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Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund Weighs Divestment From Companies Complicit in Israeli Crimes
The world's largest pension fund recently adopted new ethics rules that could preclude it from owning shares in several U.S. arms firms.
Sep 04, 2024
Norway's $1.76 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the world's largest—could soon be forced to divest from companies including linchpins of the U.S. military-industrial complex due to updated ethics standards for businesses complicit in Israeli human rights violations in occupied Palestine.
Reuters reported Wednesday that the Government Pension Fund Global Council of Ethics informed the Norwegian Ministry of Finance on August 30 that it "believes the ethical guidelines provide a basis for excluding a few more companies" to its divestment list, "in addition to those already excluded."
The ethics council has been investigating whether to blacklist more companies ever since Israel began its bombardment, siege, and invasion of Gaza 334 days ago in response to the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
Since then, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians, while forcibly displacing, starving, and sickening millions more and obliterating the Gaza Strip. Israel is currently
on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Also under the council's consideration is Israel's conduct in the illegally occupied West Bank, where occupation forces have killed hundreds more Palestinians and settlers have carried out deadly pogroms under the protection—and sometimes with the participation—of Israel Defense Forces troops.
The fund's ethics rules—which are made by Norway's parliament, the Storting—were updated partly due to the ICJ's July advisory opinion that Israel's 57-year occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must immediately end.
Companies under consideration include U.S.-based RTX (formerly Raytheon), General Electric, and General Dynamics.
Under its previous policy, the fund divested from nine companies operating in the occupied West Bank. Targeted businesses build homes and roads in illegal Israeli settler colonies, as well as provide surveillance systems for the Israeli separation wall, often called the "apartheid wall," along the Green Line boundary and inside parts of the West Bank.
In June, another Norwegian pension fund, Kommunal Landspensjonskasse (KLP), divested its nearly $70 million stake in Texas-based Caterpillar, citing the use of its bulldozers in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
"For a long time, Caterpillar has supplied bulldozers and other equipment that has been used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure to clear the way for Israeli settlements," KLP head of responsible investments Kiran Aziz said at the time. "It has also been alleged that the company's equipment is being used by the Israeli Defence Forces in connection with its military campaign in Gaza."
Norway is one of several nations including Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, and
Armenia that have recently joined the nearly 150 countries that have formally recognized Palestinian statehood.
"In the midst of a war, with tens of thousands killed and injured, we must keep alive the only alternative that offers a political solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike: Two states, living side by side, in peace and security," Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in late May.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz threatened "severe consequences" for Norway, Spain, and Ireland after they announced they would recognize Palestine.
In a move that the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
called an "alarming precedent," Israel last month revoked the accreditation and visas of eight Norwegian diplomats over the Nordic nation's support for Palestine.
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Meet the Companies Profiting From Israel's War on Gaza
"As global resistance to war and apartheid grows, it is important that the public know exactly who is making this violence possible."
Dec 20, 2023
As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group's online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a "genocidal" war that sent defense stocks soaring.
Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. Since then, Israeli forces have killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza—sparking massive protests demanding a cease-fire around the world, including many led by Jewish people.
"War and attacks on civilians will never bring safety or peace to Israelis or Palestinians."
The growing death toll, displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and difficulties in delivering humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave have also increased scrutiny of a $14.3 billion package for the war that the Biden administration requested from Congress as well as criticism of the U.S. weapon-makers and billionaire donors who are arming and enabling the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
"The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without massive weapon transfers from the U.S.," said Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the group behind the tool, in a statement Wednesday. "As global resistance to war and apartheid grows, it is important that the public know exactly who is making this violence possible."
As the AFSC webpage details:
Shortly after October 7, the U.S. government started transferring to Israel massive amounts of weapons. Among these weapons, Israel received more than 15,000 bombs and 50,000 artillery shells within just the first month-and-a-half. These transfers have been deliberately shrouded in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny and prevent Congress from exercising any meaningful oversight.
Some of these weapons were purchased using U.S. taxpayers' money through the Foreign Military Sales program; some were direct commercial sales purchased through Israel's own budget; and some were replenished U.S. military stockpiles in Israel, which the Israeli military may also use. A list of known U.S. arms transfers is maintained by the Forum on the Arms Trade.
The webpage notes that the list is based on reporting, social media, and other open sources, and "focuses on weapons used by Israel because all Palestinian militant groups are already sanctioned and receive no support from Western governments or corporations."
For example, Boeing, the world's fifth-largest weapon manufacturer, makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces, as well as "multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits" that have been used "extensively" during the war, including in a bombing of Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp.
