Almost a year into Israel’s current offensive on Palestine, which has already killed more than 41,000 people, the ‘Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau’ publishes a new report that focuses on the banks and weapons corporations that are profiting from the ongoing genocide.

The report on ‘La Banca Armada y su corresponsabilidad al genocidio en Gaza’, carried out by the ‘Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau’, analyses 3,606 financial operations that took place from 2014 to 2024, most of them executed in the last five years, between 15 arms companies that have sold their production to Israel and the banks that have financed them.

Since 2008, the Delàs Centre has published over a dozen reports, books and numerous articles denouncing the relationship between banks and arms corporations. In this new publication, it aims to appeal to the responsibility of the financial institutions that are part of the ecosystem of arms sales that the Israeli army uses against the Palestinian territories, systematically perpetrating crimes against humanity.

The shameful stats

This report presents and reviews the main arms exports to Israel over the last 10 years, mainly based on data obtained from the Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPRI) and supplemented by other sources. Most of the transactions cover the period from 7 October 2023 to the present.

The study identifies 15 arms manufacturers supplying weapons and munitions to Israel: BAE Systems, Boeing, Day & Zimmerman, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, Israel Aerospace Industries, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Nammo, Navantia, Oshkosh Corp, Rafael Advanced Defending Systems, Rheinmetall, Rolls-Royce and RTX Corp (formerly Raytheon Technologies).

It also points to 25 international financial institutions that are financing the Palestinian genocide. The investment fund manager Vanguard tops the list with more than 37 billion euros, followed by the investment and financial services corporation State Street (35,200), and the investment fund managers Capital Group (28,800) and BlackRock (27,900), with Bank of America (17,230) closing the top five with US financial institutions.

The complicity of Spanish banks

According to the report, up to 12 Spanish financial institutions, including Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank, but also other state banks such as Ibercaja, Banco Caminos and Banca March, have financed seven of these companies: Boeing, Day & Zimmerman, General Dynamics, Oshkosh Corp, Leonardo, Rheinmetall and MTU Friedrichshafen.

Santander and BBVA are the two banks responsible for most of this financing (95.4% of the total), some 3,600 million euros between the two entities, 2,225 and 1,367 million dollars, respectively. They are followed by CaixaBank (99), Bestinver (59.5), EDM Group (7.95) and ibercaja Group (2.26).

Specifically, BBVA, Santander and CaixaBank financed Boeing and General Dynamics, which exported the GBU-type guided bombs used in the Jabalia massacres of 9 and 31 October, where almost 100 civilians were killed. BBVA and Santander, together with Ibercaja and Banco Caminos, also provided financing to Rheinmetall, the company that sold Israel the 155 mm M109-52 Howitzer self-propelled howitzers used last October in the attacks on the Gaza Port.

On the other hand, the production and maintenance of the Boeing F-15 and Lockheed Martin/Leonardo F-35 aircraft that have been exported to Israel in recent years have been financed by Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank. These planes have been widely used in the bombing campaigns over Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen.

The Delàs Centre points out that eleven of these twelve financial institutions have bought shares in one of the companies supplying weapons to Israel. Moreover, it points out that ‘bearing in mind that the majority of the Spanish population is in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people and firmly opposes the genocide in Gaza, the banks that support the Israeli military-industrial complex with their money and that of their clients must assume their share of responsibility and cancel all operations that may be related to the war crimes committed by the Israeli army’.

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