GENEVA — UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on Thursday accused the Zionist entity of committing “one of the cruelest genocides in modern history” in Gaza, calling for an international arms embargo, the suspension of trade and investment ties, and legal accountability for companies enabling the war.
Presenting her latest report to the UN Human Rights Council, Albanese described the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as “apocalyptic,” with more than 200,000 Palestinians killed or injured and countless more displaced, starved, and bombarded. She condemned the Zionist entity’s so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” as “a death trap” designed to kill or force the flight of a besieged population.
Albanese highlighted the economic profiteering from the war, stating that arms companies have turned near-record profits by supplying weapons used to drop over 85,000 tons of explosives—six times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb—on Gaza. She said the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has surged 213% since October 2023, contrasting “one people enriched, one people erased.”
The report named 48 corporate actors—among them Amazon, Microsoft, BNP Paribas, Booking, and HD Hyundai—accused of fueling the “economy of occupation” through military, financial, technological, energy, and academic support. She said the Zionist entity has turned Gaza into a testing ground for weapons, surveillance systems, and drones, making the territory “an ideal laboratory for the Zionist military-industrial complex.”
In a Geneva press briefing, Albanese said she had shared detailed legal findings with all companies cited in her report. Only 18 responded, with most rejecting wrongdoing. “They don’t understand international law clearly,” she said. “They think that international law is there to make excuses.”
Under international law, Albanese emphasized, any involvement in such a system entails legal responsibility. She urged UN member states to impose a full arms embargo on the Zionist entity and sever all trade and investment ties. Businesses, she said, must “urgently terminate relationships directly linked to and contributing to violations against Palestinians.”
Calling for civil society mobilization, Albanese concluded: “Trade unions, lawyers, civil society groups, and ordinary citizens should press for boycotts, divestments, sanctions, and accountability. What comes next depends on all of us.”
