With each day, Israel’s genocide adds a new horror to a pile that long since breached the heavens. The pace of atrocities only quickened with the siege on north Gaza: Since October, the suffering afflicted has been wholly unrelenting.
Beyond demanding moral inquisition, the scale of depravities visited upon Palestine begs questions as to the how of it all: From whence comes the tinder for turning a place into “hell on earth”, as Philippe Lazzarini of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has taken to calling Gaza? The most direct answer is, of course, Washington. Guided by the ideological priors of a sunsetting executive and the duncery of the Blinken-McGurk-Sullivan triad, the Biden administration has co-authored Gaza’s decimation from the very start. But it would be misguided to think the White House and Congress alone furnish the kindling keeping Gaza aflame. The arms, energy, and financial flows which sustain Israel’s campaign are in fact gathered from a diversity of sources. In certain instances, the parties involved show themselves motivated by opportunism, in others by the perverse apoliticism of capital. Notions of ethnic or even civilizational solidarity weigh in occasion, too. In surveying the economy of Israel’s genocide, however, what sticks out most is the ubiquity of finance capital. This stems in part from northern financial institutions’ contributions to Israel’s debt financing. (By way of Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia is vested in Israel’s debt market, too). It is equally a function, though, of a world-spanning integration of money and industrial capital. By dint of the latter, Wall Street’s grand financial houses in particular have acquired commanding stakes in all the inputs from which Israel metabolizes violence.
Arms, Energy and Logistics
Concerning war materiel first, finance capital’s presence is observable not only in Israel’s armaments themselves but in the means through which they are transported and powered.
The weapons raining down upon Palestine and Lebanon are predominantly sourced in the United States, their transfer tirelessly facilitated by the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.[i] Orders of equipment and articles/services valued at less than $14 and $50 million, respectively—of which there have been at least one hundred—spare the White House from needing report to Congress, making the determination of a final tally difficult. William Hartung has nevertheless put forth a conservative estimate[ii]: In addition to restocking Israel’s missile defense system, between October 7th of 2023 and the end of September 2024, Washington sustained the country’ s offensive capacity to the tune of 57,000 artillery shells; 36,000 rounds of cannon ammunition; 20,000 M4A1 rifles; 13,981 anti-tank missiles; 3,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (guided bombs, or JDAM for short, with another 6,500 on the way); 3,000 laser-guided Hellfire missiles; 1,800 M141 bunker-buster munitions; 2,600 250-meter small diameter bombs; 8,700 MK82 500 pound bombs; and hundreds of drones. The usual lot of American defense contractors produce the munitions in question: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell International, and RTX, principally. The same firms have also produced the missiles for the Iron Dome and David’s Sling and hawked the upmarket wares ordered by Israel post-October 7th. The latter include fifty F-15s (cleared for sale by the State Department in August[iii]), twenty-five F-35’s (that deal inked in June), and twelve Apache helicopters expected to be acquired in the weeks ahead. Note that manufacturing and maintenance of advanced systems like the F-35 does involve a vast and transnational value chain. As such, a range of hardware and software companies in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Canada are responsible for making them go.[iv] Providing some of the data and computing services Israel relies on in deploying the weapons just listed, meanwhile, are American firms such as Peter Thiel and Alex Karp’s Palantir[v] and, potentially, Google and Amazon.[vi]
Due to the (re)integration of money and industrial capital observed over the past forty-odd years, ownership of America’s leading defense contractors is predominantly shared by one configuration or another of the country’s leading financial institutions. Here, we speak of the major asset managers and financial services companies (Blackrock, State Street Corp, Vanguard, Wellington Management Group, Capital Group Companies, Charles Schwab, Longview Asset Management, Geode Capital Management); leading investment banks (Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo); and hedgefunds like Newport Trust Company. The same shareholding picture is observed within the American tech sector as well, and amongst the particular tech firms named above. As for the smaller firms participating in the American arms ecosystem, they are increasingly owned by the private equity industry. This all being the case, it can be seen that the ultimate proprietors of America’s instruments of death—by which more than nine hundred families in Gaza have been killed in their entirety by the Israeli state[vii]—are the very entities that cohere contemporary finance capitalism.
