Following a report released by Danwatch in January, Denmark’s third largest pension fund, Sampension, moved to exclude four publicly traded companies from their portfolio due to their investments in illegal Israeli settlement activities. The move is a major win for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has increasingly come under fire in recent years as Israel and its allies have pushed to squash growing popularity with new legislation and political pressure on both public and private institutions.
Danwatch’s report, Business on Occupied Territory, found that Sampension with $46.1 billion under its management, was the Danish pension fund that had been investing the largest sums of money in companies that do business in or around illegal Israeli settlements.
Ana Sanchez, speaking on behalf of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian coalition that leads the global BDS movement for Palestinian rights, welcomed the move, telling Mondoweiss it represents “the latest indicator of the mounting pressure on businesses that are deeply complicit in Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights to stop profiting from Israel’s military occupation and apartheid.”
“All pension and investments funds must divest from Israeli and international companies that are involved in Israel’s human rights violations not just in response to the BDS call issued by Palestinian civil society but also in compliance with UN principles and guidelines on business and human rights,” Sanchez said.
According to Danwatch, Sampension chose to revise its investment guidelines following the report. In accordance to its new guidelines, Sampension excluded four Israeli companies from its portfolio.
The four companies excluded due to their involvement in settlement activity are all listed as companies targeted by the BDS movement. They were identified as two Israeli banks, Hapoalim and Leumi, the German construction company, HeidelbergCement and Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecommunications company, which owns telecommunications equipment installed within settlements, providing the illegal communities with telephone and data signals.
Sampension shared a press release after the move, explaining the shift.
“During 2017, Sampension has expanded its policy and practice for responsible investments in several areas,” the report read. “The focus areas are climate change, human rights and the pursuit of active ownership.”
Director of Investments in Sampension, Henrik Olejasz Larsen, said the four companies were excluded from their investment portfolios due to “the financing of settlements and for the extraction of natural resources and the establishment of infrastructure for telecommunications in the occupied area.”
In addition to the four Israeli companies already blacklisted on Sampension’s portfolio, the company has stated it is now “initiating a dialogue” with another six companies about possible business activities in Israel’s settlements, according to the most recent Danwatch report.
Banking
Denmark’s largest bank, Danske Bank, also a BDS target, confirmed to Danwatch that it still holds investments in Hapoalim and Leumi, despite reports of the bank’s blacklisting of Hapoalim in 2014.
Last month Israel’s banks came under fire, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report criticizing Israeli banks for continuing to allow investments and business exchanges with industries that support illegal Israeli settlements, in contravention of international law.
Israeli banks, such as Leumi, one of the banks that Sampension blacklisted, told HRW they are required by Israeli law to provide services to settlements, since Israeli banking, consumer, and anti-discrimination law, dictates that banks cannot reject customers based on their place of residence.
However HRW found that Israeli banks “do not have to provide financial services that involve settlements, such as financing construction projects or mortgages for settlement properties, when the grounds for refusal are not the place of residence of the customer but rather the business and human rights considerations stemming from the location of the activities.”
HRW called on banks to use the legal loophole to divest from any investments involved in settlement activities.
Natural Resources
HeidelbergCement, one of the four companies moved to Sampension’s blacklist, is the world’s largest cement producer and a major manufacturer of aggregates and ready-mix concrete, with around $1 billion in revenue, according to Who Profits, a research center dedicated to exposing companies involved in Israeli settlement activity.
The German cement company owns three plants and one aggregates quarry in the occupied West Bank through Hanson Israel, Heidelberg’s local branch.
One of the quarries operates on Palestinian land from the village of al-Zawiya.
“The quarry exploits occupied Palestinian natural resources for the needs of the Israeli construction industry,” Who Profit documented. In addition, once the natural resources, dug up from West Bank land, are turned into building material, they are directly supplied to settlements for building and expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“Materials of stone and gravel extracted from Palestinian land have been providing the raw material needed for the Israeli expansionist construction industry,” Who Profits documented. “Without which the construction sector could not have thrived economically, generating profit for many Israeli companies.”
Last month, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a report revealing that the Palestinian economy was performing “far below potential.”
The report documented that the primary cause of the problem was the “continuing loss of land and natural resources to settlements and the annexation of land in the West Bank.”
According a report released by The Rights Forum, a research center focused on Israel and Palestine, natural stone, or “white oil” is one of Palestine’s most important resources, with the industry providing at least 15 to 20 thousand Palestinian jobs, with an annual contribution of $250 million to the Palestinian economy — however the report found that the stone’s potential value was up to $30 billion.
HRW found that companies such as HeidelbergCement are in direct violation of international humanitarian law “which requires that such natural resources should only be used for the benefit of the (Palestinian) population of the occupied territory.”
Hi Sheren,
Thanks for sharing this article with good news. May additional companies continue to follow this trend of anti-Colonialism.
Stripping Palestine of its natural resources, including stone, is nothing new for Zionists.
