American Pockets Lined As Gaza Crisis Rages On

By Ada Jolly

Since October last year, Israel’s war on Gaza has resulted in the deaths of approximately 43,000 Palestinians. The majority of those whose lives have been claimed have been innocent civilians with 16,765 children dead. The crisis has reached new heights with South Africa bringing genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice in December last year. The ICJ ruled in January that Israel may be violating the United Nations Genocide Convention and ordered provisional measures stating that Israel must halt their actions in Gaza. Israel has ignored demands to immediately stop the killing of Palestinians and the war has raged on. 

An Economic Boon
Meanwhile, the US government has ignored growing evidence of Israeli war crimes and has instead offered the Israeli government unconditional support in their war offensive. Alongside performative statements asking Israel to exercise caution and keep respecting human rights, the Biden administration has continued to support military action in Gaza. In fact, as well as sending the annual $3.8 billion fund, the administration asked Congress to send an additional $14.3 billion to Israel to bolster its military arsenal further. When the request faced blocks in Congress, Biden bypassed the legislature twice to facilitate the sale of weapons amounting to $200 million in return from Israel. Once again, the US Department of Defense’s ‘ever-expanding budget’ pulled through with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stating that “America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and support Israel’s military needs” by providing them with a steady flow of weapons. Following this, the Pentagon has increased pressure on American defence contractors and the Biden administration has been found to have sent numerous destructive weapons to Israel including the chemical agent white phosphorus, the use of which is actually outlawed by Protocol III of the Geneva Convention for being able to burn through skin, flesh, bone, and even metal. 

In the private sector, the war has been perceived as a boon on the stock market particularly as the value of stocks from weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have shot up since October 7th last year. The demand for both weapons and fossil fuels has skyrocketed, with British oil and gas company Shell’s stocks reaching record highs. The added threat of the Gaza crisis disrupting the Middle East’s oil production and trade flows has raised profits for American oil majors who profited massively at the outset of the war in Ukraine in 2022. In the US, the response to such financial prospects has manifested with even members of Congress benefiting from conflicts through stock trades. The American government permits such profits and at the end of September 2023, New Jersey Democratic Congressman Josh Gottherimer brought in $15,000 in privately owned Northrop Grumman stock. 

The Beneficiaries of Death
The callous approach to financial gains at the cost of real human lives has been criticised around the world when analysts at Morgan Stanley and TD Bank bluntly inquired as to how they would be making profits from the Israel-Hamas war during the 2023 third-quarter earnings calls with General Dynamics and RTX (formerly knows as Raytheon). Eager to see returns on a $16 million investment in the weapons industry, TD Cowen’s senior research analyst Cai von Rumohr probed into the economic benefits of the war during General Dynamics’ October 25th earnings call last year. The aerospace and weapons sector had indeed seen a 7% jump in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7th attacks and on October 26th after the earnings call, von Rumohr changed General Dynamics’ stock rating to ‘buy’. 

During the RTX October 2023 earnings call, Morgan Stanley’s head of aerospace defence equity research Kristine Liwag mirrored von Rumohr’s approach to the crisis. Conscious of the fact that her employer held $3 billion in stock with RTX at the time, Liwag asked “So how much of this opportunity is addressable to the company and if the dollars are appropriated, when would be the earliest you could see this convert to revenue?” In both cases, such comments and the tone with which they were delivered go against each company’s earlier statements on human rights. Both Morgan Stanley and TD Bank had previously endorsed the UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and such exploitative economic pursuits contradict their commitments. “[The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human rights] are clear in their expectation of companies to respect human rights throughout their value chain,” said Cor Oudes, programme leader at PAX for Peace, a non-governmental organization seeking safety for civilians against acts of war. Accordingly, Banks investing in manufacturers who supply a government with weapons which are used in violation of human rights are guilty of violating the principles outlined in the aforementioned instruments. 

Aside from investment groups and banks, the war has yielded immense success for American weapons manufacturers including industry giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, and RTX as uncovered by the American Friends Service Committee. It has also been profitable for other military contractors complicit in the Gazan deaths including Caterpillar, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Shield AI, as well as private firms such as Hewlett-Packard, Chevron, and Google who may be implicated in the persecution of Palestinians. 

Lockheed Martin 
The largest weapons manufacturer in the world, Lockheed Martin delivered 2000 Hellfire missiles to Israel between October 7th 2023 and November 14th 2023. These missiles have been one of the main weapons used in Israel’s aerial attacks on Gaza and are capable of destroying the majority of known tanks in the world. Lockheed has received $18.3 million of US taxpayer money for work on a heavy-lifting aircraft which one of their subsidiary companies provided to Israel. In 2023, during an October earnings call with investors, their CEO Jim Taiclet emphasized “the Israel and Ukraine conflicts as potential drivers for increased revenue in the coming years.”

