The Dangerous Liaisons of French Banks with the Israeli Occupation
CounterPunch News Service | April 6, 2017
Executive Summary
While the year 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Israeli government’s colonization project in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has accelerated dramatically.
The very existence of Israeli settlements is illegal under international law. It is accompanied by numerous restrictions imposed on the Palestinian population, restrictions that violate their most fundamental rights and deprive them of the conditions that make a decent life possible.
The UN(1), the European Union(2) and the French government(3) have affirmed on numerous occasions and, most recently, in the major resolution of the UN Security Council of 23 December 2016: the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are not part of Israel as defined by the 1967 frontiers and are illegal under international law.
These settlements, “which do not cease to undermine a two state solution and to impose on the ground the reality of one state”(5), remain a major obstacle to any resolution of the conflict. The same Security Council resolution also requires [par. 5] that all states, ‘in their relevant dealings’, make a distinction between the territory of the state of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.
The Israeli banking system constitutes an essential tool of the colonization project, and Israeli businesses contribute to the maintenance and development of the settlements. In this context, the principal French financial institutions, in continuing to support Israeli banks and businesses involved in the settlements, contribute indirectly to the maintenance and development of this illegal situation with respect to international law.
Five major French financial groups – BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, [the state-owned] Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne, AXA – manage financial holdings or hold shares in Israeli banks or businesses involved in financing settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and which furnish services vital to the maintenance and development of the settlements – such as housing or factory construction, the provision of telecommunications connections or of surveillance equipment.
Added to that financial involvement, the four largest French banks – in this instance BNP Paribas, Société Générale, LCL (subsidiary of Crédit Agricole) and Natixis (investment bank subsidiary of BPCE) – have granted loans to the total of €288 million for the period 2004-2020 to the state enterprise Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) for a project for two gas-fired power plants(6), while IEC is providing electricity to the illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
The French government is responsible at three levels:
1) Obligations under international law (the UN’s ‘protect, respect and remedy’ framework of its Guiding Principles, to not recognize as legitimate a situation created by a grave violation of international law, nor to aid or assist in the maintenance of this situation, and to cooperate to dismantle such situations).(7)
2) An obligation to protect against human rights violations by third parties, including businesses and banks.(8)
3) A particular obligation, as 20 per cent shareholder in Alstom [2004-06, 2014-], to apply rigorous controls when a business is state-owned or state-controlled, even when the state is a minority shareholder.(9) Alstom is the contractor for one of the two gas-fired power plants [partly financed by French banks], as noted above. [Siemens is the contractor for the other plant.]
The signatory organizations of this report have exhorted the French banks and insurance companies to conform to international principles in ceasing all financing of the Israeli colonization project. Numerous financial institutions, public and private, European and American, and pension funds(10) have already taken this step and have disengaged from Israeli entities which support the settlements, in contrast to the French financial institutions targeted in this report. To this day, no French bank has committed itself to cease financing entities which contribute to the development of settlements on Palestinian territory, despite unmistakable infringements on human rights, and in spite of undertakings with respect to human rights of the banks mentioned in this report and their adhesion to one or more directives on a voluntary basis.
The risks of new financing linked notably to the extension of the East Jerusalem light rail by Alstom(11), 20 per cent owned by the state itself, reinforces the urgency of strong commitments. It is not too late to act: the French banks must make commitments in conformity with international law and announce publicly the end of all financial support to entities that facilitate the maintenance and development of the illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The signatory organizations request:
To the French banks to:
* withdraw all financing, direct or indirect, from banks and Israeli businesses involved in the development of the settlements;
* commit themselves publicly to no longer finance such entities;
* develop a credible policy aiming to exclude from their operations all businesses involved with the settlements.
To the French state to:
* respect its international obligations, notably those resulting from violations of the imperatives of international law by Israel and those pertaining to the UN’s ‘protect, respect and remedy’ human rights framework.
