Israel and Deadly Investments

It takes a lot of companies to keep an apartheid regime afloat. weapons manufacturers supplying These companies – ranging weapons manufacturers supplying the Israeli military, to travel booking companies renting out rooms in illegal settlements on Palestinian land – often receive financial services from banks.

Banks have the right to decide who they provide financing to, and for what purposes. In this article we’ve collated information from NGO reports, company websites, and financial filings to show which leading UK current account providers are most heavily linked to Palestinian human rights abuses.

The least and most complicit finance providers

Our research assesses banks’ policies around financing military and weapons in general; evidence of financing companies supplying weapons to Israel; and evidence of financing companies linked to settlements. This is set out in the three tables below.

The companies that appear not to finance any settlement or weapons/military activity, and are therefore considered the least complicit, are: 

• Al Rayan
• Co-operative Bank
• Cumberland Building Society
• Metro Bank
• Monzo
• Nationwide Building Society
• Revolut
• Starling
• Triodos

The most complicit banks – which have recently financed companies involved in settlements and supply of weapons to the Israeli military, are: 

• Barclays
• HSBC
• JP Morgan Chase
• Lloyds Group
• NatWest Group
• Santander Group

How banks rate for their financial policies and involvement with Israeli state

We assessed banks against three different policies and practices:

• Policies around weapons/military beyond excluding the most controversial weapons (table 1)
• Provides financing for weapons/military (table 2)
• Finances companies linked to settlements (table 3)

For each of these aspects there were three ratings: 

• Least complicit (good): no involvement, or had a policy against financing
• Average: some involvement, company not mentioned in major investigative reports
• Most complicity (poor): actively funds military involvement, no restrictions, listed in investigative reports

The tables below show which finance companies fall into which rating for each policy/practice. 

Table 1

*HSBC says it prohibits financing of clients which manufacture, trade, purchase, or sell weapons for military use. But its practices don’t match this policy.

Table 2 

*Reports: 

• 'Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide’ (October 2024), Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau. Report used data covering the period 2011 and 2024; 85% covering 2019 to 2024.
• ‘The companies arming Israel and their financiers’ (June 2024), Pax, Profundo. Report used data covering the period January 2021 to August 2023.
• ‘Barclays: Arming Israel’s Apartheid and genocide’ (May 2024), Campaign against the Arms Trade, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want. Report used data covering the period January 2019 to December 2023.
• Also, non-European banks with large investments in one or more of the arms companies covered by these reports.

Bank of Ireland Group and Virgin Money: No investment/lending disclosure found, so not in table 2.

Table 3

*'Don't Buy into the Occupation' report. Report used data covering the period January 2021 to September 2024 (loans/underwriting) and latest filing available September 2024 (shares/bonds).

Bank of Ireland Group and Virgin Money: No investment/lending disclosure found, so not in table 3.

Evidence and position of some of the most complicit banks

Some of the investigative reports rank the banks on the level of financing. Below we have listed the most complicit banks with their rankings, broadly in order of worst first.

J.P. Morgan

• 6th of top 100 international banks financing arms companies with exports linked to Gaza  (Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide report)
• Recently financed Boeing, Elbit, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation (source)
• Recently financed Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, and Bookings Holdings (source)

Barclays

• 19th of top 100 international banks financing arms companies with exports linked to Gaza (Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide report)
• 4th largest European creditor of complicit companies, and 7th largest investor (The companies arming Israel and their financiers report)
• 3rd largest European creditor of companies linked to settlements, and 11th largest investor (Don't Buy into the Occupation report)
• Recently financed BAE Systems, Boeing, Caterpillar, Elbit, General Dynamics, QinetiQ, Raytheon, and Rolls-Royce (Palestine Campaign Barclays report)

Banco Santander

• 36th of top 100 international banks financing arms companies with exports linked to Gaza (Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide report)
• 7th largest European creditor of complicit companies; and recently financed Boeing, Leonardo, and Rolls-Royce  (The companies arming Israel and their financiers report)
• 6th largest European creditor of companies linked to settlements (Don't Buy into the Occupation report)

Lloyds Banking Group

• 35th of top 100 international banks financing arms companies with exports linked to Gaza (Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide report)
• 6th largest European creditor of complicit companies; recently financed Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Rolls-Royce (The companies arming Israel and their financiers report)
• 27th largest European creditor of companies linked to settlements (Don't Buy into the Occupation report)

HSBC

• 45th of top 100 international banks financing arms companies with exports linked to Gaza (Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide report)
• 13th largest European creditor of complicit companies, and 9th largest investor, and recently financed Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce, and RTX Corporation (The companies arming Israel and their financiers report)
• 2nd largest European creditor of companies linked to settlements, and 10th largest investor (Don't Buy into the Occupation report)

NatWest Group 

• 75th of top 100 international banks financing arms companies with exports linked to Gaza (Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide report)
• 18th largest European creditor of complicit companies and recently financed Leonardo and Rolls-Royce. (The companies arming Israel and their financiers report)
• 20th largest European creditor of companies linked to settlements (Don't Buy into the Occupation report)

Dankse Bank

• 15th largest European creditor of companies linked to settlements, and 39th largest investor (Don't Buy into the Occupation report)

Svenska Handelsbanken

• 31st largest European creditor of companies linked to settlements, and 19th largest investor (Don't Buy into the Occupation report)

Broader connections with the Israeli state

We didn’t include a column about whether or not the bank boycotts all Israeli institutions and organisations, because no bank does that. In fact, the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is not campaigning for that – it asks supporters to focus on targets that are complicit with apartheid, for example through having specific ties with the state apparatus.

