An Economy Of Genocide: Israel And The Albanese Report
What makes the investigative undertaking by Albanese useful is its examination of the corporate world and its links to the colonial, settler program of removing and displacing a pre-existing population. The machinery of conquest of any state necessarily involves not only the desk job occupants in civilian bureaucracies and high-ranking military commanders, but those in the corporate sector, eager to make a profit. 'Colonial endeavours and associated genocides,' writes Albanese, 'have historically been driven and enabled by the corporate sector. Commercial interests have contributed to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples of their lands – a mode of domination known as 'colonial racial capitalism'.'
Eight private sectors come in for scrutiny: arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction entities, those industries concerned with extraction and services, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities. 'These entities enable the denial of self-determination and other structural violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including occupation, annexation and crimes of apartheid and genocide, as well as a long list of ancillary crimes and human rights violations, from discrimination, wanton destruction, forced displacement and pillage to extrajudicial killing and starvation.'
Advertisement - scroll to continue reading
Central to the multifaceted economy of genocide, the report charges, is the military-industrial complex that forms 'the economic backbone of the State.' Albanese cites a stellar example: the F-35 fighter jet, developed by US-based Lockheed Martin, in collaboration with hundreds of other companies 'including Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A, and eight States.'
Since October 2023, the process of colonisation and displacement has assumed an air of urgency, aided by the private sector. In 2024, US$200 million was advanced for 'colony construction'. Between November 2023 and October 2024, 57 new colonies and outposts were established 'with Israeli and international companies supplying machinery, raw materials and logistical support.' Examples include the maintenance and expansion of the Jerusalem Light Rail Red Line, the construction of the new Green Line, encompassing 27 kilometres of new tracks and 50 stations in the West Bank. The infrastructure has proven to be invaluable in linking the colonial project to West Jerusalem. Despite some companies withdrawing from the project 'owing to international pressure', an entity such as the Spanish/Basque Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles has been a keen participant, along with suppliers of excavating machinery (South Korea's Doosan and Sweden's Volvo Group), and providers of materials for the light-rail bridge (Germany's Heidelberg Materials AG).
Beyond the structural and physical program of construction and displacement, all designed to extinguish any semblance of self-determination on the part of the Palestinians, come other features of the colonial project. A prominent feature of this, Albanese notes, is that of 'surveillance and carcerality'. Repressing Palestinians has become a 'progressively automated' affair, with tech companies feeding Israel's voracious security appetite with 'unparalleled developments in carceral and surveillance devices', some of which include closed-circuit television networks, biometric surveillance, advanced tech checkpoint networks, drone surveillance and cloud computing.
Palantir Technologies Inc., a specialist in software platforms, comes in for a special mention. 'There are reasonable grounds to believe Palantir has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scale-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision making.'
With the report released, the dance of dissimulation began. Lockheed Martin told the Middle East Eye that foreign military sales were not their preserve as far as accountability or cause of concern was, a lofty, business-like attitude unshackled from a moral compass. Such sales took place between governments, meaning that the US government would be best placed to answer any questions. Hand washing and deferrals of guilt is a private sector speciality after all.
In a more direct fashion, both Israel and the United States have continued their 'Hate Albanese' campaign, boringly reiterating old accusations while adopting novel interpretations of international law. Given the obvious loathing of international human rights conventions by Israeli officials and their US backers, this is decidedly rich, even more so given such jurisprudence as that of the International Court of Justice's Advisory Opinion of July 2024, and the International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (These developments figure prominently in Albanese's assessment.)
According to the ICJ, all States were under an obligation to 'cooperate with the United Nations' on ensuring 'an end to Israel's illegal presence in the Occupied Territory and the full realization of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination'. Israel's continued presence in the OPT was illegal. 'It is a wrongful act of a continuing character which has been brought about by Israel's violations, through its policies and practices, of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.'