Northrop Grumman

Based in Virginia, USA, Northrop Grumman is the world’s third-largest weapons manufacturer. Last year in December, the firm was awarded an $8.9 million contract to supply the Israeli military with canons. The deal was funded by US taxpayer money and was intended to begin production in Mesa Arizona. 

Boeing

Fourth in the world, Boeing is widely known for manufacturing airplanes, rockets, satellites and weapons. n addition to supplying the F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters which Israel has used in Gaza since 2023, Boeing supplies Israel with Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits which convert other unguided bombs into guided munitions. The Virginia-based company’s JDAM technology has been used to persecute Palestinian refugees in Gaza and those fleeing as well. 

Amongst other incidents, traces were found in the November 1st 2023 Jabalia Refugee Camp bombing and the March 27th 2024 attacks at an emergency relief centre in South Lebanon where 7 volunteers were killed. The Jabalia attack where hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed has since been condemned as a war crime by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 

General Dynamics

Another American firm, General Dynamics is known for manufacturing a 2,000-pound bomb with lethal fragments which extend up to 1,200 feet. According to CNN, Israel has used more than 5,000 of these bombs in Northern Gaza since the 6th of November 2023 including in the Jabalia bombing. 

General Dynamics is notably the only manufacturer in the US to produce a specific type of 155mm calibre artillery shells used by the Israeli military. These shells have made up a portion of US weapons shipments to Israel and their use by the Israeli forces is “indiscriminate, unlawful, and devastating to civilians in Gaza,” as per Oxfam statements.

RTX (formerly known as Raytheon)

Formerly known as Raytheon, RTX rebranded in July 2023 and since then they have been the world’s second-largest arms manufacturer. On October 24th 2023, RTX CEO Greg Hayes announced to investors that “across the entire Raytheon portfolio, [they’re] going to see a benefit of this restocking,” about new weapons shipments. 

Caterpillar

This construction giant has been selling armored bulldozers to Israel for decades and most recently the vehicles have been used to bulldoze Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the West Bank and along the Gaza Strip. In December last year, Israeli bulldozers (manufactured by Caterpillar) razed several tents outside the Beit Lahia Kamal Adwan Hospital, killing several civilians. 

Rafael Advanced Defensive Systems

This Israeli firm has recently supplied Israel with portable shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets used in Gaza. This new rocket technology was co-developed with a German subsidiary of Rafael and the Singaporean government and invested in by the Biden administration. 

On the 1st of April this year, a drone attack on three of the World Central Kitchen’s vehicles in central Gaza killed 7 aid workers from Palestine, Australia, Poland, the U.K., and a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada. The damage was consistent with Spike missiles produced by Rafael. 

Shield AI

Headquartered in San Diego, California, this firm primarily manufactures drones. According to Politico, Israel has used Shield AI products in “close-quarters indoor combat” in Gaza, exemplifying the disparate access to technological warfare in the Israel-Hamas war. Shield’s complicity in the persecution of Palestinians raises further questions on the prevalence of surveillance infrastructure in the Israeli offensive. 

Hewlett-Packard

Commonly abbreviated to HP, Hewlett-Packard is a household name lesser known for supplying the Israeli immigration authorities with computer hardware, software, and servers. Their support reinforces the systems of ethnic separation criticised as ‘apartheid’ by many human rights watchdogs. 

Chevron

American energy giant Chevron has been central to Israel’s gas extraction efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The company has raised billions of dollars in revenue for Israel in gas licensing payments and helped to facilitate the illegal transfer of gas through the Palestinian Exclusive Economic Zone to Egypt without paying Palestinian authorities millions in transfer fees. Chevron may also be implicated in Israel’s ravaging of offshore Palestinian gas reserves – a war crime under international law. 

Google

One of the most influential American companies worldwide, Google’s application Google Photos is used by the Israeli military in its mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza. Such activity is indeed a violation of Google’s terms of use which expressly disallows use of the platform “to promote activities (…) that cause serious and immediate harm to people or animals.” 

Additionally, since 2021, Google has been involved in Project Nimbus which aims to develop cloud software along with Amazon Web Services for use across the Israeli government. The software is intended to be used by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers including Rafael. 

Though Google doesn’t seem to have increased its investment in the Israeli offensive since October 7th 2023, it has undoubtedly benefitted from the increased demand for its services and is as such profiteering.