SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
barclays
New Campaign Targets Companies Profiting From Illegal Israeli Settlements in West Bank
"We cannot allow international companies and governments to profit from occupation, dispossession and human suffering," said one peace advocate.
Sep 15, 2025
A collective of more than 80 different groups on Monday announced a new campaign aimed at companies that do business with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The campaign, called "Stop Trade With Settlements," is being sponsored by more than 80 civil society organizations, including Oxfam International, and it names multiple companies including Barclays Bank, Siemens, and Carrefour as firms that are benefiting from selling goods and services to the settlements.
In a statement introducing the campaign, Oxfam explained why "ending trade with settlements is a necessary step to uphold human rights, protect Palestinian livelihoods, stop Israel’s settlement expansion, and end the unlawful occupation" of the West Bank.
"Over the last four years, Israel has significantly accelerated its settlement activities in the West Bank," the organization said. "Most of these approvals were granted for settlements located 'deep into the West Bank,' further fragmenting Palestinian territory and imposing new movement restrictions on Palestinians."
"The revival of the ‘E1’ plan... is effectively cutting off Palestinian movement between the northern and southern West Bank," the group added, referring to the E1 settlement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on last week. The plan will "bury" the possibility of a Palestinian state by cutting East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank.
Oxfam then walked through how these firms are profiting from doing business in the West Bank.
German travel conglomerate TUI, for example, offers a bus tour through the West Bank for tourists to meet with settlers who are illegally living on Palestinians' land.
Siemens, meanwhile, was found to have provided "equipment and services for settlement-linked transportation infrastructure including a rail deal worth over €1 billion."
The report singled out Barclays for providing $18.1 billion in loans to settlement-linked firms over a three-and-a-half-year period, which the report said made it "the third largest creditor of corporations complicit in settlement trade."
Anne-Marie Clements, engagement officer at the Catholic charity Justice and Peace Scotland, spoke of her recent trip to the occupied West Bank, where she met Palestinians who "told me of land confiscation, settler violence, home demolitions, military checkpoints and the denial of water: all daily realities of the occupation that make life unbearable."
Clements said the reality on the ground in the West Bank made it imperative for her organization to support the campaign.
"The Stop Trade With Settlements campaign shines a light on how the illegal settlements, an integral part of the occupation, are sustained through trade," she said. "Ending this trade is not just a political necessity but a moral imperative. We cannot allow international companies and governments to profit from occupation, dispossession, and human suffering."
Keep ReadingShow Less
XR Glues Shut Barclays Across UK for Financing 'Climate Breakdown'
"The inconvenience we've caused this morning is small in comparison to the catastrophic events already happening due to Barclays' financing of fossil fuels," said one campaigner.
Nov 27, 2023
"We have closed this bank today."
That's the opening line on an explanatory poster, plastered on dozens of Barclays branches across the United Kingdom on Monday.
"Barclays has been on the wrong side of history for centuries," the poster continues. "Financing the Atlantic slave trade, apartheid in South Africa, weapons, and fossil fuels. $190 billion in finance for fossil fuels since 2015. Time to change."
"Barclays are choosing short-term profits over a livable future and a lot of us are sick of the measly progress they're making."
The posters were left overnight by activists with Extinction Rebellion (XR), sister organization Money Rebellion, and allied groups, who superglued the doors shut at nearly 50 branches—inspired by a 2020 Greenpeace action targeting the bank.
"We're responding to public attitudes and targeting the perpetrators of climate breakdown, not ordinary people, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused to staff and customers," said an XR campaigner in a statement. "The inconvenience we've caused this morning is small in comparison to the catastrophic events already happening due to Barclays' financing of fossil fuels."
The climate groups pointed to this year's annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, which shows that Barclays has poured $190.58 billion into the fossil fuel industry since 2015, when world leaders finalized the Paris agreement. Parties to that deal aim to keep global temperature rise this century "well below" 2°C, with an ultimate goal of limiting it to 1.5°C.
Already, "human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C," relative to preindustrial levels, according to a March Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
A United Nations analysis published last week ahead of the upcoming COP28 U.N. climate talks projects that currently implemented policies put the world on track for 3°C of warming by 2100.
Responding to the Monday action, a Barclays spokesperson told ITV that "aligned to our ambition to be a net-zero bank by 2050, we believe we can make the greatest difference by working with our clients as they transition to a low-carbon business model, reducing their carbon-intensive activity whilst scaling low-carbon technologies, infrastructure, and capacity."
