EXPOSED: Labour’s dodgy donation linked to Israel’s destruction of Gaza

Just as the extent of cronyism in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party came out last month, openDemocracy revealed how the party had quietly received “£4m from tax haven-based hedge fund with shares in oil and arms”. But the story gets even worse. Because after doing more digging, the outlet has now reported that the Labour donation from Quadrature Capital “stood to profit” from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, having “held $121m worth of shares in a range of arms, tech and logistics firms which have all supported the ongoing military campaign”.

Thanks to openDemocracy and Andrew Feinstein’s Shadow World Investigations analysing financial documents that Quadrature Capital filed in the US, we have damning snapshots of the company’s controversial investments. These are from December last year, and from March and June this year. And as openDemocracy said:

On average across the three reporting dates, the hedge fund held $121m of shares in companies that have supplied arms, tech or logistical support to Israel’s military efforts in Gaza.

Companies that it backed included:

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Caterpillar, Howmet Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Oshkosh Corporation, Palantir and Woodward Inc.

Labour conveniently allows F-35 jet licences to continue to Israel

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Howmet Aerospace (previously of Grenfell cladding infamy under the name Arconic) have all played their part in producing the final F-35 fighter jet product that Israeli occupation forces have been using over the last year to kill thousands of civilians in Gaza while scorching the earth where they live.

Conveniently, foreign secretary David Lammy has “refused to suspend arms export licences related to F-35s, despite suspending 30 other licences because of risks over Israeli violations of international law”.

Starmer’s government is fully aware of the “clear risk certain military exports to Israel might be used in violations of International Humanitarian Law”. But as business secretary Jonathan Reynolds admitted:

Due to the nature of the F-35 as an international collaborative programme, it is not currently possible to suspend licensing of F-35 components for Israel without prejudicing the entire F-35 global program.

In other words, it is possible to suspend licences, but Labour has chosen not to. That’s possibly because Britain’s political establishment is a lapdog to the US imperial overlords. Or it’s possibly because of massive donations from companies like Quadrature Capital that make a killing from, well, killing. After all, Starmer’s has already made a Quadrature figure his ‘climate envoy’.

Labour donation from Quadrature: it’s all completely innocent dytopianism, honest

While all the companies openDemocracy named have benefited from death and destruction and continue to do so, an old foe has popped up as the biggest beneficiary of Quadrature’s investments. And that’s Israel and Trump fanboy Peter Thiel.

You may remember the billionaire’s spy tech company Palantir because of its “deep ties to British and American security agencies”, its access to our NHS data, or maybe from its work helping to smear progressives, back right-wing causes, and mistreat vulnerable people.

As openDemocracy stressed:

Quadrature’s largest corporate shareholding positions linked to Israel’s war in Gaza is with Palantir Holdings, the controversial data processing company – with more than $72m of shares held in June.

The company “has been vocally supportive of Israeli military action”, and “some have suggested the company may help with artificial intelligence used to identify military targets”.

Obviously, Quadrature denies doing anything wrong. Its profiteering from the West’s dive towards dystopia is completely innocent. Its unprecedented Labour donation from Quadrature to Starmer’s Labour Party, meanwhile, was about “values”, not politics, apparently. Unfortunately, the values they share seem to be indifference to and complicity in genocide.

Featured image via the Canary