Protesters raise their voices against Gwent Council’s £110million investment into Israeli arms companies, breaching a UN sanction list.
Image via Newport PSC on X
Activists occupied the Civic Centre in Pontypool protesting Gwent Council’s ties to human rights abuses in Palestine.
Last November, voice.wales reported that the Gwent pension fund was complicit in financing Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. A staggering £110million had been poured from the Greater Gwent Pension Fund into Elbit Systems – Israel’s largest arms company.
Elbit supplies up to 85% of the military equipment used by the Israeli occupation forces to commit war crimes in Gaza.
Protestors displayed their contempt as a result of their pension money being used to support militant action in occupied Palestinian lands.
Hillary Brown, a Newport resident, said that Councillors need to act now and stop these investments. She added, “I’m shocked and horrified that Gwent Councils are investing our pensions in war crimes and genocide.
“We all want to have a good pension, but it shouldn’t be at a cost to the most defenceless and vulnerable people in the world. Nor should 10,000 children have to die in Gaza, with Gwent pension members as shareholders of this carnage!”
The Pension Fund portfolio is shared by five councils under the Local Government Pension Scheme. These include Torfaen, Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly County Borough Councils, Monmouthshire County Council and Newport City Council.
The investments contradict UN-sanctioned businesses who profit from Israel’s war on Gaza. This includes Elbit Systems, which is associated with the production of banned weapons like weaponised white phosphorus, cluster bombs and flechette projectiles.
For a year now, campaigners have been urging action from Gwent Councillors for these acts of grave ethical misconduct and divestment of citizens’ pension money from the ongoing assault in Gaza.
Joe Logan, an Abergavenny citizen, said that the Council’s utilisation of his pension fund is far from the public promise of investing their money ethically.
Joe said, “It is a genocidal and cruel massacre of innocents, making my Pension Fund complicit in these war crimes. They must divest now in the war industry as they must in the fossil fuel industry, for all our futures.”
Earlier this month, a BAE Systems Factory in Glascoed was blockaded by over 60 activists after being accused of manufacturing parts of the F-35 stealth fighter jet – used extensively in airstrikes over Gaza.
Betty Hunter, Honorary President of Palestinian Solidarity Campaign UK, backed the action against BAE Systems, saying that, “To do nothing about the arms trade with Israel is to be complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
“We refuse to allow our leaders in business and government to go unchallenged. We must stop this shameful trade in arms which dehumanises people in order to destroy them.
“The world said NEVER AGAIN in 1948 with the UN charter. This must be applied to Palestinian rights now. Starting with an immediate ceasefire.”
Boycott campaigners also targeted Barclays Bank, Zara, Starbucks and McDonald’s across Wales, in the hopes of abandoning all Israel-linked products and creating an apartheid-free zone.
