Barclays: Don’t bank on apartheid

25.07.2022

| News and analysis

UK banking giant Barclays provides billions of pounds worth of investment and loans to arms companies selling weapons and military technology to Israel. Barclays is actively arming, upholding and profiting from Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people. Barclays must stop banking on apartheid.

Armed violence is at the heart of Israel’s apartheid and occupation regime. Palestinians live under threat of lethal violence from Israeli forces and settlers, arbitrary arrest and detention, home demolitions and forcible transfer, and intrusive surveillance of all areas of their lives.

This militarised repression is made possible by international complicity: countries, including the UK, trade in arms with Israel, whilst corporations, including Barclays, invest in these weapons and other repressive technologies.

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Barclays owns shares worth over £1.3 billion in companies supplying Israel with weapons and military technology used in violence against Palestinians. Barclays provides an additional £4 billion worth of loans and other financial services to these companies, including:

Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private arms company. It supplies 85% of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or military drones, used by the Israeli army. Elbit Systems weaponry has been used extensively in Israel’s deadly bombardments of the besieged Gaza Strip, home to 2 million Palestinians. Additionally, Elbit Systems has been associated with the production of cluster munitions, or cluster bombs – which are banned under international law.
Raytheon produces bunker buster bombs, used by Israel to target Palestinian homes in Israel’s repeated bombardments of the Gaza Strip.
Caterpillar supplies the Israeli military with D9 bulldozers, used to demolish Palestinian homes, schools, villages, and civilian infrastructure, including sewage and water pipes. D9 bulldozers are used in the construction of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Palestinians have called on people of conscience around the world to support their struggle for justice and human rights, by campaigning to put an end to corporate and financial complicity in Israel’s apartheid regime of oppression.