* pursue all means to prevent any participation or investment of French businesses which contribute to Israeli colonization(12);
* implement the UN’s Guiding Principles with respect to businesses and human rights and to ensure that the corporations under its jurisdiction, including banks, do not prejudice the full realization of fundamental rights in France and abroad;
* supervise respect for the law relative to the duty of vigilance of parent and contracting companies.
* support, at the UN, the process for the elaboration of an international treaty on human rights and transnational corporations and other businesses.
Notes.
(1) Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 11 December 2013: 68/82. Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan.
(2) Council of the European Union, Council Conclusions on the Middle East Peace Process, 18 January 2016.
(3) France Diplomatie, Israël/Territoires Palestiniens, Securité, 2 December 2016.
(4) UN Security Council, Resolution 2334, 23 December 2016.
(5) See Resolution 2334 preamble.
(6) Global Trade Review, Germans Back Israel Electric [Corporation], 23 February 2004.
(7) The document here cites Trading Away Peace: How Europe helps sustain illegal Israeli settlements, October 2012.
(8) According to the Guiding Principles 11 to 24 of the United Nations. Moreover, note Principle no.7: “Because the risk of gross human rights abuses is heightened in conflict-affected areas, States should help ensure that business enterprises operating in those contexts are not involved with such abuses, including by:(a) Engaging at the earliest stage possible with business enterprises to help them identify, prevent and mitigate the human rights-related risks of their activities and business relationships; [etc.]”.
(9) The Guiding Principles of the UN, and notably Principle no.4, regarding state-owned enterprises: “States should take additional steps to protect against human rights abuses by business enterprises that are owned or controlled by the State, or that receive substantial support and services from State agencies such as export credit agencies and official investment insurance or guarantee agencies, including, where appropriate, by requiring human rights due diligence. … Moreover, the closer a business enterprise is to the State, or the more it relies on statutory authority or taxpayer support, the stronger the State’s policy rationale becomes for ensuring that the enterprise respects human rights.” The UN’s ‘Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises’ had its mandate extended in June 2014. The Working Group has equally highlighted the responsibility of states to take additional measures to guard against infringement on human rights by state-owned or state-controlled businesses.
(10) This is notably the case for the Norwegian government pension funds (2010), the Netherlands’ PGGM pension fund (2013), the Luxembourg FDC pension funds (2014), the Danish Danske Bank (2014) and German Deutsche Bank (2014) and the pension funds of the US Methodist Church (2016).
(11) Pertinent information became publicly available in June 2016, indicating that a commercial agreement had been signed between the Israeli government and the Israeli consortium Citypass and Alstom to extend the Jerusalem light rail network. Alstom and the French government have been contacted and advised by one of our organizations in June and September 2016, and have not denied the existence of this agreement. One might reasonably infer that this contract, of the order of €350 million, will require bank finance. [Resistance against French corporate involvement in this project has a long history.]
(12) In complementing the advice of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry, as per fn. (3).
§ From Le Liaison Dangereuses de Banques Françaises avec La Colonisation Israélienne, March 2017. The report was compiled under the auspices of the following NGOs: Al-Haq, AFPS, CCFD -Terre Solidaire, CGT, FIDH, Fair Finance France, LDH, and Union Syndicale Solidaires.
Translated by Evan Jones.
Putin rebukes Netanyahu over ‘groundless’ accusations on suspected chemical incident in Syria
RT | April 6, 2017
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a telephone conversation that it was unacceptable to make “groundless” accusations concerning the alleged chemical weapons incident that took place in Syria earlier this week.
During the phone call initiated by the Israeli side on Thursday, Putin and Netanyahu stressed the importance of boosting international efforts to tackle terrorism, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Both sides “expressed readiness to expand [cooperation] in the interest of assuring stability and security in the Middle East and, first of all, in Syria,” it said.
In particular, Putin “pointed out that it was unacceptable to make groundless accusations against anyone without conducting a detailed and unbiased investigation.”
