UN Calls Out Google and Amazon for Abetting Gaza Genocide

Microsoft, Amazon and Google among major corporations identified as being part of a “joint criminal enterprise” in helping Israel carry out a genocide in Gaza. The companies have made unprecedented profits from the slaughter of more than 62,000 Palestinians since October 2023. 

In a landmark report released on 30 June, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese exposes the corporate machinery both sustaining and profiting from Israel’s occupation and apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank – and now its ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

The report – entitled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” – identifies 48 separate corporate actors in sectors including, arms, tech, construction, tourism, energy, finance, academia and agriculture. According to the report, they represent only the “tip of the iceberg” as the broader web of corporate complicity is far larger. 

It outlines how tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet (parent company of Google) and Amazon grant Israel access to their cloud and AI technologies, enhancing the Israeli government’s ability to process data, make decisions and conduct surveillance and analysis. 

Israel’s apartheid and military systems require ever-growing cloud storage and computing capacity. To meet these needs, the Israeli government and military’s cloud computing project – known as Project Nimbus – brought Google and Amazon onboard with a $1.2bn contract in 2021. 

When the Israeli internal military cloud overloaded in October 2023, Microsoft, Google and Amazon stepped in to provide crucial cloud and AI tech. IDF computer chief Col. Racheli Dembinsky recently described cloud tech as part of “a collection of systems with which the IDF fights to the end”, citing these companies in her onscreen presentation. Dembinsky said: “You have to understand that it’s a platform that’s a weapon.” 

What’s more, Microsoft, Amazon and Google have established research and development (R&D) hubs and local data centres in Israel, while they enjoy what the report describes as “unprecedented government-granted access to data and a captive population”. According to Albanese’s report, this has helped unleash “the first AI-driven and livestreamed genocide, while providing the data sovereignty to shield impunity”. 

Microsoft reported $70bn in sales and an 18% increase in profits in the first quarter of 2025, boosted by its cloud computing and artificial intelligence business. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Google Cloud revenues increased 30% to $12bn led by growth across core Google Cloud Platform products, AI Infrastructure, and generative AI solutions, while Amazon Web Services segment sales increased 19% to over $28bn. 

The report states: “[Israel’s] forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech – providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.” 

During the past 21 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, 85,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on the strip of land – nearly six times the explosive power of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The bombs are deployed by F-35s, F-16s, drones and targeting tech developed and supplied by companies including Elbit Systems, Lockheed Martin, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Palantir. 

Elbit and IAI have profited hugely from Israel’s genocide thanks to an increase in Israeli military spending, which more than doubled to $46.5bn between 2023 and 2024. Elbit’s profits jumped by 18.7% in this period – with a 27% increase in aerospace revenues due to profits on drones and precision guided munitions (or ‘smart bombs’).  

Britain’s biggest pension provider – the auto-enrol, government-backed Nest scheme – invests its most popular default pension fund in Israeli weapons company Elbit.

The report also identified international partnerships providing weapons and technical support as sustaining the genocide in Gaza. Israel benefits from the largest-ever defence procurement programme for the F-35 fighter jet – led by US company Lockheed Martin alongside at least 1,650 other firms. The UK is heavily implicated in the Lockheed Martin F-35 consortium and continues to allow the export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel via a global supply pool.

Albanese’s report states: “This is a ‘joint criminal enterprise’, where the acts of one ultimately contribute to a whole economy that drives, supplies and enables this genocide.” 

The report also details complicity from British bank Barclays, which was involved in underwriting Israel’s international and domestic treasury bonds to boost market confidence. Asset management firms including BlackRock, Vanguard and Allianz subsidiary PIMCO purchased these bonds.

US investment firm BlackRock’s name is peppered throughout Albanese’s report, as one of the largest institutional investors in many companies supporting and profiting from Israel’s genocide. The report cites BlackRock’s status as the second largest institutional investor in Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and IBM, and third largest in Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar – the US engineering manufacturing company that has provided Israel with equipment to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure for decades, and for use in the ground invasion of Gaza. 

Popular online travel platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb are also implicated in sustaining illegal settlements and legitimising the annexation of Palestinian land. Both companies list properties and hotel rooms in illegal Israeli settlements. 

From 2018 to 2023, Booking.com more than doubled its listings in the West Bank – from 26 to 70 – and tripled its East Jerusalem listings to 39 in the year from October 2023. In Israeli settler village Tekoa in the West Bank, Airbnb allows settlers to list properties as “in a warm and loving community settlement”, erasing escalating violence against neighbouring Palestinian village Tuqu.

Amazon also operates directly in illegal settlements and the report accuses the ecommerce retailer of “sustaining their economy, enabling expansion and participating in apartheid through discriminatory service delivery”. In 2020, Amazon was found to be offering free shipping to illegal settlements – but not to their Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank. 

While the eyes of the world and global media are on the brutal bombing campaign in Gaza, Israeli violence and land seizure has surged in the West Bank. In 2024, unprecedented levels of settler violence were recorded, while in January this year, the IDF launched Operation Iron Wall, targeting Jenin with airstrikes and ground operations, alongside other cities and refugee camps across the West Bank. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has killed at least 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. 

The report calls on all governments to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions both on Israel and companies enabling international crimes, and to enforce corporate accountability under domestic and international law. It also urges businesses and investors to end commercial relationships linked to illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide, and commit to reparations – one suggested form is in an “apartheid wealth tax”. 

Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Booking.com, Airbnb, Barclays and Caterpillar have been approached for comment. BlackRock declined to respond.