UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese told Al Jazeera her landmark report exposes corporate complicity in Israel’s occupation and Gaza offensive, with nearly half the named companies engaging – albeit often defensively – after being confronted with evidence of breaching international law.
She emphasised that while not all firms are genocide enablers, those supplying military tech or profiting from settlements have “crossed red lines,” citing Lockheed Martin and Airbnb as examples.
Albanese detailed how Israel’s economy has boomed during Gaza’s destruction, with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange gaining $220bn, calling this an “economy of occupation.”
She urged legal accountability, stressing existing frameworks allow prosecutions for firms sustaining war crimes.
When asked about public complicity, Albanese acknowledged consumer ties to companies like Booking.com but stressed collective power to boycott or pressure them, revealing she quit Airbnb over its settlement listings.
Comparing this to South African apartheid divestment, she argued current outrage could force change, noting historic precedents where businesses faced consequences for enabling atrocities.
The report, she said, aims not to disrupt markets but to enforce ethical boundaries when “civilians are starved and pulverised.”
Albanese concluded by framing this as a pivotal moment to halt corporate profiteering from oppression.
Which global companies are benefiting from the genocide in Gaza? | Inside Story
115,718 views Jul 5, 2025 #FrancescaAlbanese #IsraelGazaWar #AlJazeeraEnglish
The UN Special Rapporteur says some of the world’s largest companies are complicit in and profiting from Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. Francesca Albanese’s landmark report identified Microsoft, Amazon and Google as just some of the major US tech firms helping Israel sustain its genocide in Gaza. But UN reports like this have no legal power. And Israel has rejected Albanese’s findings as ‘groundless’, saying it would ‘join the dustbin of history’. So, will big companies despite their financial interests, start to question their ties with Israel? And will consumers around the world bring commercial pressure on those implicated firms?Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Omar Barghouti – Co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
Vaniya Agrawal – Former software engineer at Microsoft who resigned earlier this year.
Michael Lynk – Human rights lawyer and a former UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Companies complicit in Israeli abuses ‘stand to take a major hit’ : Analysis
39,759 views Jul 4, 2025 #idf #MiddleEastNews #AlJazeeraEnglish
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor of media studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, says UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report about corporate complicity in Israeli abuses both raises legal questions and creates “bad public relations” for the firms named.
“Multiple cases are being made against Israel,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera, noting that several reports on Israeli violations of international law have been produced since the war on Gaza began.
Meanwhile, Doctor Tarek Loubani, an emergency physician and medical director of Glia International, joins Al Jazeera’s live from Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Reports on corporate complicity can be useful for informing public debate : Analysis
7,420 views Jul 4, 2025 #idf #MiddleEastNews #AlJazeeraEnglish
While international law has thus far failed to restrain Israel’s actions in Gaza, reports such as that by Albanese about the use of technology in possible war crimes could be used by rights groups seeking to hold companies that help supply Israeli forces responsible, a human rights lawyer tells Al Jazeera.
“Her report provides ammunition for nongovernmental organisations to be persuasive because companies don’t want to get a bad reputation as being a criminal company,” Geoffrey Nice said.
“They want the money a great deal, and as long as they’re not going to be at risk of losing their reputation, they’ll probably go ahead and get it, but if their reputation is going to go down with the public, who is very frightened about events around the world involving wars and breaches of the laws of conflict, they’ll run away from that.”