See: “Come and Set Up Quarries” poster published by Palestine Zionist Executive, circa 1921
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/come-and-set-up-quarries
and:
“Build Industries In Palestine!”
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/build-industries-in-palestine
Denmark, a country with a major racism and anti-immigrant problem, would prefer deal with Israel, rather than with problems at home. Funny how no one boycotts the white blonde people. Instead, they go after the Jews.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9112148
Something Is Unspoken in the State of Denmark https://nyti.ms/2mzYXYE
https://www.thelocal.dk/20170510/racism-plays-a-key-role-in-migrants-exclusion-in-denmark-report
This is good news.
Could the mainstream American press also be taking more of an interest in BDS, especially in light of the disingenuous, wrong-headed, and unconstitutional attacks on BDS by the Israel Lobby and its henchmen? A small Exhibit A may be the publication of my letter to the editor by the Portland (Maine) Press Herald on October 14, 2017 (in the print and online editions), as follows:
“The Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720 and H.R. 1697), introduced in Congress this year, is clearly an unconstitutional infringement of civil rights (per the Supreme Court, the First Amendment now covers words, money and political action).
This proposal would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. It was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, part of the Israel lobby. AIPAC, in its 2017 lobbying agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top priorities.
I am proud of my Jewish heritage. My forebears in the Wolfe, Opper, Levy and Barnett families came to this country long ago for the very freedoms that the Israel lobby now seeks to destroy (including Benjamin Wolfe, my fifth great-grandfather, one of the founders of the sixth-oldest Jewish congregation in America, Congregation Beth Ahabah, in Richmond, Virginia).
Criticism of Israel and the Israel lobby is not anti-Semitism, and everyone knows it. Many people feel that our tax dollars and other support of Israel, and its dangerous agenda in the Middle East, is not in the best interests of this country. I ask our elected representatives, please, to oppose this form of totalitarianism and to preserve our rights to criticize and oppose Israel and the Israel lobby without fear of condemnation, accusation of hate crimes and criminal penalties.
David Plimpton”
I was also heartened by the fact that my letter was the lead letter in both the online and print editions and that the print edition had “Boycotting Israel is my civil right” as a headline above all the letters to the editor, an Associated Press representation of a hand holding a placard which read: BOYCOTT UNTIL ISRAEL COMPLIES WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW”, beneath which was a caption: “A proposed law making it a felony to support an international boycott of Israel would violate the First Amendment, says reader.”
Some rather good news, but infinitely sad that it is “unprecendented”:
“In Unprecedented Move, Eight European Countries to Demand Compensation From Israel for West Bank Demolitions …
Eight European Union countries wrote an official protest letter to Israel, demanding over €30,000 ($35,400) in compensation for confiscating and demolishing structures and infrastructure which the countries had built in Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli control.
A senior European diplomat told Haaretz that the letter, which is the first of its kind, was expected to be delivered to senior Foreign Ministry officials within a few days.
According to the European diplomat, Belgium was leading the move. The other countries involved in drafting the letter are France, Spain, Sweden, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland and Denmark. All eight countries are members of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a body through which they coordinate humanitarian assistance to Area C.
The countries were protesting the confiscation of solar panels they had installed in Bedouin communities and the demolition of mobile structures that were financed in various Bedouin communities to serve as classrooms.
The existence of the protest letter was first reported by the French newspaper Le Monde. In the letter, the eight countries stressed that if Israel does not unconditionally return the equipment it seized, they would demand compensation. The demolition and seizure of humanitarian equipment, including school infrastructure, and the interference in the transfer of humanitarian assistance contravenes Israel’s obligations under international law and causes suffering to the Palestinian residents, the letter said. …
According to a senior Foreign Ministry official, Belgian Ambassador to Israel Olivier Belle said during the meeting that if Israel did not return the equipment it had seized, his country would formally demand compensation. Belle was the only one at that meeting to raise the issue of compensation, but in the ensuing weeks he apparently managed to persuade his colleagues to turn the demand into a joint agreed-upon position that would be officially conveyed to Israel.
Israel categorically rejects the demand for compensation. Israel’s position is that the European activity in Area C is not humanitarian assistance but illegal development that is being done without coordinating with Israel and with the aim of strengthening the Palestinians’ hold on Area C. The European position is that under the Geneva Convention, Israel is responsible for dealing with the everyday needs of the Palestinian population in Area C, and since it is not doing so, the European states are stepping in with humanitarian aid.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.818017
Then there’s this weird tidbit:
“U.S. firm to build solar plants in blackout-plagued Gaza …
GAZA (Reuters) – The Gaza Strip will have three new solar energy plants operating by April, the U.S.-based energy firm behind the project said on Tuesday, providing the territory with some relief from daily blackouts but far from meeting its severe power shortages. …”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-gaza-solar/u-s-firm-to-build-solar-plants-in-blackout-plagued-gaza-idUSKBN1CN1I9