In addition, it should be emphasized that many of the same financial institutions hold major positions within the Israeli arms industry. Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s preeminent weapon manufacturers, is traded on the Nasdaq, where Vanguard, 1832 Asset Management, Invesco Ltd., Goldman Sachs, and Fidelity have each acquired substantial equity. (London’s Barclays Bank has also tripled its holdings in Elbit this year.[viii]) Through a host of channels, both Wall Street and the Silicon Valley-based fraction of American finance capital has become significantly vested in Israeli defense and security start-ups as well. JPMorgan and HSBC scaled commercial lending operations oriented toward Israeli tech firms, defense included, in 2022.[ix] Blackrock lends directly and via a fully-owned subsidiary (the recently acquired Kreos Capital, one of Israeli tech’s leading creditors) to the same spaces. Andreessen Horowitz, motivated by its founders’ devotions to libertarianism and securitized repression as much as prospects of profits, expanded its Israel activities significantly in 2024.[x] Sequoia Capital, another Silicon Valley giant, just made a major investment in an Israeli security start-up called Kela, which was launched by Palantir’s former head of local operations Hamutal Meridor. Palo Alto Networks, the massive cyber security firm in which Vanguard, Blackrock, Morgan Stanley et al retain considerable equity shares, has pumped investment into companies in Israel with relations to US intelligence over the past eighteen months, amongst other things.[xi] Chartered Group, a Singapore-based investment house, is a major backer of XTend, producer of one the drones haunting Gaza’s people nightly. The list goes on.
American finance is just as present throughout the logistical operations getting weapons to Israel. The involvement of private interests in this aspect of the war was made necessary after the volume of weapons being transferred overwhelmed the Department of Defense’s delivery capacity. Expectantly, the outsourcing of transportation operations redounded positively for ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd and its American partners—All-Ways Forwarding and Atlas Airlines, amongst others.[xii] Once a state-owned entity, ZIM was the Haganah’s (and later, Israeli army’s) sole means of bringing arms in by sea during the nakba. After October 7th, company CEO Eli Glickman famously offered up ZIM’s entire fleet and operation to the Israeli army, with evidence suggesting the latter took him up on it: Per a lawsuit brought in Belgium, ZIM had, as of May, moved as much as 246 tons of weapons from the port of Antwerp to Israel.[xiii] Partially as a result, and despite facing this legal action and regular disruption from portworkers, the company has enjoyed a banner year in 2024 (+48% revenue in the second quarter). Though legally domiciled in Israel, ZIM is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its largest shareholders count many of the investment houses already touched upon in our discussion of arms: Blackrock, Morgan Stanley, and the hedgefund D.E. Shaw & Co rank amongst ZIM’s largest shareholders.
The privately-owned JAS Freight Forwarding has also lent a sizable hand in the conveyance of weapons to Israel, as has the Copenhagen-based multinational Maersk, if indirectly in the latter case. (As one of the American arms industry’s most trusted transporters, Maersk ensures that the disparate components which go into the weapons assembled in the factories of Northrop Gruman, RTX et al get there in a timely fashion.) In addition, FedEx Express, Delta Airlines, Lufthansa, and Challenge Airlines of Belgium have all directly flown weapons to the Israeli army. The Ditch in Ireland documents the planes of these companies routinely violating Irish airspace while moving weapons from US depots in Memphis to Ben Gurion Airport. The largest equity holders for FedEx and Delta are the likes of Vanguard, State Street, and Blackrock. The largest individual shareholder in Lufthansa, meanwhile, is Germany’s richest person, Klau-Michael Kühne, who derives his inherited fortune from the looting of European Jews during the holocaust.[xiv]
Backing and profiting from the energy that powers Israel’s war machine is finance capital, too. Much of the jet fuel powering Israel’s planes and helicopters flows from the United States via a complex logistics operation that starts in Corpus Christi, in the refineries of Valero Energy.[xv] When it comes to crude oil, American multinationals Chevron and Exxon supply Israel and by extension, her army, with produce extracted out of their joint concessions in Kazakhstan.[xvi] British Petroleum’s contributions are even larger, furnishing 28% of Israel’s imported crude post-October 7th through its positions in Azeri fields and control of the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline.[xvii] Ownership of each of the companies named thus far corresponds to those detailed in our discussions of arms manufacturing and logistics, with only Warren Buffet’s yet-to-be mentioned Berkshire Hathaway added to the mix. Zooming out to appraise all Israel’s imported petroleum products, Russian and Brazilian firms enter the picture, making up 47% the volume of shipments to Israel during the genocide.[xviii] The long arm of American finance also reaches to Brazil’s Petrobras, though, most prominently through the Fort Lauderdale-headquartered GQG Partners.
