Indian Companies Complicit In Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinians

By Sudhanva Deshpande and Vijay Prashad

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Oct. 3, 2025: The Israeli genocide of the Palestinians has persisted for two years —a “live-streamed genocide”, as Amnesty International called it in its April 2025 annual report. Thus far, Israel has murdered over 66,000 Palestinians —the overwhelming majority of whom are civilians; 20,000 of the dead are children, meaning a Palestinian child has been killed every hour since October 2023. Two million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to remain on the move as Israel continues to pummel the small area with missile and bomb attacks. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank have faced eviction as part of a broader ethnic cleansing policy Israel is pushing for the entire region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

People look on as Palestinian artists work on a mural painting representing the Global Sumud Flotilla bound for Gaza, as a gift of appreciation for the activists who were aboard, in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on October 3, 2025. The vessels that set sail last month, ferrying politicians and activists including Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg towards Gaza, were intercepted by Israeli forces. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)

During these two years, Israel has violated the sovereignty of seven states, from Lebanon to Qatar, killing uncounted numbers of people in these countries with no official United Nations sanction. This murderous rampage appears endless, but world opinion has now almost entirely turned against Israel. When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an International Criminal Court warrant for crimes against humanity, spoke at the United Nations, the General Assembly hall was almost empty. Netanyahu is now unwelcome in most countries.

Almost, most. These qualifications are necessary because many countries continue to provide political support for the Israeli genocide and broad-ranging military support for the mass killings. Two recent reports measure this enduring support for Israel’s genocide. The first, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, came from Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Published in June 2025, the report prompted direct and virulent personal attacks on Albanese, even extending to her husband, who works at the World Bank. The report’s substance, detailed below, elicited no rebuttal from the Western governments, which would be hard-pressed to respond to the factual claims about Western corporate complicity in the genocide.

The second report, Profit and Genocide: Indian Investments in Israel, was written by Hajira Puthige of the Centre for Financial Accountability in New Delhi. Published in September 2025, it details the complicity of Indian corporations in the Israeli genocide.

Western Support

Israel’s most important ally is the United States, whose government continues to provide diplomatic support —the US vetoed a sixth UN Security Council cease genocide resolution in September 2025— while supplying weapons and money. Since October 2023, the US has sent over a thousand weapons shipments to Israel.

Apart from the United States, Israel’s closest allies are the states of Europe, both individually and in the European Union. These states have cracked down on their own citizens for peacefully protesting the genocide while they made arms deals with Israel. For instance, Germany began a major embargo on weapons sales to Israel but simultaneously signed a deal to import €350 million worth of weapons from Israel. Although many European states have pledged to recognise Palestine, this aligns with their existing agreements to a two-state solution; they have yet to sanction Israel in any way for its genocide.

Albanese’s report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, demonstrates not only how Western states have defended Israel’s genocide but also how Western corporations have profited from both the genocide in Gaza and the illegal occupation and apartheid across the Israeli landscape, including the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Western companies are no longer merely implicated in West Bank apartheid, as previously documented, but are now embedded in the economy of genocide. The report documents complicity across eight key sectors: arms manufacturers, technology, construction, mining, finance, insurance, universities, and charitable organisations. Albanese developed a database of 1000 corporate entities but highlighted only a handful, such as Amazon, BlackRock, Caterpillar, Google, Lockheed Martin, and Microsoft. Technologies previously used to control and dispossess Palestinians are now being used to inflict mass violence and immense destruction.

The report asserts that international law provides no safe harbour for firms complicit in genocide. Albanese argues that corporate engagement with any component of the genocide violates jus cogens (compelling law) norms and constitutes international crimes. She notes that the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures and the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants “signal the risk that corporate entities – and their executives – that engage in the [Occupied Palestinian Territory] are implicated in serious international crimes”. The report concludes with a call for corporations to cease relations with Israel until the occupation and genocide end. Albanese advocates for comprehensive sanctions, arms embargoes, the suspension of trade agreements, and the prosecution of corporate executives to pressure the world to stop its support for this genocide.

Indian Support

In recent months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu have exchanged public birthday wishes on X. In early September 2025, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich —member of a far-Right party who expresses such extreme racism and homophobic views that he is sanctioned by several governments, including the UK— led a delegation to Delhi to meet with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. They signed a major bilateral investment agreement to boost trade and investment. Sitharaman stressed the need for greater collaboration in “cybersecurity, defence, innovation and high-technology”.

A few days later, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel stated unequivocally that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Sporadic news reports over the past two years have detailed India’s continued arms relationship with Israel. Al-Jazeera published reports on recent arms transfers, based on documents that its journalists had seen. Albanese’s report also documents weapons transfers from a company in Hyderabad to Israel. However, until recently, there has been no major study of the Indian complicity in the genocide. This gap is filled by the Centre for Financial Accountability’s publication of Puthige’s report, which details the complicity of the Indian billionaire class and their corporations.

Here are some examples:

Adani. Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India, Ltd. manufactures the Hermes 900 drone, which has been used in Gaza. Adani Ports, which owns Haifa Ports, is therefore the owner of an Israeli navy facility that harbours Israel’s submarine fleet.

Tata. Tata Consultancy Group has been working on the Project Nimbus system, which provides surveillance and targeting of Palestinians in Gaza. Tata has sold Israel Land Rover vehicles, which the Israeli military has converted into the MDT David, an armoured vehicle it uses in patrols in the West Bank and in Gaza.

Ambani. Reliance Jio has been working closely with Israeli digital firms to build Israel’s digital infrastructure, while Reliance Defence has worked with Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to build missile systems and drones for the Israeli military.

Jains. Jain Irrigation, through NaanDanJain, works to supply and build irrigation systems in the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank of the OPT.

The report provides evidence that powerful and influential sections of Indian business, like their Western counterparts, are directly complicit in the genocide.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was produced by Globetrotter. Sudhanva Deshpande is a leading theatre personality of India. Deshpande has been associated, as an actor and director, with Jana Natya Manch (Janam) (People’s Theatre Front) , a radical theatre activist group, since 1987. He also heads Leftword Books, an independent publication, as its managing editor and May Day Bookstore and Café as a proprietor/barista. In his long association with Janam, Deshpande has acted in over 8000 performances of more than 60 street plays, directed more than 30 street plays, and conceptualized and written dozens of street and proscenium plays on issues of contemporary political and social relevance.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Chelwa and Prashad will publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later this year with Inkani Books.

Source: Globetrotter