed to harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions.” The phrase “war-related missions” is straight-forward and could otherwise be described as genocide, which is exactly what the International Court of Justice called it on January 26, 2024. Palantir’s TITAN system is being used for precision targeting, which – given the number of civilian casualties in Gaza – has been precise in the murder of non-combatants. On April 30, 2025, at the Hill & Valley Forum, Palantir’s CEO Karp was asked about the death of Palestinians, and he answered that Palantir had been responsible for killing “mostly terrorists, that’s true”. This is, of course, not true, since most of the people killed in Gaza have been civilians (it would be useful to look at the overall data on Palestinian death tolls since 2008, held by the United Nations; if all those killed had been part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, then these groups would have been an even more formidable armed force). Based on Karp’s comments at the 2024 meeting in Tel Aviv and at the 2025 Hill & Valley Forum, Albanese’s report concludes that they are “indicative of executive-level knowledge and purpose vis-à-vis the unlawful use of force by Israel, and failure to prevent such acts or withdraw involvement”.

As news reports have come out of the association of Palantir with the deportation of migrants from the US, protests have mushroomed across the United States at Palantir offices. These protests link the genocidal work of Palantir against the Palestinians and the collaboration with the US state to deport migrants.

Profiting off the occupation
For decades now, investigators with the United Nations and other groups (including Palestinian organizations) have documented the way in which corporations have profited off the Israeli occupation of Palestine. According to a conservative estimate by UNCTAD, Israel generates USD 41billion annually from its direct exploitation of the West Bank (around 7% of Israeli GDP). This does not take into account other indirect benefits that emanate from having a captive population to exploit.

In 2020, the United Nations published a database of companies that had been profiting from the illegal settlement activity in the West Bank. Most of the companies in the database had their domicile within Israel, but many were multinational corporations. The familiar ones included Airbnb (United States), Booking.com (Netherlands), Expedia (United States), TripAdvisor (United States), General Mills (United States), and Motorola (United States). The WhoProfits website, meanwhile, not only has an accurate database of firms involved in profiteering from the genocide and the occupation, but it also produces important reports on specific areas of activity – such as its 2024 report on Greenwashing Dispossession: The Israeli Renewable Energy Industry and the Exploitation of Occupied Natural Resources. The Don’t Buy Into Occupation coalition’s report from December 2023 lists European financial firms and their profitable tentacles within the illegal Israeli settlement project.

On June 10, 2025, the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), Sadaka Ireland, and al-Haq (Palestine) brought a series of lawsuits in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States against Airbnb for its operations in the Occupied Palestine Territory. In 2018, Airbnb said that it would “consider the impact we have and act responsibly”, but it then reversed course and – as GLAN notes – “continues to list over 300 accommodations listed for rent” in the West Bank. These three organizations argue that one of the crimes here is the “money laundering by Airbnb of proceeds of Israeli war crimes.” These are serious charges, particularly in Ireland and the United Kingdom, which have strong money laundering legislation. GLAN’s senior lawyer, Gerry Liston said, “These are the first ever cases to apply anti-money laundering legislation in the UK and elsewhere to business activity in the illegal Israeli settlements. They demonstrate that senior executives of companies profiting from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory risk prosecution for a very serious criminal offense.”

The impact of these companies profiteering from occupation is not limited to the income they generate at the expense of Palestinians, but they also contribute to land grabbing and environmental pollution. One example is the Geshuri agrochemical company, which affects indigenous Palestinian communities in Tulkarem and leads  to higher rates of cancer, asthma, and eye and respiratory health anomalies. This example is unfortunately not unique in the West Bank as Israeli companies profiteer from extractive and polluting practices across the West Bank.

Having a captive population with no rights to experiment on has proven to be a valuable resource for the development of intrusive espionage technologies. A prime example is the Pegasus spyware, which was developed in close cooperation between the Israeli army infamous intelligence unit 8200, Israeli academia, and private capital. This spyware was used by repressive governments globally to crack down on dissidents with over 50,000 people targeted.

According to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), “In 2020, Israeli cyber firms received approximately 31% of global investment in the sector. Acquisitions of Israeli cyber companies generated some USD 4.7 billion, and Israeli cyber exports stood at USD 6.85 billion. Israel has become a leader in the spyware and surveillance market, providing data collection and processing expertise, including spyware, facial recognition, “user tracking tools” used for policing, electoral manipulation, and more.

Genocide gentry
The focus on senior executives is notable. A new project, Genocide Gentry, focuses directly on the senior executives of weapons manufacturers (Boeing, Elbit Systems of America, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX – formerly Raytheon). These are the main defense contractors for the US Pentagon. The group – developed by the open-source online platform LittleSis – names the senior leadership of these firms, tracks their connections to other corporations, and then finds their linkage to cultural institutions. It is these institutions that are the weakest link in the chain, since they do not like to be associated directly with genocidal corporations even if they need the money.

Genocide Gentry offers a simple three-step strategy:

1. Better understand your city/university/workplace’s connection to genocide. Their database helps track whether a member of a weapons company sits on a board of institutions in a city.
2. Identify cultural and educational institutions in your community with ties to weapons companies.
3. Utilize the profiles of board members and donors to specific examples of how local institutions are linked to the war machine.

Here’s an interesting example: Kathy Warden is the CEO of Northrop Grumman and on the board of directors of Catalyst, a global nonprofit that helps build workplaces that “work for women”. UN Women estimates that at least 28,000 women and girls have been killed in Gaza by weapons – some of them from Northrop Grumman, and UN Women warns that a million women and girls are facing starvation in Gaza due to the war machine fuelled by Northrop Grumman. So much for Catalyst’s “brand” of standing for women.

There are successes to this strategy. In early 2024, activists began to pressure musicians who had been slated to play at the South by Southwest SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. In March, Ella Williams (who plays as Squirrel Flower) announced that she would not go to SXSW because it was sponsored by arms manufacturers. On Instagram, she wrote, “SXSW is platforming defense contractors including Raytheon subsidiaries as well as the US Army, a main sponsor of the festival…. Genocide profiteers like Raytheon supply weapons to the IDF, paid for by our taxes. A music festival should not include war profiteers. I refuse to be complicit in this and withdraw my art and labor in protest.” Seventy-nine other performers decided to boycott the festival. By June 2024, SXSW said it would cut its links to the US Army and to Raytheon (RTX).

What is evident as the genocide continues, is that there are vested interests of big investors to protect their profits that result from the continued occupation of Palestine. The situation is grim and ugly, but there is now sufficient evidence – such as from – Albanese’s report – of the wretchedness of Zionism’s occupation of Palestine and its treatment of Palestinians. There is also plenty of indisputable evidence that reveals how corporations and their technologies have been used to repress Palestinians, and continue to find their way to be used globally. This evidence must be acted upon, either by international bodies, by courts, or by public opinion. Silence is not an option.

We are not free until everyone is free.

Ubai al-Aboudi is the Director of the Bisan Center for Research and Development (Ramallah, Palestine). Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

 

(Peoples Dispatch)