Who Profits

Introduction

Who Profits is a leader in BDS efforts against Israeli and foreign companies. The NGO maintains a public database of businesses that are often targeted in international BDS campaigns.

For more information on Who Profits, read NGO Monitor’s Report “Who Profits: Foundation for the UN BDS Blacklist.”

Profile

Country/TerritoryIsrael
Websitehttp://www.whoprofits.org
FoundedRegistered Israeli Amuta (non-profit organization) in 2013 formerly a research project of the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP)
In their own words“research center dedicated to exposing the commercial involvement of Israeli and international companies in the continued Israeli control over Palestinian and Syrian land”

Funding

Activities

BDS Activities

  • Who Profits’ initiates international BDS campaigns, targeting Israeli and foreign banks, security companies, civil infrastructure facilities, and private companies. It supports BDS campaigns around the world in finding target companies. The website provides the option to “Report a Company,” and calls on the public “to identify companies that should be included in their database.” This database includes more than 500 Israeli and international businesses.
  • Who Profits has participated in campaigns against Ahava, Airbnb, HP, and G4S.
  • Who Profits’ false allegations of the illegality and immorality of various business activities are echoed uncritically by UN bodies and officials and international NGOs as part of their politicized agendas. UN bodies – notably the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) – relied significantly on Who Profits in preparing a discriminatory database of businesses purportedly operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel.
    • In February 2020, following the publication of the database, Who Profits stated that “The UN list of 112 companies involved in the Israeli occupation is an important step toward corporate accountability. However, its narrow focus and restrictive temporal frame leave out hundreds of complicit corporations and wider structures of dispossession.”
  • In November 2022, Who Profits published a report on the “Complicity of Five Israeli Insurance and Pension Companies in the Violation of Palestinian Rights.” In the report, Who Profits’ alleged that these companies are “involved in widespread activities that work to entrench Israel’s prolonged military occupation and processes of colonial dispossession and control.”
  • In August-September 2021, Who Profits co-founder Dov (Dalit) Baum was a “trainer” at a BDS school run by the Democratic Socialists of America BDS & Palestine Solidarity Working Group. The school aimed to teach the “history, demands, and strategy of planning boycott and divestment campaigns; the interconnectedness of Palestinian liberation to the liberation of all peoples; and the role of labor and our workplaces in the BDS movement.”
  • In October 2019, Who Profits published a report titled “Profiting Through Dispossession: Another Side of Airbnb’s Complicity” alleging that “The act of plundering and privatizing refugee properties by the Israeli state, which started during the Nakba and continues to this day, has transformed the refugee properties in Yafa [Jaffa] into commodities that can now be listed by hosts on platforms such as Airbnb. In serving as a platform for these properties, as well as those in settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, Airbnb is profiting from the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.”
  • In December 2018, Who Profits published a report on how the “Israeli Wine Industry Remains Complicit in the Israeli Settlement Enterprise.” Who Profits accused Israeli wineries of “us[ing] the planting of vineyards as a means of seizing public and private Palestinian land.”
  • In September 2017, Who Profits published a report, “Touring Israeli Settlements: Business and Pleasure for the Economy of Occupation,” accusing Israel of “pursu[ing] a dual strategy for its aggressive exploitation, heavily investing in Israeli tourist enterprises beyond the Green Line while simultaneously restricting and actively de-developing the Palestinian tourism industry.” Who Profits accused companies active in the tourism industry, such as Booking.com, Airbnb, and TripAdvisor, of “reaping massive amounts of profit and, in the process, strengthening the Israeli settlement enterprise and Israel’s economy of occupation as a whole.”
  • In August 2017, Who Profits released a publication titled “What We Know about HP So Far,” examining HP’s “occupation-related activities” and stating that “HP, though formally defunct, remains heavily involved in the settlement enterprise and the economy of the occupation as a whole.”
  • In November 2016, Who Profits, in partnership with BADIL and Al-Haq, held a side event at the United Nation’s Forum on Business and Human Rights titled “Business and Human Rights in Palestine: The Many Facets of the Occupation Industry,” discussing “the development of a data base of corporations complicit in human rights violations in the oPt.”
  • Who Profits and Coalition of Women for Peace co-authored a report titled “Knowing the Occupation Economy” (2015).
    • Who Profits attached a “sample letter” (see appendix 1) to the report under the title “contact company management.” The letter seeks to “bring to your attention your company’s involvement in the ongoing expulsion of Palestinian residents from their homes and lands- a process which beginning in the 1948 Nakba, and is continuously ongoing in the day to day policies of occupation and land theft” (emphasis added).
    • Also calls for lobbying the EU to cancel the EU-Israel trade agreement relating to the Israeli pharmaceutical industry.
    • Who Profits acts against small and medium businesses in Israel. NGO Monitor has acquired a number of letters sent in English from the “Who Profits staff” to Israeli businesses, informing them that they will be added to the NGO’s database (see appendix 2). The consequences of being added to this “database” include being targeted by BDS campaigners and being lobbied against in various international forums.
  • In May 2015, Who Profits was part of a BDS campaign against the French telecom company Orange and its connections with the Israeli company Partner. Reflecting an extreme political agenda opposed to Israeli self-defense, Who Profits makes allegations that are completely unrelated to commercial involvement in the West Bank and Golan Heights: “As part of its social responsibility policy, the company sponsors two Israeli military units, the Ezuz armored battalion and the Shachar search and rescue unit, through the provision of sports days, entertainment activities and training. During the attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014, Partner was on the front lines providing material support, cellular services and entertainment to the Israeli soldiers. The company also waived service fees for soldiers during the 2014 assault” (emphasis added).
  • Based on information provided by Who Profits, a large Dutch pension fund, PGGM, announced on January 8, 2014 that it will “no longer invest in five Israeli banks.” Who Profits, as well as a number of other highly politicized NGOs, lobbied PGGM to divest from these Israeli banks as part of its economic warfare campaign against Israel.
  • Published a 2009 report alleging Norwegian Government Pension Fund investments with “corporations whose activities continuously support and maintain the Israeli occupation.” In the report, Elbit, which supplies unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), was described as “One of the main subcontractors for electronic detection systems in the separation fence and the seamline barrier for the Israeli Ministry of Defense.” Elbit’s role in preventing attacks against Israeli civilians was ignored.

Current and Former Activists

2017-2021 Funding to Who Profits (amounts in NIS)

Figures based on NGO annual reports

Donor20212020201920182017
Trocaire (Ireland)152,735156,440157,695142,366174,060
Somo10,724
Fagforbundet (Norway)36,33038,31441,25347,82344,061
Medico International(Germany)46,65046,67450,98446,116
Rockefeller Brothers Fund (Private)184,879253,269259,280263,791
DanChurchAid13,199
Diakonia10,276
HEKS-EPER40,000
Church of Sweden182,818181,289186,154105,622210,505
CCFD-Terre Solidaire (France)35,11838,22335,96279,89340,017
Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP)22,59425,67026,559
General Board of Global Ministries10,8599,65417,155

Appendix 1

who profits bds letter

Appendix 2


All Articles about Who Profits