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In our last News Update, on 5th January 2010, we published an open letter to multinational fruit exporter Fyffes on the subject of trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Corporate Watch had been supplied with a photo of boxes of dates bearing the Fyffes logo inside a packing house in the settlement of Tomer. Read the rest of this entry »
Israel is planning to build a new security fence around the Red Sea city of Eilat, close to the border with Egypt. Companies set to tender for stakes in the $270 million project include Motorola Israel, which manufactures the Wide Area Surveilance System (WASS) sensors for settlements in the West Bank; Ortek, a subsidiary of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit; Magal Security Systems, an Israeli company that had built parts of the West Bank and Gaza walls; D-Fence and El-Far. Israel has already built fences and walls along its borders with Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and inside the West Bank and Gaza. The construction of many of these barriers has resulted in land grabs and everyday suffering for Palestinians trying to cross through the countless checkpoints.
It’s Valentines Day in a couple of weeks and tonnes of cut flowers from Israel and the Occupied Territories are set to be exported to Europe. Many of these flowers come from the besieged Gaza Strip, a captive market for Israeli companies like Carmel-Agrexco. Israel has eased its siege on Gaza specifically to allow the export of flowers to Europe through Israeli companies. Roughly 450,000 flowers have been passing through the Gaza crossings each week, bound for the UK, Holland and other parts of Europe. Agrexco’s flowers are also sourced from the occupied West Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
Ever since the first Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel in 2005, French multinational Veolia has been on campaigners’ list of boycott targets for its investment in the controversial East Jerusalem tram line and involvement in ‘settlers only’ bus routes. As a result of high profile boycott campaigns around the world, Veolia last year attempted to abandon its part in the tram line project (see previous articles: 1 | 2). But Veolia’s shameless facilitation of settlement infrastructure does not end there. On a recent visit to the area, Corporate Watch investigated the impact of Veolia’s other big operation on occupied land: the Tovlan landfill. Read the rest of this entry »
The Christmas period is one of the busiest times of the year for date importers. Tonnes of dates are imported into the UK from illegal Israeli agricultural settlements on Palestinian land. Campaigners have been focusing on Israeli companies, such as Carmel Agrexco, importing these dates into the UK but little is known about Fyffes, a transnational company that has also sourced dates from Israeli settlements.
Anti-militarist campaign Target Brimar has begun 22 days of protest to commemorate not only those killed in Gaza during the Israeli attacks last year, but also all those killed by UK and US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world. Brimar is a Manchester-based company whose targeting display systems are used by UK, US and Israeli forces.
December 19th saw the international day of action against Ahava, an Israeli settlement-based spa products company that is known for exploiting Palestinian resources and land. In London, around 20 campaigners held a protest at the company’s store in Covent Garden. Besides the police, protesters were this time confronted by some Zionists demonstrating ‘in support of Ahava.’
Link: www.stolenbeauty.org
Origial article at http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3505
ITT, the owner of EDO MBM in Brighton, has announced a new $39.3 million contract to produce the BRU-57/A bomb rack for the F-16 at Robins Air Force Base in the US. Apparently, “these will be installed on F-16 aircraft used by U.S. and allied nations.” Israel is a major recipient of F-16s.
Link: http://es.is.itt.com/pr2009/pr09_1011.htm
Original article at http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3503
In the lead up to the Counter Terror Expo in April 2010, Corporate Watch is taking a closer look at the companies helping to create, and profiting from, the terror/security culture (see the previous article). The trade fair, which is taking place at Kensington Olympia in London, is an opportunity to make huge profits for any company that can link its products to Western governments’ ‘wars on terror’. Amongst the 250 exhibitors are several companies developing security systems using biometric technologies and increasingly oppressive surveillance systems, bidding for lucrative contracts to create state-of-the-art security systems, for both state agencies and private clients. Read the rest of this entry »
Corporate Watch - Tracking Corporate Complicity in the Occupation of Palestine 
