Bank Leumi: An Instrument of Settler Colonialism and Genocide

By the BNY Funds Genocide Campaign

The Bank of New York and Bank Leumi were intentionally established to be the financial apparatus that facilitated the White supremacist settler colonial projects of the United States and Israel, respectively. On its own website, Bank Leumi describes that it was established to fulfill the need for “a financial arm to support the operations of the Zionist movement in Israel.” 

Zionism is a form of settler colonialism, and major Zionist organizations central to the violent occupation of Palestine were named after their colonial identity. The predecessor to Bank Leumi was founded by early Zionist Theodore Herzl in 1898, and was called the Jewish Colonial Trust (JCT). Herzl took money from poor European Jews (some of whom needed to divide the cost into 80 payments) to fundraise for the JCT. Founding documents of the JCT from 1899 declared its purpose was: “To promote, develop, work, and carry on colonization schemes in the East, by preference in Palestine and Syria, and further to promote, develop, work, and carry on industries and undertakings in Palestine, Syria, or in any other part of the world.”

Bank Leumi, first called the Anglo-Palestine Company (APC), was founded in 1902 as a subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust  in London.  The JCT and APC were the main financial institutions of Zionism, demonstrating British & Western involvement in the colonization of Palestine years before the Balfour declaration in 1917 or the UN Partition Resolution in 1947.  The word “bank” was deliberately absent from their names due to the desire to avoid the oversight from the British government in London for establishing a bank.

The Anglo-Palestine Company started opening branches in Palestine, first in the (majority Arab) city of Yafa in 1903 and then 6 other cities. The intention was to facilitate credit to Zionist objectives in Palestine: immigration of European Jewish settlers, capital transfer to support Zionism, land “purchase” and settlement.

A Case Study: The creation of Tel Aviv

The Anglo-Palestine Company’s role in the creation of Tel Aviv is a study in how Bank Leumi works as an instrument of settler colonialism and genocide. Ahuzat Bayit was a group of Zionist settlers from Germany and Eastern Europe looking to “purchase” Palestinian land outside of Yafa in 1906, although local laws prevented it. APC was created to circumvent these laws and act essentially as a money launderer for Europe. 300,000 French francs from European “charitable funds” were transferred to APC so that they could be loaned to Ahuzat Bayit, which established a settlement in 1909 that would eventually become Tel Aviv. 

In the same year, the Anglo-Palestine Company funded an early Zionist militia led by mostly Russian Jewish settlers, called Hashomer. While earlier Zionist settlers undertook violence to uproot Palestinians from their lands and communities themselves, Hashomer was the first attempt to provide an organized paramilitary occupation force by Zionists in the region. It desperately needed financing to obtain arms and horses, which it received from APC. 

By 1947, with the help of APC (renamed Anglo-Palestine Bank in 1930), Jewish settlers were able to claim ownership to approximately 2,000 square km of land in Palestine, and “without those lands, no viable nucleus for the state of Israel would have been created.” The paramilitary forces that violently imposed the Nakba a year later included the successors of Hashomer and eventually became the Israel “Defense” Forces. 

Bank Leumi established, on Palestinian land and blood

After the Nakba and the declaration of the violent occupation of Palestine as the “state of Israel,” the Anglo-Palestine Bank began to issue banknotes in the newly formed currency of Israel. It served as a central and commercial bank, facilitating the transfer of wealth for European Jews moving to Israel. In 1950, the Anglo-Palestine Bank was renamed Bank Leumi le-Israel. Until 1954, the heads of Bank Leumi would meet with the leaders in the Israeli Ministry of Finance to decide the economic matters and policies of Israel even as the Bank lacked formal authority within the government. 

Bank Leumi as a 21st century tool of genocide.   

As a financial institution inextricably linked with the occupation of Palestine by Israel, it is no surprise that Bank Leumi has relentlessly supported the ongoing illegal and violent settler colonial expansions that have continued into the 21st century in areas including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights in Syria. It has financed settlement infrastructure and building projects, and provided loans and other financial services directly to the local settler municipalities, to individual settlers, and Zionist businesses. Without institutions like Bank Leumi, this expansion tactic of the Zionist occupation, through illegal settlement projects, would have enormous difficulty succeeding. 

Western imperial institutions like the European Union and Bank of New York Mellon are strengthening their violent ties with Bank Leumi, in response to popular organizing against Bank Leumi.  Since 2014, pension funds, student unions, and churches in the West have divested and cut ties with Bank Leumi. The EU is strengthening ties by creating and expanding partnerships with Bank Leumi to increase loan programs for “LeumiTech” loans, which finance the military-industrial complex of Israel, including Israeli weapons firms and military-oriented technology companies.

The Bank of New York Mellon has doubled down on its relationship with Bank Leumi, despite the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.  In 2024, BNY Mellon welcomed Rakefet Russak-Aminoach as a board member. Russak-Aminoach served as President and CEO of Bank Leumi from May 2012 until October 2019, during the creation of LeumiTech and the financing of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. She is currently on the board of Hailo Technologies, Ltd, a militaristic Israeli AI technology company focused on applications of AI to autonomous vehicles, security cameras, and autonomous mobile robots.

Just as Bank Leumi facilitates the settler colonial project of Israel, BNY Mellon plays a fundamental role in the United States. Settler-colonial projects can only be carried out through the backing of capital, and the tactics being used in the genocide of Palestinians were developed from the tactics used against the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Predictably, BNY Mellon and Bank Leumi have deepened their ties in the global system of Western imperialism as the movement for Palestinian liberation grows and leads the way towards decolonized futures.

By making it more difficult for settler colonial projects to access capital, we can slow their aims of ethnic cleansing and genocide.  Our campaign against BNY Mellon is part of the global movement for Palestinian liberation that is growing every day.  Join us. 

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