Activists and councillors in West London are calling on Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) to divest from companies providing weapons and technology used by Israel in its multi-front war across the Middle East. RBKC’s current investment portfolio for its staff pensions includes the Israel-based weapons company Elbit Systems and the American aerospace and weapons giant General Dynamics. The world’s largest asset management firm BlackRock has invested millions of pounds of RBKC pension money in these and a raft of other companies* that are actively enabling Israel’s wars of aggression, conquest and extermination.

Campaigns

Under the Local Government Pension Scheme, RBKC administers a £1.1bn pension fund. The funds are managed by the council’s Investment Committee who have outsourced the pension scheme to BlackRock and other asset management companies including Baillie Gifford in pursuit of the maximum financial return. 

A West London branch of Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has called on RBKC to divest from weapons and technology “destined for use by Israel” in the occupied Gaza Strip, occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen. A PSC officer told Urban Dandy: “Councils that divest from arms producers linked to Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza and Lebanon uphold the standards required of public bodies for ethical and responsible investments and will encourage other councils and public bodies to operate to high ethical standards.

“Divestment of councils from arms investments may seem to make a small difference in comparison to the scale of support for Israel by Western countries. But divestment does make a difference by highlighting moral and ethical aspects of investment portfolios and by putting pressure on companies to consider reputational damage. This was clear in the campaign to divest from South African companies in the apartheid era.”

In a meeting at Kensington Town Hall on November 4^th, independent councillors Emma Dent Coad and Mona Ahmed put the case for divestment to RBKC’s Investment Committee. In 2023, the same two councillors tabled a ceasefire motion regarding Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, but the motion has been kept at the bottom of the list of items for debate by council bosses.  

RBKC told the independent councillors that money in the council’s investments funds has “zero exposure to indiscriminate weapons, WMD or nuclear weapons” despite staff pension contributions to the tune of £56,000 and £964,000 being invested in Elbit and General Dynamic respectively. In fact, RBKC’s claim of “zero exposure” relates only to the Baillie Gifford Fund and Adams Street Private Equity parts of the portfolio and not the BlackRock-administered investments.

RBKC’s Investment Committee has previously vowed to interfere over investments identified as going to companies implicated in the Grenfell Tower fire but not in any other cases. However a RBKC legal review concluded that the Investment Committee can act on ethical considerations should a significant number of pension scheme members express concerns. 

Legal Advice

In an email chain seen by Urban Dandy, Cllr Ahmed followed-up on the 4th November meeting to provide RBKC Investment Committee Chair, Councillor Quentin Marshall with analysis of the legality of the pension investments from an international law scholar who is also a local resident. The scholar advises that, as Israel has been deemed to be committing a “plausible genocide in Gaza,” it is incumbent on all countries to take reasonable action to contribute to stopping the killing. Article Four of the Geneva Convention makes complicity with genocide a punishable offence, including for public officials.

RBKC’s Chief Solicitor and Monitoring Officer, LeVerne Parker responded to Cllr Ahmed and claimed that the council, when administering staff pensions, is not bound by considerations of international law, saying it is “not unlawful…to invest…funds in undertakings engaged in certain activities with a bearing upon Israel’s conduct in and in relation to Gaza or the other Palestinian territories.”

In a subsequent email to Cllr Ahmed, Parker back-tracked, saying she had merely been expressing “differing legal opinion about the legality” of investments such as RBKC’s in weapons and technology used by Israel. Parker did not respond to Cllr Ahmed’s raising of practical and ethical concerns around the pension investments. RBKC’s next Investment Committee meeting will be in late January by which point campaigners hope to have gained support from residents and staff via a petition.

Elbit Systems

Israel’s wars have been profitable for the companies in question. In August Elbit Systems sealed a £292 million contract to supply the Israeli army with ammunition, following on from a similar deal in May worth £585 million. In the Summer Elbit reported rising profits, with quarterly revenue increasing from $1.45 billion to $1.63 billion; quarterly sales to Israel jumping from 17% to 27% of the company’s total sales and a rise in share value from $1.65 to $2.08.

Elbit CEO Bezhalel Machlis told Reuters, “Unfortunately, globally there are many conflicts right now and these conflicts drive high investment in defence…our portfolio is very wide and we can take advantage of this.” 

General Dynamics

General Dynamics supplies artillery ammunition and bombs for attack jets used by Israel in Gaza. It is also providing Israel with the metal bodies of MK-80 bombs, including the 2,000-pound MK-84/BLU-109/GBU-31 bomb, designed to inflict massive civilian casualties when used in dense urban areas such as Gaza City or Beirut. The explosion of this bomb means “instant death” for anybody within 100 feet, with lethal fragments extending its range up to 1,200 feet.

