UN Blames Capitalism for Israel-Hamas War

You might be forgiven for believing that Hamas did nothing to provoke Israel’s war on it if your only source of information about the conflict were the United Nations. 

After a comprehensive investigation spanning a year and a half, the NGO has concluded that the culprit for all the death and destruction is…capitalism and settler colonialism. 

A recent U.N. Human Rights Council report engages in Ivy League grad student-level idiocy to blame the war in Gaza on capitalism. https://t.co/Zs45i4x24J

— reason (@reason) July 14, 2025

This conclusion, by now, is pretty standard fare within our intellectual and cultural elite, who can’t seem to wrap their minds around the fact that some cultures (other than those inhabited by white people) are sick beyond measure. 

We can rest easily, folks: The inaptly named United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has closely examined the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel and found the culprit: It was settler colonialism and capitalism what done it! In a masterful mishmash of leftist gibberish, the report assumes Israel’s culpability and combines antisemitism with hostility to free markets. The report should make Americans happy that the U.S. has disengaged from the UNHRC and bears no responsibility for its actions.

Forget Hamas, It’s All About Settler-Colonialism and Racial Capitalism

“The role of corporate entities in sustaining the illegal Israeli occupation and its ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza is the subject of the present investigative report, which is focused on how corporate interests underpin the Israeli settler-colonial twofold logic of displacement and replacement aimed at dispossessing and erasing Palestinians from their lands,” asserts Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, in the introduction to the July 3 report. The document concludes, in part: “The enduring ideological, political and economic engine of racial capitalism has transformed the Israeli displacement-replacement economy of occupation into an economy of genocide.”

The name “Hamas” does not appear in the executive summary of the report, nor in the report itself. I am not joking–you can read the report yourself. 

It is insane, but then again, this is the United Nations Human Rights Council, which inhabits a universe in which Iran is considered a proper judge of how human rights should be implemented. 

Albanese and her staff elide any events during October 2023 that might have precipitated a change in policy by Israel towards Gaza, and they wave away any possible hostility towards Jews. Of course, Albanese herself was the subject of a 2024 report from Geneva-based watchdog group UN Watch that found she is ill-disposed towards Israel and most of its inhabitants. Titled Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing: Why Democracies Should Sanction UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese For Propagating Antisemitism and Supporting Terrorism, that report documented a series of concerning facts about Albanese. These include her accusation that the United States has been “subjugated by the Jewish lobby”; that her husband, who compares Palestinians to Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, formerly worked for the Palestinian Authority; that in her role as a U.N. official, she told attendees at a Hamas-organized conference “you have a right to resist this occupation”; and that she responded to Hamas’s October 7 atrocities by insisting “today’s violence must be put in context.”

Based on her conduct, statements, and connections, the UN Watch report found that “Francesca Albanese knowingly supports Hamas and other terrorist groups.”

That Francesca Albanese was named the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 tells you everything you need to know about how corrupt the United Nations is. She is a virulent antisemite, sympathetic to terrorists, and speaks like a professor from Columbia. 

Here’s the introduction of the report, just to give you a flavor:

Colonial endeavours and associated genocides have historically been driven and enabled by the corporate sector, Commercial interests have contributed to the dispossession of Indigenous people of their lands  – a mode of domination known as “colonial racial capitalism”.

The same is true of Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands, its expansion into the occupied Palestinian territory, and its institutionalization of a regime of settler-colonial apartheid.

After denying Palestinian self-determination for decades, Israel is now imperiling the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine. The role of corporate entities in sustaining the illegal Israeli occupation and its ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza is the subject of the present investigative report, which is focused on how corporate interests underpin the Israeli settler-colonial twofold logic of displacement and replacement aimed at dispossessing and erasing Palestinians from their lands. 

The Special Rapporteur discusses corporate entities in various sectors: arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities, and charities. These entities enable the denial of self-determination and other structural violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including occupation, annexation and crimes of apartheid and genocide, as well as a long list of ancillary crimes and human rights violations, from discrimination, wanton destruction, forced displacement and pillage to extrajudicial killing and starvation. Had proper human rights due diligence been undertaken, corporate entities would have long ago disengaged from Israeli occupation. 

Instead, post-October 2023, corporate actors have contributed to the acceleration of the displacement-replacement process throughout the military campaign that has pulverized Gaza and displaced the largest number of Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967. 

While it is impossible to fully capture the scale and extent of decades of corporate connivance in the exploitation of the occupied Palestinian territory, the present report exposes the integration of the economies of settler-colonial occupation and genocide. In it, the Special Rapporteur calls for accountability for corporate entities and their executives at both the domestic and international levels: commercial endeavours enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people’s lives must cease. Corporate entities must refuse to be complicit in human rights violations and international crimes or be held to account.

Did you notice anything missing? By this account, Israel–out of the blue–started destroying Gaza for no reason other than its evil capitalist desire to steal the land, and corporations apparently wanted their piece of the action. 

Hamas released a video showing them digging up Gaza’s water pipes and electricity lines—to turn them into rockets.

If you’re upset about Gaza’s lack of power or water, direct your outrage where it belongs: at Hamas. pic.twitter.com/bcW6n5EsWi

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) July 12, 2025

In response to Albanese’s ridiculous report, Marco Rubio did something amazing: slapped sanctions on her. 

After Albanese’s latest mischief, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded, “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.” He noted that “she has recently escalated this effort by writing threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations and recommending the [International Criminal Court] pursue investigations and prosecutions of these companies and their executives.”

Rubio’s statement imposed sanctions on Albanese of the sort detailed in an earlier executive order. They include “blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the United States.” Were Albanese a garden-variety bigot and hater of free markets, sanctions would be an excessive reaction to hateful speech. But she’s a U.N. official: Her pronouncements help shape government policy. The sanctions, then, are a matter of conflict between the U.S. government and a hostile state actor.

Good. But not quite enough. The United States should withhold funds from the United Nations until it repudiates efforts to bully US corporations to do its will. If the United Nations is hostile to capitalism and threatening US corporations, we should return the favor by cutting off its funds to do so. 

The US is the largest contributor to the United Nations, funding 22% of its general operating funds and 26% of its peacekeeping operations. 

Turnabout is fair play.