【Text by Yanis Varoufakis, Observer Net Columnist; Translation by Duan Pingyang】

Historical lessons tell us that economic interests have always been the key driving force and factor behind colonial interest groups and their racial extermination practices. Since the birth of colonialism, corporations have been inseparable from it; in the past, they played a key role in the violence, exploitation, and ultimate plundering of indigenous peoples and their lands. This mode of rule is called racial colonial capitalism. The Israeli colonization of Palestine also follows this model.

Recently, the report by the UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967 will help us understand the political economy under Israel's apartheid policy, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and the genocide being implemented by Israel today. We believe that this report should be widely and freely studied and discussed.

According to a report by the Washington Post on July 9, the United States announced sanctions against UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on the issue of human rights in the Palestinian territories, accusing her of targeting American and Israeli citizens for prosecution in the International Court of Justice.

Given the hostile and intimidating letter sent by the US government to the UN Secretary-General, demanding the dismissal of Ms. Albanese and the revocation of her outstanding report, we feel it necessary to express our strong support for Ms. Albanese and urge the United Nations to reject the unreasonable demands of the US and Israeli governments.

The United States and Israel are following the old path of denying genocide, intimidating countries that challenge colonial power and oppose the expulsion of indigenous peoples, while most European governments, due to excessive cowardice, dare not speak out; they demand the international community to turn a blind eye to the ongoing genocide, especially to the key roles played by transnational corporations and domestic enterprises in maintaining the apartheid policies and subsequent genocide.

As economists, we believe it is our responsibility to emphasize three key findings clearly revealed in Ms. Albanese's report.

Firstly, territorial occupation and genocide are highly profitable for conglomerates. This includes not only conventional military-industrial complex companies (such as Lockheed Martin, the main manufacturer of F-35 fighter jets, Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer, and Palantir, a company whose algorithms may have played a key role in target selection in Gaza), but also well-known brands (such as Caterpillar, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Allianz Insurance, Chevron, British Petroleum, Petrobras, and A.P. Moller-Maersk Group).

Under the active support of the US government, Israel's defense budget has doubled; a large amount of "investment" has flowed into Israel's war machine through an international network of thousands of Israeli companies and American, European, South Korean, and even one Brazilian multinational corporation. This also explains why Israeli stocks have risen by 161% despite a comprehensive decline in demand, production, and consumer confidence.

Public discontent with Google applying technology to military use

The second finding worth further study in Ms. Albanese's report is that the occupied Palestinian territories have become an ideal laboratory and testing ground for tech giants - and the process of upgrading occupation to genocide has further strengthened this function.

For example, no country has opened up such a large-scale population biometric data to IBM as Israel has. Since October 7, 2023, Microsoft, Amazon, Google's parent company Alphabet, and Palantir have been rapidly expanding their cloud service businesses. Facial recognition software, target selection algorithms, and automated strike systems are undergoing real-time testing, with operations completely at will, and ethical constraints even less than those applied to experiments on lab mice. Tech giants are practically begging for it!

The third key finding is that top universities in the US and Europe are financially dependent on the political economy of maintaining Israel's apartheid and permanent occupation and conflict. If they stop supporting Israel's genocide, many top American and EU universities would face serious financial difficulties.

Mrs. Albanese's report reveals this disgraceful dependency between Western top universities and research institutions (including Technical University of Munich, MIT laboratories, and the University of Edinburgh), which is a contribution worthy of high praise. The people of Europe and the United States have the right to know that some of their most proud academic research institutions are actually financially dependent on the political economy that supports Israel's occupation and genocide.

Within a few years, almost everyone will claim they once opposed this genocide. But now more than ever, it is needed for people with a conscience to step forward. This UN Special Rapporteur is facing疯狂 attacks from the US and Israeli governments, simply because she recently released a report that irrefutably exposed the truth of genocide hidden beneath the political economy structure of the occupied areas of Israel.

As economists, we stand with Francesca Albanese today.

Economists who signed this statement:

Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek Minister of Finance, Economist)

Thomas Piketty (French Economist, Author of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century")

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Lebanese-American Scholar, Author of "The Black Swan")

Michael Hudson (American Economist, Financial Analyst)

Guy Standing (British Economist, Advocate of the "Basic Income" Theory)

Jayati Ghosh (Indian Economist, Development Expert)

Giuseppe Mastromarco (Italian Scholar, Social Activist)

Jomo Kwame Sundaram (Malaysian Economist, Former UN Assistant Secretary-General)

Robert H. Wade (British Political Economist, Development Research Expert)

Christopher Kramer (British Development Economist)

Nidhi Srinivas (Indian Management Scholar, Nonprofit Organization Research Expert)

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