The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) welcomes the release of the landmark report From economy of occupation to economy of genocide by UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese.
The report builds on years of international legal scholarship and civil society documentation to expose how Israel’s economy is structured around occupation, colonisation, disposession and now, the genocide of Palestinians, and how the corporate sector supports and profits from these international law violations.
The report, which analyses the complicity of eight private sectors – arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities – concludes that states and companies must immediately reconsider all financial and institutional ties with Israel’s war economy.
In doing so, it buttresses the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion of July 2024, which found that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful, and that states must not render aid or assistance that sustains it.
This new report carries urgent implications for Australian private and public sectors, with states, companies and institutions that invest in trade with Israeli entities at risk of criminal liability for enabling and profiting from Israel’s crimes.
Albanese highlights sovereign wealth and pension funds as “significant financiers” of Israel’s human rights abuses across Palestine.
Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, holds investments in Israeli arms manufacturers like Elbit Systems ($1.3 million), a company specifically highlighted in the report for its “critical domestic supply of weaponry, and reinforce[ment] of Israeli military alliances through arms exports…”
Meanwhile, almost all Australian superannuation funds are investing billions of dollars into companies identified in this report, including Elbit, Lockheed Martin, tourism operators Airbnb and Booking.com, gas companies Delek and Paz Oil and Israeli banks.
The report also discusses the role of universities in both collaborating in the research and development of tools for “surveillance, crowd control, urban warfare, facial recogition and target killing; tools that are effectively tested on Palestinians” as well as for partnering with Israeli institutions operating in areas directly harming Palesitnians.
In doing so, Albanese acknowledged the “vital work” of students and staff in holding universities to account and demanding that they divest and cut ties.
APAN endorses the recommendations of the report, urging the Australian private sector to:
- Cease all business activities and terminate relationships linked with contributing to and causing human rights violations against the Palestinian people.
- Pay reparations to Palestinians, including in the form of an apartheid wealth tax.
APAN also demands that the Australian government heed the report and urgently:
- Impose country-level sanctions and a two-way arms embargo on Israel, including on dual use items, technology and civilian heavy machinery.
- Impose sanctions, including asset freezes, on Israeli individuals and entities responsible for human rights abuses against Palestinians.
- Suspend or prevent all trade agreements and investment relations.
- Enforce legal accountability for Australian corporate entities involved in violations of international law via their economic relationships with complicit Israeli companies.
Comments attributed to APAN President Nasser Mashni:
“This report confirms what Palestinians have been saying for a long time: doing business with Israel is not just unethical, it is actively enabling a genocide.
“This report makes it very clear that there is no such thing as a ‘neutral investment’ in Israeli corporations.
“This must be a wake-up call for Australian businesses and the government. They must immediately reconsider all financial and institutional ties with Israel’s war economy, starting with the Australian government’s Future Fund, universities, and superannuation funds.
“The proposed Red Lines Package would go a long way to ensuring that Australian legislation prevents trade relationships with genocidaires, and investments in the architecture of genocide, which is why the Australian parliament must support it when it is reintroduced later this year.
“After more than 21 months of Israeli genocide, and decades of illegal Israeli occupation and apartheid, there can be no more excuses. Australia must stop funding, arming and trading with the genocidal apartheid state of Israel.”