At least 70 people, including 11 children, were reportedly killed in a suspected chemical incident in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Iblib province, Syria, on Tuesday. The US and its allies have put the blame on the Syrian government.
Earlier on Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that he was sure Syrian government forces were behind the “chemical weapons attack” in Idlib.
“The two murderous chemical weapons attacks on civilians in the Idlib region in Syria and on the local hospital were carried out by direct and premeditated order of Syrian President Bashar Assad, with Syrian planes. I say this with 100 percent certainty,” Lieberman said.
The defense minister criticized the ‘international community’ for having “zero” reaction to the incident, stressing that “the world needs to take responsibility and, instead of just talking, needs to do something.”
When asked if Russia was somehow involved in the chemical weapons attack, Liberman replied “we don’t know.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said the Syrian military carried out airstrikes in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, hitting production facilities where terrorists stored chemicals, which were previously used in Iraq and the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has dismissed any accusations that the Syrian Army deployed chemical weapons in Idlib.
It’s impossible that the army – which has been making significant gains in almost all theaters of the Syrian war – would use banned chemical weapons against its “own people” and even terrorists, the minister said.
UN experts warn Saudi Arabia against demolition of Shia neighborhood
Press TV – April 6, 2017
UN rapporteurs have urged Saudi Arabia to immediately halt a planned demolition of an entire 400-year-old neighborhood inhabited by the kingdom’s Shia Muslim minority.
The UN experts warned that the so-called development plan for the historic neighborhood of al-Masora in the village of Awamia in the eastern province of Qatif threatens the historical and cultural heritage of the area with irreparable harm.
They said such a move would lead to forced eviction of 2,000 to 3,000 people from their businesses and residences.
“The area is of importance not only to local people and the entire cultural landscape of Awamia, but also has national significance for the history and cultural heritage of Saudi Arabia,” said the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Karima Bennoune.
“The planned demolition would erase this unique regional heritage in an irreversible manner,” she pointed out.
Masora is considered a historical model of a walled village, including mosques, farms and farmers markets, places of worship for Shia Muslims, ‘Hussainiyats’, and businesses. It has been of great interest for researchers and experts in the fields of heritage and archaeology.
The imminent demolition of the entire neighborhood is part of a so-called development plan aimed at transforming Masora from a mainly residential neighborhood to a commercial and service zone.
Local residents are concerned that the plan will exacerbate the existing housing crisis and lead to a rise in real estate prices, as the plan does not include the construction of residential buildings.
“Residents have been pressured in many ways, including through power cuts, to vacate their homes and businesses without adequate alternative resettlement options, leaving them at best with insufficient compensation and at worst, with nowhere to go,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha.
“Demolitions must never lead to homelessness of the evicted persons, so the authorities have to ensure the provision of adequate alternative housing facilities, resettlement and compensation for lost property,” she added.
The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, warned about the ramifications of the demolition on the standard of living of Masora residents.
“If implemented, the plan will remove people from the areas where they live and work, resulting in loss of livelihood and difficulty in securing housing,” he said.
The experts also raised concerns over the lack of “any meaningful consultation” with the residents, and the absence of less damaging alternatives, like restoration.
“The Saudi authorities must take all necessary steps to guarantee cultural rights, including the right to the enjoyment of and access to cultural heritage, and the right to an adequate standard of living, including housing, in accordance with international human rights laws and standards,” the UN experts said in a statement.
“They must halt all ongoing demolition works that do not meet these standards and cancel any planned in the future,” the statement said.
Citizens of Qatif and other oil-rich regions of eastern Saudi Arabia have for long lamented about discrimination against them. International rights campaigners have also called on Riyadh to stop the persecution of members of the Shia community, saying they should enjoy more freedom in expressing their religious beliefs.
Israel proposes railroad to Saudi Arabia via Jordan
Press TV – April 5, 2017
The Israeli regime has proposed construction of a railroad connecting the occupied territories to Saudi Arabia via Jordan.
