How Your Fund is Complicit
Israel is engaged in unprecedented atrocities against the Palestinian people. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, while at least 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced. UN experts report that “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.”
The International Court of Justice, the world court, has ruled that it plausible that Israel is committing genocidal acts in its assault, while the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has applied for arrest warrants against senior Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
These war crimes are built of the foundations of decades of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.
Israel and Palestine: The Basic Facts
Since its foundation in 1948 Israel has established a body of laws, policies, and practices that has systematically oppressed Palestinians. This political and legal system impacts Palestinians in different ways.
In the West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians face a military occupation, which severely restricts their fundamental human rights. They face forced dispossession, unjust military law and restrictions on their freedom of movement.
In Gaza, 2.2 million Palestinians live under a brutal siege, deemed illegal and inhumane by the United Nations, and have been subjected to numerous military assaults.
1.7 million Palestinians live as second class citizens within the state of Israel. They are subject to over 65 laws that discriminate against them because they are Palestinian.
The largest group of Palestinians, over 7 million, live as refugees, or in exile from Israel’s forced displacement. They are unable to return to the homes which they, or their family, were expelled.
LGPS Complicity
Israel is only able to maintain its oppression of the Palestinian people because of products, equipment and technology it receives from a range of complicit companies. As Palestine Solidarity Campaign research has uncovered, many local authority pension funds invest in these companies.
This includes companies supplying Israel with weapons and military technology it uses to carry out its attacks on Palestinians.
It also include companies which do business with or in Israel’s settlements built on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The illegality of Israel’s settlements has been repeatedly stated by the international community, recently in UN Security Council Resolution 2334.
As affirmed by Amnesty International, and the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights in applying the UN Guiding Principles to the occupied territory, conducting business on occupied land unavoidably contributes to sustaining an illegal situation, where Palestinians are denied their land and basic human rights.
Other companies provide the infrastructure for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. For example, building Israel’s apartheid wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice, or constructing and maintaining Israeli checkpoints in the occupied territory.
Investment in these companies is not only unethical, it is financially risky. As the UK Government Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Overseas Business Risk Guidance states there are “clear risks related to economic and financial activities in the settlements.” This is “stemming from the fact that the Israeli settlements, according to international law, are built on occupied land and are not recognised as a legitimate part of Israel’s territory.” There is therefore clear financial and reputational risks stemming from continued investment in companies aiding Israel’s human rights abuses.
Internationally, several pension funds have recognised this, and taken steps to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.
To give a few examples, in 2012 Norway’s finance ministry excluded Shikun & Binui from its pension fund over its role in the construction of Israeli settlements. In 2018 Falkirk Pension Fund divested from Bank Hapoalim after challenging the bank regarding its activities in illegal settlements. In 2019 the United Nations staff pension fund confirmed it had divested from two investment funds holding shares in companies operating in illegal settlements, and in 2020 the largest Dutch pension fund ABP announced it had stopped investing in two Israeli banks funding Israel’s illegal settlements.
The Campaign
Led by scheme members and their representative trade unions, LGPS Divest is campaigning for an end to LGPS funds complicity in Israel’s human rights abuses. We are demanding administering authorities ensure adequate screening and due diligence procedures are in place to guarantee that pension holders deferred wages are not being not used to support Israel’s violations of international law.
Get Involved! Acting together, we can end pension funds’ complicity!