Financial Flows
Liquidity is also essential to Israel’s war effort, and in this domain too has the major financial houses of the global north played a critical support role. Of course, the federal government of the United States has made its own indispensable contribution. Since October 7th of last year, Washington has granted Israel $17.9 billion in bilateral aid, an amount equivalent to approximately 3.5% of Israel’s projected GDP for the year. Nor does that sum represent the entirety of Washington’s philanthropy. Linda Bilmes has hazarded that as of early fall, CENTCOM spent, at the behest of Israel, between $4.85-4.87 billion on operations against Ansar Allah in Yemen. In addition, the State of Israel’s latest filings with the SEC indicate that it has $3.4 billion worth of bonds backed by a US government guarantee presently outstanding. (Congress initially authorized financial guarantees for Israel worth $10 billion in 1992. Today, the figure is $8 billion. At the outset, the terms of the contract specified that the guarantee was to be reduced by amounts equivalent to what Israel spent on settlement construction. Language regarding that condition appears to have been dropped in more recent iterations, however.)
The meaningfulness of US government support is beyond contention. According to the latest projections of the credit rating agencies and the Bank of Israel, Israel’s fiscal deficit for 2024 is likely to settle somewhere 7.2-9% GDP. Simple arithmetic gives an indication of how much larger this deficit would be in the absence of American aid (read: upwards of +50%). Given that Israeli Eurobonds have been trading at near distressed levels in secondary markets in recent times despite the gifts received from the US Treasury, it is reasonable to speculate that the country might be facing a financial crisis without American charity. And yet, debt financing has been even more important to the funding and stabilization of Israel’s war economy, as a comparison between the size of the fiscal deficit and US aid packages makes plain. Here, a wide constellation of private actors (and some public) have made the difference.
Israel issues debt externally and internally. In the case of external debt—which jumped beyond $54 billion in early 2024—the state does so through three distinct mechanisms. The first is public sovereign issues. In March of this year, Israel raised $8 billion via this mechanism. Underwriting the state’s debt issuance and serving as primary dealer for the bonds were four northern banks—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, and Deutsche Bank—whilst the multinational law firm White & Case advised the Israeli government in structuring the debt’s terms. Due to the skilled salesmanship of the banks’ personnel, demand was drummed up in all the typical haunts—the offices of pension funds and major asset managers like those we met earlier especially[i]—to the extent that the auction wound up oversubscribed. This kept the yield on the debt instrument relatively low. (The price of the bonds would tank and the yield jump in later months, as earlier mentioned, though this did not impact the state’s repayment obligations, which were fixed in the coupon rate set at the initial bond sale). For a government running up a significant deficit and staring down an economy threatened by disinvestment, capital flight, and widespread bankruptcy, the low interest rates on the Eurobonds were of great help. Early indications suggest the Ministry of Finance will rely on the same four banks for a new Eurobond issuance in the months to come, lest market sentiment prove too negative.
The second mechanism through which Israel issues external debt is private placements. Due to the nature of these transactions, it is difficult to trace who is on the buying side. What is documented is that in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, the Ministry of Finance raised at least $6 billion through these arrangements, and that many of those who acquired the bonds—almost certainly a financial institution—accepted extremely low, sub-market coupon rates. For instance, in October and November of 2023, one or multiple buyers agreed to purchase Japanese Yen-denominated Israeli debt with coupon rates of just .625 and .63%, respectively. Those rates would have been affected by the Bank of Japan’s unorthodox monetary policies, certainly. The same cannot be said, however, of the sales of 750 million in Euro-denominated bonds between October and December of 2023. In that instance, the Israeli Ministry of Finance found buyers willing to accept coupon rates of only 1.5%. The negative premium the investors agreed to is difficult to reconcile. It would not be unreasonable to frame their decisions as acts of knowing self-harm, and ones undertaken in support of a state perpetrating crimes against humanity. This gives credence to the idea that in certain spaces, at least, finance’s engagement with Israel has been ideologically compelled.