Transport Minister Yisrael Katz said on Wednesday that Washington had also welcomed the plan, but he declined to say whether Riyadh and Amman had supported the proposal.
The link is designed to connect the Saudi port of Daman in the Persian Gulf via Jordan to the Mediterranean port of Haifa in northern Israel, according to the Israeli minister.
Katz, who has declared himself as a candidate to succeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the premier steps down, said the rail line would notably cut the distance needed to move goods.
The minister also elaborated on the plan, saying only a small distance of track was needed to link the current Israeli network in the north with the occupied West Bank near the city of Jenin and Jordan at Sheikh Hussein crossing.
Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab governments that have official diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv and host Israeli missions. The rest of the Arab governments have no diplomatic relations with the Israeli regime, and seek to portray themselves as Tel Aviv’s traditional adversaries and upholders of the Palestinian cause.
Even so, reports have indicated that some of the governments, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have had secret relations with Tel Aviv, covertly appeasing the regime.
Wadi Qana’s Palestinian farmers endure another mass tree uprooting
International Solidarity Movement | April 5, 2017
Hebron, occupied Palestine – Just days after Palestinians commemorated Land Day, a day which marks the struggle against the Israeli government’s expropriation of Palestinian land, farmers of Wadi Qana endured another mass uprooting and theft of their trees.
Speaking from his home in the Salfit district village of Deir Istiya, Palestinian activist Rezeq Abu Nasser cited the frustrating chronology, “This is the third time they took my trees. They stole them in 2013 and 2015 as well.” He then handed ISM volunteers the Arabic/Hebrew notice that he found posted on a fence he erected at a cost of over 1,000 NIS to protect his trees. Abu Nasser’s fence was also dismantled and seized along with 25 of his trees.
The notice received by four Palestinian farmers demands that they uproot their own trees or face arrest and/or fines to cover the cost of Israeli occupation forces uprooting the trees for them. Soon after, 135 trees were uprooted and stolen during the small hours of morning. Several bulldozers entered the valley, hauled large stones into the road to block the entryway and rammed through part of a 40 meter stone wall to access the trees.
Citing environmental justifications for these aggressive acts of theft, an Israeli government spokesperson for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territory was quoted as saying that the trees were uprooted due to their “damaging the natural view and value of the nature resort.” Claiming the act to be one of protection of the view of a lush valley from the sight of trees is even more absurd, given that the Israeli forces left a partially demolished stone wall and broken tree limbs scattered atop a small field of holes where the trees once took root.
While speaking to the Mayor of Deir Istiya, his office produced copies of the issued warrants for the threatened trees and the generations old British land deeds affirming the farmers’ rights to their ancestral land. The Mayor of Deir Istiya described arriving at the Wadi Qana immediately after being alerted to the uprootings in progress, only to find the road blockage Israeli forces left to keep farmers and residents from defending their land. As for the stone wall, he claimed,”This is a new experience for us that they demolished the stones.”
The farmers who lost their trees, tantamount to their livelihood, plan to continue their struggle against these incursions by furthering their cases with the local municipality. As for Abu Nasser, “I’m going to replant them again.”
‘Can’t apologize for telling truth’: Suspended ex-London Mayor Livingstone avoids Labour expulsion
RT | April 5, 2017
A Labour Party committee upheld the charges leveled at Ken Livingstone for his comments about the links between Hitler and Zionism last year, but did not expel the former mayor of London from its ranks. The time-limited sanction has provoked outrage from Jewish groups.
Following two days of legal and historical deliberations behind closed doors, the National Constitutional Committee found the 71-year-old, who had been suspended from the party since April 2016, guilty of three counts of conduct that is “prejudicial or… grossly detrimental to the party.” Livingstone, who says that he has no plans to return to frontline politics, is barred from holding any position in the party, or running as a Labour candidate until April 2018.