After decades of Israeli occupation forces using Caterpillar's armored D9 bulldozers to "demolish Palestinian homes and civilian infrastructure in the occupied West Bank and to enforce the blockade of the Gaza Strip," the machines "have been crucial in the Israeli military's ground invasion" of the enclave, according to AFSC.
While both of those war profiteers are based in the United States, the list isn't limited to U.S. firms, also calling out the world's seventh-largest weapon manufacturer, the U.K.'s BAE Systems, and Israel's largest weapon manufacturer, Elbit Systems, "one of the primary suppliers of weapons and surveillance systems to the Israeli military."
Other companies on the list include weapons giants such as General Dynamics, General Electric, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX—formerly Raytheon—as well as vehicle companies AM General, Ford, Oshkosh, Toyota, and drone manufacturers AeroVironment, Skydio, and XTEND.
The list also targets U.S.-based Colt's Manufacturing Company, which makes firearms including the M16, and Emtan Karmiel, an Israeli firm that "delivered some 12,000 rifles" to the country's forces within a week of October 7. It also includes Israel Aerospace Industries, a state-owned manufacturer that "makes multiple weapons systems specifically for the Israeli military."
Other Israeli firms listed include Plasan, which makes the SandCat light armored vehicle, and MDT Armor, which is owned by the Israeli company Shladot and makes the David Urban Light Armored Vehicle used by the military for patrols and reconnaissance.
The other foreign firms on the list are ThyssenKrupp, the German company that built four warships for Israel, and Nordic Ammunition Company, which makes the M141 Bunker Defeat Munition, a shoulder-fired "bunker-buster" rocket.
"As a Quaker organization with a long history of work in Palestine and Israel, including in Gaza, we support a full arms embargo to both Israeli and Palestinian militant groups," Perry stressed Wednesday. "War and attacks on civilians will never bring safety or peace to Israelis or Palestinians. We need a permanent cease-fire and to work toward a just and lasting peace in the region."
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Rachel Corrie 'Lives On in All of Us,' Say Palestinians 20 Years After IDF Killed Activist
One Palestinian journalist said the slain American activist "became a worldwide symbol of freedom and a source of inspiration for everyone who dreams of a world of justice and peace."
Mar 16, 2023
Palestinian rights activists on Thursday remembered the life and legacy of Rachel Corrie, the American human rights defender who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer on March 16, 2003 while trying to shield a Palestinian home from demolition in occupied Gaza.
"Rachel was 23 when she was killed. She could have satisfied her conscience by protesting against global injustice in a demonstration in America or by calling for a boycott of the aggressors," Palestinian journalist and activist Ahmed Abu Artema—who is from Rafah, where Corrie was killed—wrote for Mondoweiss.
"But her high sense of morality was not satisfied with these symbolic gestures," he added. "Her conscience would not rest without complete involvement, without standing side-by-side with us. That's why she came to Palestine."
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian politician, scholar, and activist, called Corrie "an icon of resistance, freedom, and self-sacrifice."
"Palestine is forever grateful," she added. "Always in our hearts. Rest in love and peace."
Corrie, who hailed from Olympia, Washington, was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led group resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine through nonviolent direct action.
"No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing, and word-of-mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here," Corrie wrote to family and friends on February 7, 2003, adding that she had "very few words to describe" what she saw in Gaza.
"An 8-year-old child was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here," she said.
"I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive," Corrie told a reporter two days before she was killed.
On the afternoon of March 16, Corrie received an urgent call from ISM activists telling her to rush to the home of Samir Nasrallah, a pharmacist who lived with his wife and three children near the Egyptian border in Rafah. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops were in the process of destroying homes in the area and ISM activists feared the Nasrallah's residence was next, as it was one of the few houses left standing in the area.
Corrie hurried to the home, clad in a fluorescent orange jacket and carrying a megaphone. As the IDF's American-made Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer approached Nasrallah's home, Corrie stood in its path and was fatally injured. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she died.
Corrie was not the last ISM activist to be killed or seriously wounded by Israeli forces. A month after her death, 21-year-old British student Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by an IDF sniper as he attempted to rescue Palestinian children from an Israeli tank that was firing in their direction. The shooting left Hurndall in a coma; he died nine months later in a London hospital.
IDF officials denied intentionally killing Corrie, despite court testimony from army officers that Corrie and other activists were legitimate military targets who were "doomed to death" for resisting Israeli occupation forces.
An IDF investigation concluded that Corrie had not been crushed to death by the bulldozer, despite an Israeli autopsy that concluded her death was caused by "pressure on the chest with fractures of the ribs and vertebrae of the dorsal spinal column and scapulas, and tear wounds in the right lung."