While our research didn’t assess connections to the state of Israel beyond settlements and weapons/military, this is another important area where banks might be complicit. 

JP Morgan and Barclays are the two companies offering UK current accounts that provide significant underwriting services to the Israeli state, according to an investigation conducted by Netherlands-based financial research group Profundo and published by Dutch NGOs BankTrack and PAX. The campaigners describe the banks named as underwriting “war bonds”, saying they play a key role in enabling Israel’s assault on Gaza. 

Activists taking action against banks

Several banks have been targeted by activist groups over their support for weapons companies. For example, activists disrupted Lloyds Banking Group's 2024 shareholder meeting in Glasgow, and direct action campaign group Palestine Action targeted a JP Morgan property in Edinburgh over its investment in Elbit. Palestine Solidarity Campaign continues to call for a boycott of Barclays Bank.

What impacts have campaigns against financial institutions had?

It’s not simple to measure how successful campaigns calling on financial institutions to end complicity with the Israeli state have been, but here are a few examples which suggest campaigns have an impact – and at minimum, generate publicity and increase awareness about banks’ role in propping up the Israeli military and settlements.

Successes: Danske Bank and KLP

There are some clear wins. For example, in 2010, Danske Bank divested from Elbit Systems following demands from campaigners. 

KLP (Norway’s pension fund) has excluded several companies linked to settlements and the Israeli military, including Caterpillar in 2024 and Elbit Systems and Motorola in 2021.

Partial success: AXA

While not a bank, AXA provides a range of financial services. It’s long been targeted by a boycott call by the global Stop AXA Assistance to Israeli Apartheid campaign, due to its investment in Israeli banks, Elbit Systems, and settlements.

It divested from Elbit fully in 2019, and from two Israeli banks in 2022, and by 2024 AXA had effectively divested from all three remaining Israeli banks. A campaigner with corporate accountability group Eko, Lelli Kashani, said: “Our data and the sharp drops in our graphs despite steady or rising share prices show that AXA divested due to external pressure to stop crimes against Palestinians, and not in response to market prices.” The BDS movement’s Europe Coordinator, Fiona Ben Chekroun, said “The confirmation of AXA’s divestment from all Israeli banks and Elbit Systems is a major milestone for the movement that follows years of strategic BDS campaigning.”

However, that doesn’t mean it’s fully ended complicity. A recent report shows that in June 2024 AXA held over $150m in shares and bonds in eleven companies that armed Israel during the genocide in Gaza. So the campaign calling on the company to end complicity continues. The BDS Movement is still calling for a boycott of AXA.

Some banks have gone back on previous positive divestment commitments 

Banks might sever ties with a complicit company but then resume them at a later date. Sometimes banks appear to have divested, but it later emerges that they once again hold shares or are providing other financial services. Here we list three examples of banks and financial institutions changing their minds.

Danske Bank

In 2014, Danske Bank made headlines when it excluded Israeli Bank Hapoalim from its investment portfolio over its ties to Israeli settlements.

Two years later, Danske Bank removed the company from the exclusion list. In 2024, it was invested in Bank Hapoalim.

HSBC

HSBC faced monthly demonstrations outside (and sometimes inside) 40 UK HSBC branches, and received emails from over 24,000 War on Want supporters about its complicit investments. In 2018, the BDS Movement announced a campaign success, saying HSBC had divested from Elbit Systems: “Global banking giant HSBC confirmed to us that it has divested completely from Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems after a year of campaign pressure.”

In September 2020, HSBC once again held shares in Elbit, and it was listed as providing financial services to Elbit Systems in the 2024 Don’t Buy Into Occupation report.

PGGM

In 2014, Dutch pension group PGGM divested from five leading Israeli banks over “ethical concerns”.

In 2019, it reversed this decision.

Research as a campaign tool

Over the past decade, reports containing robust research methodologies from, for example, War on Want and Human Rights Watch have helped make it possible to map links to Israel’s crimes. 

This not only provides clear information about which companies are most complicit and so can help inform consumers’ decisions, it also improves transparency and creates new avenues for campaigners to use to expose and take action to end corporate complicity with the Israeli regime.

Why focus on banks?

Banks have an enormous amount of power and wealth. 

UK banks recorded pre-tax profits of almost £50 billion in 2021. 

Banks also choose where to provide financial support, in the form of loans or investments. This support determines whether corporations can build an oil rig, expand their munitions production, or develop their wind farms. In other words, they can decide what our economy, industries, and planet look like now and into the future. 

They therefore hold massive sway over the nature of our economies.

On a consumer level, ethical banking is also important, even if you think your savings aren’t worth much. For every £1 a bank holds, it can lend out £9. This means that if you have £12,500 in savings (the median amount of savings for a UK household), your financial provider could lend out £112,500 to either clean or dirty industries.

Ethical banking therefore offers a chance to both align your money with your values and make a really meaningful impact.

Research by Marlous Veldt.