Up to 6^th November this year, Israel had dropped 500 of these 2,000-pound bombs in the northern Gaza Strip. One such use was on 1^st November 2023 when Israel killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the Jabalia camp. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights identified the massacre at Jabalia as a possible war crime. In the period 7^th October to 21^st December 2023, the United States reportedly supplied Israel with over 5,000 of these bombs.

General Dynamics is the only US company that makes 155mm calibre artillery shells. Within two months of the war starting, a single Israeli brigade had fired 10,000 of these shells, which Oxfam has stated are “virtually assured to be indiscriminate, unlawful, and devastating to civilians in Gaza.”

General Dynamics’ destructive products are also being utilised by Israel in its illegal assault on Lebanon. The company manufactures the BLU-109 bombs that have been used by Israel to destroy entire tower blocks in Beirut.

Like Elbit, General Dynamics has profited from Israel’s violence, boasting of having delivered “a 37 percent total return for investors, outperforming the S+P 500 by just over 3 percent.” The S+P 500 is a stock market index that tracks the stock performances of 500 of the largest companies listed on the stock exchange.

A significant proportion of RBKC’s investments in Israel’s wars are managed by BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company with $11.5 trillion in assets under management. The company’s CEO Larry Fink is a supporter of Israel, and his company has a 7.4% stake in Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, which has supplied Israel extensively during its genocide in Gaza, including the Hellfire R9X missile, apparently used by Israel to assassinate journalists in an attempt to hide the reality of its actions in the besieged enclave. 

Victims

The primary victims of Israel’s use of these weapons are women and children who account for 70% of the 44,000+ Palestinian deaths in Gaza. A report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights states that 44% of Israel’s victims are children; and the age group with the highest number of deaths is children aged between five and nine. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has described Israel’s “wanton disregard” for the “rules of war” including widespread or systematic” attacks on civilians that could be “crimes against humanity” and “may also constitute genocide.” 

In October 2024, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, authored a report titled Genocide as Colonial Erasure, which states that Israel carries out systemic rape of male Palestinian prisoners among multiple other forms of torture.

The International Criminal Court last week issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The court concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe the pair are criminally responsible for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” The office of the UK Prime Minister has confirmed the British government would uphold the warrant, meaning that Netanyahu and Gallant would be subject to arrest and deportation to The Hague should they visit Britain.

Change?

The push for RBKC to divest from companies supporting Israel’s wars comes at a time when the council is at pains to point out the changes it has made since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. The September Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report makes scathing criticisms of RBKC, including that “Certain aspects of the response demonstrated a marked lack of respect for human decency and dignity,” and that Muslim victims of the fire “were left feeling that the council had no regard for their cultural and religious needs.”

We asked RBKC for their response to the demands for divestment. Chairman of the Investment Committee, Councillor Quentin Marshall, told us: “The Investment Committee thanked councillors for raising this very serious issue with them. They asked questions on the practical and ethical aspects of the issue. The committee took away the importance of the issue to many in the community, including some current and past employees of the Council.”

We also asked RBKC how it planned to engage with councillors, staff and residents who are concerned about the connection between council investments and war, in the context of the Grenfell Inquiry Report’s criticisms and the council’s own Charter for Public Participation which sets out how the council must conduct its work transparently and with integrity. RBKC’s press team responded that “on the question of the Grenfell Inquiry Report, a report into the Council’s response will be published…and will then be discussed by Full Council on Wednesday 27 November” but did not make reference to the Charter for Public Participation.

In December 2023, at a Full Council meeting, Cllr Mona Ahmed invited RBKC Leader Elizabeth Campbell to condemn Israel’s atrocities, call for a ceasefire and make public space available for vigils, as she had when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Campbell declined.

In February this year, RBKC defended its plans to host Israel’s openly racist and genocidal UK ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely at the Mayor’s annual diplomatic reception, claiming that the event is simply a chance for ambassadors “to meet each other and learn about what is happening in the local area.” Eventually, RBKC cancelled the soirée, citing unspecified “security concerns.”

RBKC’s attitude towards Israel is inconsistent with the borough having the second largest Arab community in London. The council has offered no criticism of Israel or support for affected residents. Campaigners will hope that the criticisms made in the Grenfell Inquiry Report and the arrest warrant for Israeli leaders will be the start of real change, at least when it comes to acquiescence over Netanyahu’s genocide.

by Tom Charles @UrbanDandyLDN @tomhcharles

*As well as Elbit and General Dynamics, the BlackRock Aquila Life RBKC Global Fund invests in BAE Systems; Boeing; Honeywell International; Lockheed Martin; Northrop Grumman and Rolls Royce, all of whom supply the means of war to Israel.