Israel’s third mechanism for issuing external debt (and the main one prior to 2010) is on the retail level. This process is handled mostly by a US-based affiliate of the Ministry of Finance called the Development Corporation for Israel (DCFI), though separate affiliates exist in Canada and the United Kingdom. Known by a different name at its incorporation in 1950, DCFI was founded by Rudolph Sonneborn and Abraham Feinberg, who illegally ran weapons to the Haganah in the 1940s, and former US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. Since October 7th, DCFI has sold $3.5 billion worth of non-tradable debt instruments. Popularly and legally known as “Israel Bonds”, these debts have mostly been discussed in reference to DCFI’s post-October 7th scheming alongside the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)[ii]: Recruiting public treasurers, the joint effort of the two organizations raised at least $1.7 billion from state and municipal governments for Israel as of last May. Less discussed is how the bonds’ buyers, which include smaller commercial banks and Zionist (secular, Christian, and Jewish) households in addition to public treasuries, have willfully incurred financial losses on their investments. Those losses derive from the coupon rates on the Israel Bonds sold over the last thirteen months being substantially below prevailing market prices.[iii] That institutional buyers would accept them (and the weak level of investor protection attached to Israel Bonds) broaches, as did the private placement of bonds, the possibility of ideological motivation.
When it comes to internal debts, which comprise the lion’s share of the state’s borrowing, it is local financial institutions that lead the way. That said, the weight of institutions and persons from the global north is still significant. This is most baldly revealed in non-resident holdings of tradable and non-tradable shekel-denominated treasuries. Though tracking down significantly over the last year, 8.4% and 3.3% of these debt instruments, respectively, remained in the hands of non-Israelis as of July. And those numbers underrepresent the actual presence of American money in the local debt market. Firstly, this is because many of the Israeli commercial banks and investment funds that have stepped into the breach created by the exit of foreign parties from the local bond market retain American owners. For instance, Blackrock holds 3% stakes in two of Israel’s largest banks, Bank Leumi and Bank Hapoalim. The majority shareholder of Bank Hapoalim, meanwhile, is Arison Holdings, controlled by Shari Arison, an American citizen, daughter of the Carnival Cruiseline founder, and sister to Miami Heat owner Micky Arison. Positioned across the Israeli banking sector as well is the Phoenix Group, in which two American private equity firms hold a controlling interest, in which Lazard Asset Management has a sizable stake, and in which Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, capitalized by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and a host of other GCC backers, has recently acquired a 4.9% share which could double pending a regulatory review. In addition, the estate of Wertheim Moshe, which is one of the two largest holders in another of Israel’s largest banks, Mizrahi Tefahot, is domiciled in the United States. More consequentially perhaps, seven western financial institutions—Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase—serve as primary dealers for Israel’s local treasuries market. According to the Bank of Israel’s reporting, those same institutions also rank amongst the largest purchasers of NIS-denominated treasuries in 2024. Viewed in full, the service that many of the preeminent representatives of contemporary finance capital have offered Israel in funding its genocidal campaign can be recognized as essential and irreplaceable.
Conclusion
Israel’s war-making over the past year has been wind in the sails for some of America’s largest manufacturers. Yes, the fortunes of the country’s arms industry hinge more immediately on equipping Ukraine and the Gulf, replenishing American inventories, defrauding the US government, and developing nuclear subs and sixth generation fighter jets for the Pentagon. Still, Israel’s embrace of sadism and recklessness has proven a unique boon. In and of themselves, the volume of deals with the Israeli Army have been significant enough to warrant aggressive lobbying of the State Department’s arms transfer bureau. More importantly, Israel’s genocidal turn confirmed a shift in market sentiment—one initially compelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Washington’s commencement of economic war on China. With the bombs pummeling Gaza, the return of “geopolitics”, an odd stand-in for big wars administered by white people, has been validated. Knock-on effects in terms of capitalization have been pronounced. Though juiced by stock buybacks, since October 7th, the share price of Lockheed Martin has jumped by more than 50%, that of RTX by over 80%, and that of General Dynamics by ~35%, far outpacing the market’s upswing.[xix]
As major equity holders in the arms manufacturers and major players throughout Israel’s economy, finance capital has made a lot of money on the deaths of Palestinians. The next question is one of interpretation. It might risk overstatement to suggest that profit making has rendered this class fraction a decisive constituency for the Israeli genocide. The reality, after all, is that finance capital is today positioned in virtually every sector and corner of the global economy: It is at once a constituency for everything—and for nothing. At the same time, the blessing of the world’s largest financial institutions has been necessary for the genocide to proceed. More than that, there is evidence that some in their number have done more than acquiesce to Israel’s actions. Like the stewards of Washington, it is possible that the principals in question see a strategic utility if not an ideological imperative in the brutal subjugation of a resistance rising from the subaltern.