The IDF called Corrie's death a "regrettable accident" while blaming the ISM activists for their own harm because by "placing themselves in a combat zone."
Efforts in the United States by Corrie's family, activist groups, and U.S. Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) to achieve accountability and justice for Corrie bore no fruit.
While Corrie once wrote that she felt protected by "the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen," there were no such difficulties, just as there were no repercussions after Israeli warplanes killed 34 American sailors and wounded 173 others during a 1967 attack on the USS Liberty—an attack numerous top U.S. officials believe was deliberate.
In 2012, an Israeli court ruled against Corrie's parents, who had sued the IDF, with the judge claiming the activist's death was the "result of an accident she brought upon herself."
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter condemned the ruling as a confirmation of the "climate of impunity which facilitates Israeli human rights violations."
"Rachel's case was cast aside by Israel's colonial courts. But Rachel won," Abu Artema wrote Thursday. "She became a worldwide symbol of freedom and a source of inspiration for everyone who dreams of a world of justice and peace."
"Israel may have killed her," he added, "but Rachel Corrie lives on in all of us."
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Anti-Apartheid Archbishop Calls Presbyterians to Back Divestment from Israeli Occupation
Jun 16, 2014
As Presbyterians meeting in Detroit consider divestment from three companies linked to the Israeli occupation of Palestine - Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett Packard - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the leader who more than any other human being alive is associated with the successful use of divestment to help overturn apartheid in South Africa, is calling on Presbyterians to choose divestment from the Israeli occupation.
Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his leadership, as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, of the nonviolent resistance campaign to challenge apartheid.
In granting the peace Nobel to Tutu, the Nobel committee wrote [my emphasis]:
The Committee has attached importance to Desmond Tutu's role as a unifying leader figure in the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa. The means by which this campaign is conducted is of vital importance for the whole of the continent of Africa and for the cause of peace in the world. [...]
This year's award should be seen as a renewed recognition of the courage and heroism shown by black South Africans in their use of peaceful methods in the struggle against apartheid. This recognition is also directed to all who, throughout the world, use such methods to stand in the vanguard of the campaign for racial equality as a human right.
As a leader of the nonviolent struggle against apartheid, Tutu championed divestment - efforts to pressure U.S. institutions to sell their investments in companies doing business in South Africa and supporting apartheid by doing so.
Here's what Tutu is saying now about the prospect of Presbyterian divestment from the Israeli occupation: [my emphasis]:
As the Presbyterian General Assembly gathers for its biennial meeting I reach out in prayer and solidarity that the Assembly will make a strong witness for reconciliation, justice and peace. I am aware that the Assembly will consider eight overtures on the confounding and intractable conflict in Israel and Palestine, however I am especially urging the Assembly to adopt the overture naming Israel as an apartheid state through its domestic policies and maintenance of the occupation, and the overture calling for divestment of certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people. Both are worthy of adoption, by speaking truth in the first instance, and owning up to the Church's complicity in maintaining the occupation through its investments in the second.
The sustainability of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people has always been dependent on its ability to deliver justice to the Palestinians. I know firsthand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed. Realistic Israeli leaders have acknowledged that Israel will either end its occupation through a one or two state solution, or live in an apartheid state in perpetuity. The latter option is unsustainable and an offense to justice. We learned in South Africa that the only way to end apartheid peacefully was to force the powerful to the table through economic pressure.
The overtures proposed at the General Assembly are not about delegitimizing the State of Israel, but about ending its suppression of 4,000,000 Palestinian sisters and brothers. It's about naming an unjust system and refusing to participate in it. The stubbornness of Israel's leaders in wanting to hold onto and settling land that is not theirs can only lead to tragedy for both peoples. For the sake of them both as God's cherished, the strong witness of the two overtures is the only peaceful route left in the cause of justice and ultimate reconciliation. My prayers today are with the members of the General Assembly and with all the peoples of the Holy Land in Israel and Palestine.
My Just Foreign Policy colleague Megan Iorio and I are in Detroit this week, working to help lift up the diverse voices - Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli - speaking to Presbyterians in favor of divestment from the Israeli occupation.
On Sunday evening, we had the opportunity to speak with Rev. Don Wagner, a Presbyterian minister who has been a leader for decades in efforts to end the occupation and defend the human rights of Palestinians.
I asked Rev. Wagner: what's the most important thing that you think we should be telling people right now about this debate? His answer: tell people about Archbishop Tutu's statement in support of divestment from the Israeli occupation.
Rev. Don Wagner: Why I Support Presbyterian DivestmentReverend Don Wagner is an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister and the National Program Director of Friends of ...
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