From Israel came the view that the report was 'legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of [Albanese's] office.' A June 20 letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres from the Trump administration obtained by The Washington Free Beacon took issue with Albanese's supposed record of 'virulent antisemitism and support for terrorism', bitchily sniping at her legal qualifications. Little is actually mentioned of international law in the bilious missive by US Ambassador Dorothy C. Shea, acting representative to the UN, other than a snotty dismissal of UN General Assembly resolutions and advisory opinions by the International Court of Justice as lacking any binding force 'on either States or private actors'.
Shea claims Albanese 'misrepresented her qualifications for the role by claiming to be an international lawyer despite admitting publicly that she has not passed a legal bar examination or been licensed to practice law.' A fabulous accusation, given the surfeit of allegedly qualified legal members working in the Israeli Defense Forces and other offices executing their program of displacement, starvation and killing.
The accusations against various corporate entities, notably over 20 US entities, were 'riddled with inflammatory rhetoric and false accusations', making such daring claims of 'gross human rights violations', 'apartheid' and 'genocide'. These charges, ventured through letters of accusation, constituted 'an unacceptable campaign of political and economic warfare against the American and worldwide economy.'
It comes as little surprise that the security rationale – one that says nothing of the Palestinian right to self-determination, let alone rights to life and necessaries – marks the entire complaint against Albanese's apparent lack of impartiality. 'Business activities specifically targeted by Ms. Albanese contribute to and help strengthen national security, economic prosperity, and human welfare across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.' Just don't mention the Palestinians.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scoop
24 minutes ago
- Scoop
The Fanatic's Gaze: Louis Theroux And The West Bank Settlers
He has made it his bread and butter for years: finding society's kooky representatives, the marginal, the crazed and the touched. But what makes Louis Theroux's The Settlers troubling is its examination of a seemingly inexorable process in the West Bank, one that has, at its core, a religious, nationalist goal of cleansing and violent purification. The documentary captures Israel's modern colonial project in real time, and it is one most ugly. The target of the cleansing and eradication – the Palestinians in the West Bank – is awesomely horrific, rationalised by suffocating checkpoints, brooding military posts and endless harassing points of invigilation. Having already made The Ultra Zionists, a documentary on the same subject in 2011, Theroux finds, notably after the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, a missionary project of hardened purpose. The edge on the 'ultra' has been taken off. The fringe has moved to the centre. Sanitised areas (the language of ethnic scrubbing) pullulate with armed settlers holding forth with pious defiance in outposts of a land seen as promised to them. One figure interviewed, the gun-toting Texas-born settler Ari Abramowitz, sees the Bible as supplying Jews 'a land deed to the West Bank.' Palestinian shopfronts remain closed for security reasons, and Palestinians barred from visiting designated areas without appropriate approval. Theroux's guide and local peace activist Issa Amro is unable to accompany him to areas in Hebron where settlers are offered continuous military protection. When Theroux and his guides visit a ruined Palestinian home in Tuwuni in the night, an IDF patrol with laser sights is not far behind. At one checkpoint, Theroux is accosted by a balaclava-wearing Israeli soldier, provoking him to bark 'Don't touch me'. They are solid reminders to Palestinians living in the West Bank that they are living on borrowed time, a measure that diminishes with each day. Daniella Weiss emerges as a central character, a figure who has led the Israeli settler movement for half a century. She reveals being clandestinely escorted by the sympathetic soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza to scout for possible future settlements. (800 families, goes the proud claim, await moving into them.) She grins, mocks and scorns, but does, at some point, demonstrate to Theroux her view about settler violence. For her, it does not exist. In that familiar pattern, even if it did exist, it would be justifiable because of Palestinian violence. When Theroux says he had seen a video of a Palestinian being shot, Weiss retorts that the Israel shooter was merely retaliating. She proceeds to shove him, hoping he returns the serve. He considers the display sociopathic. Yet sociopathy and the limitless well of self-defence are firm friends for Weiss and any number of IDF personnel and lawyers who see their cause as worthy. All are