Hi Everyone,
Point-form notes from the first session of the Reading Group are now available.
You can find them here:
The notes are also reproduced below.
Thursday, August 7th, 2025 Meeting
– Introductions
– Relevance of discussing these documents
– Possibility of a talk using analysis/synthesis of this work – e.g. a talk to students at McMaster, how this could be useful for divestment
– Role of Canadian arms shipments – organizations involved in this
– Relevance of documents & reading together
o UN report with serious global relevance
– Different positions of peoples’ interest, background, involvement
– Background of Francesca Albanese
o Law and human rights
o UN appointment in 2022 or earlier as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories (previously Michael Link)
o Several reports since taking her position
o Previous report can be helpful framework/legal argument of why, in terms of international law, there is a case for genocide
o International human rights law, criminal law, international humanitarian law, convention on genocide, other
o Gestures to corporate entities to be prosecuted in last report – prefigures this current report (situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories)
o Focuses on what happened in 1967 but focuses before – very unambiguous about settler colonialism, genocide
o Saying that Israel should be held accountable international law, and what UN and others should be done to hold Israel to account under context of genocide
o Using legal argumentation to do this
o Talks about plight of the Palestinians around the world, not limited to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that they are a persecuted group all around the world, just as during the Holocaust, the Jews were targeted
o Albanese was sanctioned by US – implications including going to UN headquarters in NYC; numerous death threats
- What does the UN have in place for protecting her?
- What can the UN do to reverse the sanctions that prevents her from delivering the report to the UN?
– Possibility of Canadian conference on Palestine rather than having to travel to US
– Parallel suppression: ICC prosecutors that filed against Yoav Gallant and Netanyahu are under attack and also under being targeted; at least one is taking leave
– Structure of report
– Albanese is proposing that it has moved from an economy of occupation to an economy of genocide – e.g. from the structure of settlement & occupation to the structure of annihilation – what do people think about this?
o How can we interrogate this presupposition?
o The impression from the previous report, genocide is described as the attacks on culture, deprivation of education, etc much broader than murder, much prior to October 7, the project of eliminating a peoples
o What is troubling is the corporations involved in this process and how they profit on this
o A mild critique of her analysis – section II – we don’t think there’s an abrupt transition from economy of occupation to economy of genocide; that this has already been one; post-Oct 7 distinction is the move to elimination and erase all memory, intensification of genocidal process
o Surprising of why she is focusing on corporations for the whole report
- That these corporations are suitable targets for legal action by everybody from students to workers to anybody in society
- Parallels to South Africa and role of corporations in apartheid regime
- Parallels to IG Farben and accountability in the Nuremberg process
- So her purpose of doing this is important
- But useful to read in context of the other pieces she has written
- Who is feeding Israel – international corporations
– What is her purpose of calling out US and other companies?
o Prosecuting these corporations
o Leveling international law using her position
– Introduction section
o What the nature of apartheid in Israel is
o Not the same as South Africa
o This is more akin to Nazi Germany – ethnostate, expansionist, targeting a specific Native group
o Albanese is making parallels to settler colonial projects of North America
– The “why” of this specific approach – drawing on the introductory sections
– Albanese sets up the colonial and imperial history
o Powers exploiting resources, peoples
o Modern era, how this process has always acted with states and corporations acting together, drawing on British East India company, etc.
o Limited liability model is arranged in a way that can be rife for exploitation of involvement
o Documentary: “The Corporation” (Canadian) – about legal personhood of corporation, corporate speech, how these become so useful to colonialism and imperialism; psychopathic entities
o Structure of modern capitalism is still wedded to colonialism and imperialism and dispossession; that this has always been the case – key point
o Scale of some corporations exceed GDPs of entire nation-states – that we can’t discount that as how they are as power players and how they operate with complete indifference and lack of accountability to peoples and lands/environments
o International law addresses corporations and corporate behaviour – guiding principles on business and human rights
o Corporations need to be aware on human rights abuses, and have acted to ameliorate or use leverage to address these
o Provides the general framework of corporations in international law
o Now, what is the case for Palestine?
- Completely documented and detailed, plausible evidence is strong e.g. ICJ case January 2024
- Corporations are extremely culpable and extremely vulnerable to their involvement in this genocide
– What corporate entities entail – include universities, non-profits, hospitals, etc under the Guiding Principles
o How this can be used to confront universities in the context of divestment, student encampments, repression, and more
o Connections to local contexts, e.g. Mohawk and McMaster with L3 – placements, investment, etc.
o What is the purpose of international law when it is not enforceable, when nothing has been done?
- Same with ICC – Trump has sanctioned them
- What is moving the people (versus the states who will not do anything) – not simply law-breaking but also mass starvation, violence
- A popular outcry to move people
– What corporations are doing
o Entities are culpable
– 4.22 Relevance of settler colonialism through expulsion of peoples from its lands
– Financial institutions
– Academic institutions
– Also part of corporate entities discussed
– Multi-pronged approach of private interests
– Focus on 8 sectors
– A – displacement – the mechanisms, technologies, and methods of Israeli dispossession, destruction, removal of the Palestinian peoples and their economies, cultures, and livelihoods
– 4.A.30 Military technology & testing – “battle-proven”
– 4.A.32 Elbit Systems & IAI as 2 largest military manufacturers; F-35 supply chains;
– Surveillance and carcerality – role of “tech” companies (Silicon Valley)
– B – replacement – forms of building the settler society/doing the work of normalizing Israeli colonial settlement of destroyed and occupied Palestinian lands, dispossession of Palestinian peoples
– Construction and naturalization of Israeli society
– B.55 Control over and weaponization of natural resources (basic necessities) – water, electricity, fuel & gas
– C – Enablers
– Financiers and universities/knowledge production
– Ideological role of universities
o Student encampments
o How universities provide cover for the occupation
o Pick up next week
Next session:
Albanese Report continued:
Section 4 – Continued discussion + Recommendations
PYM/WBW/Arms Embargo Now Report:
Executive Summary