For the carnage wrought by Israel to ever come to an end, confrontation must be taken not only to the country’s political sponsors: The genocide economy must be deprived of its material fundaments, too. And as this analysis makes plain, this will necessitate confrontation with the financial institutions that today structure and order global capitalism.
Photo featured is credited to the UN/Shareef Sarhan
[i] Reuters and Times of Israel Staff Writer, “A Year of War Saps Israel’s Borrowing Strength, While Costs Balloon”, The Times of Israel (October 7, 2024).
[ii] Munira Lokhandwala and Molly Gott, “U.S. State and Local Treasuries Hold At Least $1.6 Billion in Israel Bonds”, LittleSis (February 5, 2024).
[iii] Michael Bradley, Irving de Lira Salvatierra, Mitu Gulati, “Diaspora Bonds: Patriotism or Investment”, Capital Markets Law Journal (February 2024).
[i] Brett Murphy, “Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel”, ProPublica (October 4, 2024).
[ii] Linda J. Bilmes, William D. Hartung, and Stephen Semler, “United States Spending on Israel’s Military Operations and Related U.S. Operations in the Region, October 7, 2023-September 30, 2024”, Report: Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs (October 7, 2024).
[iii] Greg Hadley, “State Department Approves Sale of New, Updated F-15s to Israel”, Air and Space Forces Magazine (August 13, 2024).
[iv] Dania Akkad, “Legal Battles Loom Over Supply Chain Keeping Israeli F-35s Flying Over Gaza and Lebanon”, Middle East Eye (October 4, 2024).
[v] Marissa Newman, “Thiel’s Palantir, Israel Agree Strategic Partnership for Battle Tech”, Bloomberg (January 12, 2024).
[vi] Michael Kwet, “How US Big Tech Supports Israel’s AI-Powered Genocide and Apartheid”, Al Jazeera (May 12, 2024).
[vii] Mohammed Hussein, Mohammed Haddad and Konstantinos Antonopoulos, “Know Their Names: Palestinian Families Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza”, Al Jazeera (October 8, 2024).
[viii] Palestine Action, “Palestine Action Target Over 10 Barclays Sites Across the Country”, Press Release (September 9, 2024).
[ix] Sharon Wrobel, “JPMorgan Expands Commercial Banking Business to Israel to Cater to Tech Companies”, The Times of Israel (December 4, 2024).
[x] Meir Orbach, “Andreessen Horowitz Steps Up Israeli Investments as Local Funds Struggle to Raise Capital”, CTech by Calcalist (September 10, 2024).
[xi] Meir Orbach, “Palo Alto Networks’ Nir Zuk: ‘The Cyber Market is Maturing. Small Companies Have a Problem Selling Standalone Solutions that Big Companies Provide”, CTech by Calcalist (September 24, 2024).
[xii] Arvind Dilawar, “Activists Target Logistics Firms That Are Facilitating Israel’s Genocide in Gaza”, Truthout (August 30, 2024).
[xiii] Staff Writer, “I/OPT: NGO Coalition Takes Israeli Shipping Company ZIM to Court Over Illegal Weapon Transfer Via Antwerp Port During Ongoing War on Gaza”, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (May 15, 2024).
[xiv] David de Jong, “The Richest Man in Germany is Worth $44 Billion. The Source of His Family Fortune: The Nazis Know”, Vanity Fair (September 12, 2024).
[xv] Elia el-Khazen and Charlotte Rose, “Routes to Disruption—Supply Chain Sabotage and Israel’s War on Gaza”, Middle East Research and Information Project (Summer 2024).
[xvi] Oil Change International and Data Desk, “Israeli Crude and Fuel Supply Chains”, Report (March 8, 2024).
[xvii] Energy Embargo for Palestine, “BP’s Oil Route to Israel”, Report: Transnational Institute (September 9, 2024)
[xviii] Oil Change International and Data Desk, “Behind the Barrel: New Insights Into the Countries and Companies Behind Israel’s Fuel Supply”, Report (August 2024).
[xix Eli Clifton, “Israel’s Wars Mean ‘Massive” Returns for US Arms Company Investors”, Responsible Statecraft (October 7, 2024).