incapable of violence, incapable of genocide. Critics have taken issue with the lens of the documentary, suggesting that the camera can deceive because of its sharp focus. The sampling of settlers shows them as almost comically villainous, their fanaticism icy and cruelty assured. The British-Palestinian writer and activist John Aziz was frustrated by the 'selection of nasty extremists who lurched between denying the existence of Palestinians and expressing the desire to conquer more land and drive out the Arab inhabitants.' He even takes issue with the keen interest in Weiss, curious given that any program about Israeli settlements would look bare without her starring role. Aziz misses the point in his demand for an elusive nuance. People once seen as marginalised pioneers seeking land in the West Bank have become the spear of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After October 7, 2023, it has become modish to entertain notions of expulsion, dispossession and seizure, to finally bury Palestinian notions of self-determination. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and follower of the teachings of Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who, after moving to Israel, declared 'the idea of a democratic Jewish state [a] nonsense', is symptomatic of this shift. Convicted on eight charges, among them supporting a terrorist organisation and incitement to racism, Ben-Gvir regularly advocates ethnic cleansing of both the West Bank and Gaza. In May this year, the Israeli Security Cabinet initiated the land registration process in Area C in the West Bank, a process which determines final ownership of land and extinguishes other claims. The Ministry of Defense was unequivocal about the goal of this move in a statement: 'to strengthen, consolidate, and expand Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.' While the Israeli settlers seem to fail to see the Palestinians as human beings with valid territorial claims, international law has little time for the legality of the settlements. They are structures of a colonising project, and one regarded as unlawful. In its advisory opinion from July 2024, the International Court of Justice found that Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was 'a wrongful act of a continuing character which has been brought about by Israel's violations, through its policies and practices, of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.' The settler project can also count on abundant support from the private sector. In her report to the UN Human Rights Council From economy of occupation to economy of genocide Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, lashes 'corporate entities' international and local who have been enriched by 'the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide.' This includes heavy investments in the West Bank colonising enterprise, be it through supplying logistics, construction equipment and building materials. With the Israeli settlers being the shock troops of the Israeli State, Weiss's boast captured by Theroux is being realised: 'We do for governments what they can't do for themselves.'
Otago Daily Times
10 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Rental frustrations drive tenant match-making app
Flatly co-founder Quinn McCarthy. PHOTO: SUPPLIED Three friends are setting out to make flat-finding and flatmate- or tenant-finding a much easier experience. Christchurch-based Quinn McCarthy, who lived in Queenstown for three years till his rental was put on Airbnb and he couldn't find another, has co-created a free house-sharing app, myflatly — the website's and the Instagram account's @myflatly McCarthy's journey originated when he tried to find new flatmates through Facebook and was overwhelmed by hundreds of desperate flat-hunters at the same time as he was busy at work. He says Flatly was born out of this frustration and is "aiming to revolutionise the long-term rental market". Starting up in Queenstown and Christchurch, it's designed for both people looking for a rental and for existing tenants and landlords looking to fill a room or rooms. "The housing conversation is often about affordability and availability, but the flatmate search itself is chaotic, overwhelming and unregulated," says McCarthy, who's started Flatly with Christchurch-based Tawanda Sunguni and UK-based Veerain Patel. "Our biggest hope is we can start targeting some of those people who are sitting on the fence with a room; they might be on a mortgage or something, but listing on Facebook is just too much of an effort, right? "They don't want to deal with 200 people." McCarthy says they want to build up their house-sharing solution with extra information, like, for example, a guide on average rentals. His particular gripe is landlords/head tenants charging, say, $200 extra for a couple as against an individual — "that's just straight price-scalping". As for his own situation, "I wouldn't be opposed to moving back down [to Queenstown] if all the stars aligned". "It's an ironic thing because I wouldn't have done this if I didn't have to leave."