In the wake of the hearing, an unrepentant Livingstone told the media that proceedings resembled “sitting through a court in North Korea,” and complained that “natural justice” had not been done, and said that those who called him “anti-Semitic” and a “Nazi apologist” should have gone in front of the panel instead.
“If I’d said Hitler was a Zionist, I would say sorry. You can’t apologize for telling the truth. I apologize for the offence caused by those Labour MPs who lied,” insisted Livingstone, who said that he was smeared due to his connections with Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, by the latter’s political opponents.
‘Hitler-Zionist collaboration’ controversy
In his original remarks last year, made in defense of Naz Shah, a Labour MP also accused of anti-Semitism, Livingstone claimed that Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews.”
Instead of retracting his comments, Livingstone, who led the Greater London Council in the 1980s and served as the city’s mayor between 2000 and 2008, has tried to clarify his views, focusing on the 1933 Haavara agreement between Zionist German Jews and the Nazi authorities, which enabled some to emigrate to present-day Israel, and transfer some of their assets out of the country.
“[Hitler] didn’t just sign the deal. The SS set up training camps so that German Jews who were going to go [to Palestine] could be trained to cope with a very different sort of country when they got there,” Livingstone said last month.
“He passed a law saying the Zionist flag and the swastika were the only flags that could be flown in Germany… Of course, they started selling Mauser pistols to the underground Jewish army. So you had right up until the start of the Second World War real collaboration.”
Suspension a ‘slap on the wrist’
The Jewish Labour Movement, which had submitted a 178-page report to the panel challenging Livingstone’s version of history and criticizing his “disparaging, inaccurate and out-of-context comments,” said that Tuesday’s decision was a “betrayal” of the party.
“This punishment is totally insufficient. They don’t match the leadership’s commitment to zero tolerance on anti-Semitism. They imply a revolving door policy in which you can revise the history of the Holocaust, sit quietly for a year then come back and do it all again,” said Jeremy Newmark, the chair of the Jewish Labour Movement.
“Mr Livingstone’s inaccurate and antagonistic comments including over the past 40 years have had a huge impact on the Jewish community,” said Simon Johnson, the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council.
In excess of 20 Labour MPs, who had called for Livingstone to be expelled, expressed their unhappiness with the suspension, with Anna Turley calling it “weak and shameful” and Lisa Nandy calling the decision a “sad day” for the Labour Party.
Software System Plants Israeli Propaganda on Social Media
IMEMC News & Agencies – April 2, 2017
The Israeli government has purchased a software system enabling it to monitor social media and specific users to plan ideas in online discourse.
The bid, which was won by a company called Buzzilla, specifies that the software must have the ability to “plant an idea in the debate on social networks, web news sites and forums,” reports Ido Kenan on the website Room 404, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Haaretz said, according to Days of Palestine, that the main purpose of the software is to monitor debate on the internet and identify trends and feelings among the public.
“From time to time, the ministries have the need for monitoring services, and recovery and processing of data on internet,” the bid request states.
“These services are necessary for a range of needs in the government sector, such as generating useful information for the sake of ongoing activity, feasibility testing, identifying trends, identifying needs and identifying and handling crises.”
The Israeli finance ministry, which issued the request, further explains that, until now, ministries requiring such services had obtained them from different sources, so it decided to find a system that can supply all of the ministries’ needs.
Via this system, the Israeli government is able to plant ideas in conversations on social networks and forums through an automated or semi-automated mechanism.
Haaretz wondered what the government is doing with the system. It answered: There is the possibility of swaying an existing debate, which is worrying; but, as the system also offers a breakdown of users, even more worrying is the theoretical ability of the ministries to focus on specific ones, such as supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
“In our case, since there is no legal obligation to deliver information, and since there is no certainty regarding the ways this information will be transferred and processed, there is another problem: What is going to be done with that information,” lawyer Yehonatan Klinger, the legal adviser of the Digital Rights Movement, said.
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