Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel, including a full arms embargo, and withdraw international support for what she termed an “economy of genocide”. Albanese made the comments in a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva as she presented her latest report, which named dozens of companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli repression and violence towards Palestinians.
The report, titled From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, detailed what it described as “the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory”. It singled out companies, including arms manufacturers, tech giants, heavy machinery companies and financial institutions, for their “complicity” in Israel’s repression of Palestinians, from sustaining Israeli expansion on occupied land to enabling the surveillance and killing of Palestinians.
Albanese’s speech was received with applause from delegates in Geneva, with Ireland’s ambassador to the UN, Noel White, saying that his government was progressing with legislation banning the import of goods from settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Read more here.
