Get to know the companies of the war and how they are financed

Published at: 11/07/2025 05:00 PM

The United States is the largest supplier of war weapons in the world and today, in addition to financing Ukraine, Israel is the country that receives the most annual fixed military aid from Washington, with an allocation of approximately 3.6 billion dollars. To this figure, we must add additional packages, such as the one that became known just a few days ago when they reported that Israel had obtained yet another round of US military aid, worth 8.7 billion dollars. It is the country responsible for 42% of the global arms trade and in the last ten years it has carried out at least forty arms transfer operations to Tel Aviv.

In October 2024, journalist Antoinette Radford published on CNN's website that “because war is a business, there are four American arms companies involved, classified according to the volume of transfers, which are Lockheed Martin, Boeing , General Dynamics and RTX (formerly Raytheon)”.

Radford explained that “the Boeing company has supplied Israel with a variety of military equipment, including Apache AH-64 helicopters, F-15 aircraft, and Hellfire missiles, as well as bombs and ammunition kits guided by GPS. In addition, it manufactures the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 missile systems, developed in collaboration with Israel. Since October 7, the US has also sent more than 5,400 Mk84 type bombs to Israel, manufactured by General Dynamics, which can be converted into guided bombs with JDAM kits. manufactured by Boeing.”

Radford added that “Germany is also one of Israel's main arms supporters and is responsible for 30% of military aid to Israel between 2019 and 2023, and according to data from the Stockholm International Institute for Peace Research (SIPRI), since the end of 2023 it has multiplied by ten its exports. In fact, in 2024, they authorized several deliveries that, according to the statements of the German Minister of Economy, among those exported there are 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons and 500,000 ammunition cartridges for automatic or semiautomatic firearms.”

In research published in Diario.es, the J.M. Delàs Peace Studies Center, in Stockholm , highlighted the role of Italy and Spain as arms exporting countries. Also, according to data from DataComex, Spain is the fifth country in the European Union that has exported the most material in category 93 (weapons and ammunition) to Israel after October 7.

Israeli weapons used against Palestinian civilians

In this war, not only are soldiers killed, the civilian population is permanently attacked with armed weapons. In the massacres in Jabalia, Gaza, Israeli bombings destroyed twenty-two buildings and killed ninety-eight civilians. In both cases, the Israeli army used JDAM missiles manufactured by Boeing.

The Israeli army used the same type of missile to attack Wasi, an area where Israel had ordered the relocation of displaced people. Forty-three civilians died in the attack, nineteen of them boys and girls. The same missiles have been detected in other massacres of civilians, such as the one in Khan Younis on July 10, with twenty-seven people killed in an Israeli attack on a school, or like the massacre in Al Mawasi, on July 13, with ninety-two dead in total. Israel also used the same weapons in its March Israeli attack on an emergency center in Habbarieh, Lebanon, in which seven civilians died.

Israel uses Boeing Apache helicopters in multiple attacks on the Strip, such as those last June in Rafah and Gaza City, where it killed dozens of civilians. On the other hand, the F-35s, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and Leonardo, have participated, along with the F-15 (manufactured by Boeing and BAE Systems) ), in multiple operations in Gaza and other territories since October 7. An example is the Israeli bombing of Hodeidah, in Yemen, with several dead and at least eighty people injured.

There are also data of attacks on civilians with weapons and artillery ammunition provided by companies such as the American General Dynamics or Day & Zimmerman, the German company Rheinmetall and the British BAE Systems. In October, for example, the Israeli Army used the M109-52 Howitzer (BAE Systems and Rheinmetal l) against the port of Gaza, nearby hotels and also over Lebanon. In those attacks, the projectiles were made of white phosphorus, in acts investigated as war crimes and reported by Amnesty International.

On the other hand, Rh-120 tank ammunition from Rheinmetall has also been used indiscriminately against the Palestinian population and against important civilian infrastructure, including medical facilities, aid convoys and civilian shelters in Gaza, as well as against well-identified journalists on the border with Lebanon .

General Dynamics , for its part, also produces the M107 and M795 self-propelled guns, the former being widely used in artillery attacks against Gaza without discriminating between military and civilian objectives, even against a local office of the United Nations Population Agency refugee from Palestine in the Middle East (UNRWA) in 2009.

Despite these details, the legal responsibility of countries that send weapons to Israel is null and void. Jurists who are experts in genocide and international human rights organizations have been asking States for an arms embargo against Israel for years. In its ruling last July, the International Court of Justice insisted on the need to suspend trade and investments that contribute to the illegal Israeli occupation, condemned in several UN resolutions, the first in 1967.

Armed banking

“Armed banking” is the name by which institutions that finance arms companies are known. “They are a key player. Jordi Calvo, director of the Center for Peace Studies, in an interview with El Diario.es explained that “at least the two main Spanish banks, Santander and BBVA, have financed the main military industries that supply weapons to Israel, with 2,442 and 1,500 million dollars respectively. But so have Caixabank, Ibercaja, Banco Caminos or Banca March”.

Calvo added that “these banks have provided financial support to the companies that manufacture the planes and helicopters from which the Israeli military has dropped bombs on the civilian population, to the producers of those bombs or to the manufacturers of the ammunition that has been fired on humanitarian convoys from Israeli tanks.”

In a report prepared by the center run by Calvo, it was detailed that “the arms companies financed by Spanish banks and entities are Boeing, Day & Zimmerman, General Dynamics, Oshkosh Corp., Leonardo, Rheinmetall and MTU Friedrichshafen. Israel has used Boeing and General Dynamics weapons in attacks that have killed civilians in Gaza. Both companies have been financed by BBVA, with almost 1.3 billion dollars. Boeing has also been financed by Banco Santander, with more than 1.2 billion dollars, and by Caixabank, with 110 million. The Leonardo company, for its part, a participant in the manufacture of aircraft used in Israeli attacks against civilians, received financing of 198 million dollars from BBVA and Banco Santander.”

The report also revealed that “General Dynamics has been financed by BBVA with 345,896,723 million dollars, and Day & Zimmerman by Banco Santander, with 58 million dollars. Rheinmetall , in addition to having a factory on Spanish soil, has been financed by several entities, such as Santander (1.8 M$), BBVA (16.89 M$), EDM Group (8.82 M$), Ibercaja (2.53 M$), Banco Caminos (0.25 M$), Dux Inversores (0.17 M$), Renta 4 banco (0.56 M$) and GVC Gaesco Group (0.41 M$) )”.

This report added that the Oshkosh company “has produced various types of armored and armed ground vehicles used in the ground invasion of Gaza, such as the Namer 1500 or the Eitan. Others are the JLTV patrol armoured vehicles, used, for example, to transport dozens of civilians arrested after an attack on the Al-Shifa hospital in December 2024. In that transfer, the violation of international humanitarian law was reported, as those arrested remained naked and were humiliated for hours. Once again, BBVA and Santander appear as financiers of this company, with investments of 12.01 and 0.42 million dollars respectively.”

In its conclusions, the report of the Center for Peace Studies indicated that the support of Spanish and international financial institutions “constitutes a necessary contribution to the perpetuation of the situation of violence, human rights violations and genocide in Gaza.” Given this, it is worth asking: What can we do when we know that a bank is jointly responsible for the murder of boys and girls in Gaza? I am very clear about it, changing banks as soon as possible is a personal decision that does not really destabilize those institutions, since regrettably, the war market is still profitable for economies, so the human cost, blood and terror experienced daily by the Palestinian people are not important.

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team