Newsroom
a day ago
- Newsroom
Tourism's role in peace and prosperity
The Nobel Peace Prize has been won by presidents, fighters for the oppressed, people who've changed history and put their lives on the line for a cause. So when Washington-based Auckland-educated Lelei Tuisamoa Lelaulu found out he'd been nominated, it's not surprising he thought it was a prank. He is a Samoan development entrepreneur whose leadership has extended across the globe including the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the World Indigenous Games. He chairs the Earth Council Alliance and a council at George Washington University School of Business. This year he told the Metropolitan Museum of Art to take its reimagined Rockefeller Wing arts collections on tour to the places they came from. Lelaulu is nominated 'for his work in reshaping the narrative around tourism – not just for leisure, but as a vessel of peace'. He's still trying to get his head around the nomination. 'It's a huge honour and I'm just a little bit stunned waiting for something to happen. It's a little bit overwhelming.' Lelaulu was nominated by NGOs associated with the Anglican Church and the United Nations. 'It was a bit out of the blue in a sense 'cause I don't really go to Anglican churches or any churches generally, so I thought it was a prank initially, and then they called back and it was true, and they sent the recommendation and I saw it and away it went. We'll see what happens.' But what does tourism have to do with peace? 'I think that tourism is the only real peace dividend,' he says. 'It's basically the industry of peace because if you think about it … this is the largest transfer of resources from the haves to the have nots in history – voluntarily. No one's forcing it. 'Then you think about the hundreds of millions of lives that have been lost because people tried to wrest resources from others over the centuries; it's just astounding but tourism has reversed all that,' Lelaulu said. If it's handled properly tourism gets resources and money to communities instead of corporations 'and it has enormous possibilities for allowing communities to improve their education, their health, their welfare and their dignity – their ability to live lives of dignity. That's why I think the industry of peace is tourism,' he says. Lelaulu explains to Lei'ataualesa Susana Lei'ataua in a special episode of The Detail that bilateral aid goes mostly to the treasuries of countries whereas tourism handled properly goes to families and the communities directly 'and it builds them up and gives them a whole new dignity of life'. But how does tourism fit in when it comes to conflict zones? 'In terms of conflict we have to end the conflicts before tourism can apply. It is very much the industry of peace because once there's peace then people tend to stream across borders to see what their former adversaries are like and what they did and how they live, and this then builds up connections between former adversaries and this is what I hope for,' Lelaulu said. Lelaulu is quick to point out the 'holus bolus' introduction of tourists is not the answer. The wine routes in France are a successful example of a planned approach to directing a huge percentage of tourists outside of an over-crowded Paris, benefiting the agricultural sector. He says we could take a leaf out of that book. 'New Zealand is obviously one of the most beautiful countries on the planet but it also has one of the richest cultural ethnic heritages that should be looked at, and pulling people out of the major tourist destinations is the way to do it.' Lelaulu highlights Māori tourism. 'It's incredibly innovative and very effective. If you look at what they're doing in the South Island, looking at Kaikōura and what the iwi are doing there that's enormous. It's one of the most successful tourism projects in New Zealand … and they're very, very generous with the local communities which is an important thing.' Lelaulu was a guest speaker at the re-opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's US$70m revamped Michael C Rockefeller Wing in New York, and had a strong message for them. 'We should move these wonderful pieces of art around the world so that more and more people should see them … move it overseas to the major art capitals of the world and also to the places of origin like Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji. Let the people there see the beauty of what emerged from their artists a long, long time ago.' Lelaulu suggested these collections would tour for six months at a time and door-take profits would be split with the destinations to upgrade and build 'museologically sound' facilities for the artefacts. 'In a sense as the collection goes around and as you return some of the artefacts now and then where applicable, the collection that comes back to the Metropolitan Museum is going to be richer and more valuable than the exhibit that left, so I called it a cultural diplomatic continuum.' The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 10, with the award ceremony taking place on December 10 in Oslo, Norway. Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