"We have set 2030 targets to reduce the emissions we finance in five high emitting sectors, including the energy sector, where we have achieved a 32% reduction since 2020," the spokesperson added. "In addition, to scale the needed technologies and infrastructure, we have provided £99 billion of green finance since 2018, and have a target to facilitate $1 trillion in sustainable and transition financing between 2023 and 2030."
Climate campaigners argue that such policies are far from enough, given that the bank continues to finance fossil fuel projects.
"Barclays are pumping billions into the fossil fuel industry, completely at odds with advice from the International Energy Agency, United Nations, and IPCC," said a Money Rebellion activist who took part in the action. "Barclays are choosing short-term profits over a livable future and a lot of us are sick of the measly progress they're making, as they hide behind their lies and greenwash."
Keep ReadingShow Less
New 'Blame Wall Street' Campaign Launched as Climate Emergency Grips Planet
"These companies could stop the flow of money to fossil fuels today, but they are choosing greed instead," said organizers with the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition.
Sep 01, 2022
Hundreds of organizations announced plans on Thursday to launch a mass mobilization this fall aimed at holding accountable those that allow destructive fossil fuel extraction to continue, specifically the Wall Street banks that have poured more than $1 trillion into oil and gas projects in recent years.
The Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, which includes more than 200 climate action groups, called on people across the U.S. to join "Blame Wall Street" public actions that are already planned in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities where campaigners will "connect the dots between the extreme weather events harming communities and the corporations fueling the climate crisis."
"There are plenty of people to be angry at: fossil fuel companies, which exist to make massive profits off of poisoning our air, water, and planet," Alec Connon and Arielle Swernoff, organizers with Stop the Money Pipeline, wrote at Common Dreams Thursday. "Politicians, who are bought and sold by wealthy tycoons, and whose climate policy--years in the making--was still riddled with giveaways to the fossil fuel industry. And finally: Wall Street."
As the Rainforest Action Network showed in a report released earlier this year, since the Paris climate agreement was forged in 2015, JPMorgan Chase has invested $382 billion in fossil fuel projects. Citigroup is the second-largest funder of oil and gas extraction, pouring $285 billion into projects, and Wells Fargo follows close behind at $275 billion.
Bank of America, Barclays, TD, and Morgan Stanley are also part of what the report labeled the "Dirty Dozen" and are among the banks Stop the Money Pipeline will target with their "Blame Wall Street" campaign this fall.
Fossil fuel companies also rely on insurance to build their infrastructure, and BlackRock and Vanguard are two of the largest investors in oil and gas projects, Connon and Swernoff wrote.
"These companies could stop the flow of money to fossil fuels today, but they are choosing greed instead," they said. "When we look around at the devastation caused by heat, flooding, hurricanes, and climate disaster, and we think about who to blame, Wall Street should sit at the top of the list."
This fall, the Stop the Money Pipeline will welcome anyone concerned about the climate crisis, extreme weather like the monsoons that recently caused unprecedented flooding and killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan, and the fossil fuel investments made by banks that millions of Americans rely on to join or organize public actions across the country.
\u201cAlready this year, we\u2019ve witnessed unprecedented climate disasters: heatwaves, drought, floods & fires. \ud83c\udf21\ufe0f\ud83d\udd25\u26a1\u26c8\ufe0f\ud83c\udf0a\n\nWe\u2019re calling out those responsible: banks, insurers & investors funding fossil fuels. \nJoin the organizing call 9/7: https://t.co/OYj2ChPiRj \n\n#BlameWallStreet\u201d— Stop the Money Pipeline (@Stop the Money Pipeline) 1661968930
"Wherever you live--and regardless of whether you're new to activism or have been organizing for years--we want to support you in organizing to hold the funders of climate chaos accountable," wrote Connon and Swernoff, noting that Stop the Money Pipeline will be offering training and 1:1 coaching for anyone new to organizing.
Although Pakistan is responsible for just 0.3% of greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth's atmosphere, they said, it is currently suffering a humanitarian disaster induced by the fossil fuel-driven heating of the planet.
Catastrophes like Pakistan's, Europe's historic drought, and the drying-up of China's rivers and lakes "are happening because of a political and economic system designed to make some (mostly white, mostly male) people exceptionally rich from extracting and burning fossil fuels, while the rest of the world is left to suffer," wrote Connon and Swernoff.
"It's time to get angry, take to the streets, and hold those responsible for the climate crisis responsible," they wrote.
The coalition is also planning to hold an organizing call on September 7 to explain how advocates can organize "Blame Wall Street" demonstrations in their own communities.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular