French insurance giant AXA cuts ties with major Israeli banks: BDS
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French insurance giant AXA has divested from all major Israeli banks amid increasing pressure from the BDS movement.
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A woman holds a megaphone with a sticker bearing the Israeli flag and reading: 'boycott Israel and those who finance it,' during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Rome, Italy. Saturday, January 27, 2024 (AP)
French insurance giant AXA has reportedly divested from all major Israeli banks in a massive win for the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement (BDS).
The move comes as part of ongoing efforts by BDS to pressure companies complicit in supporting the Israeli occupation's settler-colonial regime, as announced in a new report published on Wednesday by the corporate accountability organization Eko.
Israeli banks are considered the backbone of the Israeli colonial project, providing substantial direct support for the expansion and maintenance of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
The global campaign against AXA targeted the company's investments in these banks and in Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli defense contractor implicated in various human rights violations against Palestinians.
Under pressure from the campaign, AXA had previously partially divested from Elbit in December 2018 and March 2019. By the end of 2022, it had also withdrawn its investments from two Israeli banks, Mizrahi-Tefahot and First International Bank of Israel.
Eko, which is part of the broad coalition pushing AXA to cease its complicity in Israeli crimes against Palestinians, commissioned independent research by Profundo, revealing that as of September 2023, AXA still held over $20 million in shares in three Israeli banks: Hapoalim, Discount, and Leumi. However, by June 24, 2024, amid escalating global pressure, AXA had divested from these banks as well.
The report confirms that AXA has no longer invested in Mizrahi-Tefahot or First International Bank of Israel since at least the end of 2022, and it has now sold its remaining investments in the other Israeli banks, with only a few shares left in Bank Leumi.
Not entirely scott free
Fiona Ben Shakrun, the BDS Europe coordinator, praised this development, stating, "The pressure led by the BDS movement is effective. AXA's confirmation of its divestment from all Israeli banks and Elbit Systems is a significant achievement after years of strategic campaigning."
"All states, local authorities, companies, and institutions are legally obligated to end all forms of complicity, direct or indirect, in Israel's settler-colonial and apartheid regime," she added. "This is a crucial step towards dismantling this genocidal system that has persisted for over 76 years."
During AXA's shareholders meeting in April 2024, the company's CEO was compelled to announce that AXA no longer had any investments in Israeli banks, either directly or indirectly.
However, AXA is not entirely free from scrutiny. Amid the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, the coalition will continue to monitor AXA's investments to ensure the company is not complicit in the ongoing genocide.
The AXA boycott campaign has been ongoing for five years, driven by the company's investments in Israeli banks that finance the occupation's crimes, including settlement expansion, killing, and displacement of Palestinians.
AXA also invested in Elbit Systems, which supplies weapons to the Israeli military and provides logistical support for the occupation's infrastructure, including the apartheid wall.
Germany lists BDS as extremist
This comes in the wake of a recent decision made by Germany's Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to deal with BDS as a "suspected extremist case," noting that it had "links to secular Palestinian extremism."
The report claimed that the BDS is not a homogeneous association, party, or organization.
German news site Watson cited the report as saying that “there is sufficient, strong, factual evidence to suggest that [the] BDS thereby violates, among other things, the idea of international understanding” by questioning "Israel’s" existence.
The report said, “After the terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, BDS-affiliated groups mobilized and participated in many anti-Israel gatherings and intensified their demands for an end to an alleged ‘Israeli apartheid’ as well as called for a boycott of companies and goods related to Israel.”
German news site Judische Allgemeine quoted Faeser as stating, "We must oppose internal threats from extremism just as decisively as [we do] external threats," adding, "We absolutely have to break the spiral of escalations in the Middle East, leading to even more disgusting hatred of Jews here."
“Security authorities are reacting with great vigilance to the latest developments and are actively taking action against any kind of anti-Israel and antisemitic agitation,” she continued.
