22 No. 78 JUSTICE sector, as companies and governments increasingly factor litigation risk and reputational exposure into their decisions. Legal and Other Procedures Targeting Israeli and Foreign Companies. A growing constellation of measures targets Israeli and foreign companies engaged in commercial activities overseas, often on the sole basis that they have a presence or activities in the West Bank or provide support to the Israeli defense industry. The United Nations maintains a database of companies allegedly doing business in the West Bank – commonly referred to as a “blacklist” – which is compiled with input from a network of NGOs that devote substantial resources to identifying even tenuous commercial or operational links to the territory. Inclusion on the list carries reputational consequences and serves as a trigger for further action by other actors. Sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors – including Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global – have faced sustained pressure to divest holdings in Israeli companies, including major banks, on the grounds that providing financial services to individuals and businesses in the West Bank amounts to support for the settlements. In some cases, these campaigns have succeeded; in others, they generate ongoing reputational and operational costs even where formal divestment does not occur. In some cases, these efforts have led to lawsuits against Israeli and foreign companies whose products are alleged to have been used in the context of the settlements or in military operations in Gaza. Even when these suits fail, the litigation itself – and the threat thereof – creates a significant “chilling effect” on commercial engagement with Israel. The cumulative effect is to draw Israeli and foreign companies into a political conflict in which many have no involvement and no position, with the aim of inflicting commercial and reputational harm. The Quasi-Legal Ecosystem: Reports, Resolutions, and their Downstream Effects. Alongside formal legal proceedings, a parallel ecosystem of quasi-legal publications and political measures – not binding in themselves, but employing legal language and standards – exerts independent force and, critically, feeds the legal proceedings described above. These publications emerge from a range of institutional sources, many of which display a structural predisposition against Israel, whether through their mandates, composition, or track record. Some officials display the same biases. At the United Nations, the principal sources include the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory” – the only permanent commission of inquiry ever established by the Human Rights Council, with an open-ended mandate and no set termination date – which in September 2025 issued a report alleging that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Additional sources include special rapporteurs (notably the Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories), Human Rights Council resolutions adopted with an automatic anti-Israel majority, officials such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and UN operational agencies such as UNRWA and OCHA. These publications frequently suffer from deficiencies in factual verification and methodology. International NGOs – including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others – produce a constant stream of reports that often adopt expansive and contested interpretations of international law, including characterizations of Israel’s conduct as genocide and apartheid, without adequate engagement with the Israeli perspective or with the operational realities of the conflict. These reports are frequently produced without access to classified military information, without giving meaningful weight to Israel’s legal positions, and without applying the same scrutiny to the conduct of Israel’s adversaries. The publications of these bodies serve two functions. First, they are deployed in non-legal arenas – to pressure academic institutions, sports federations (such as FIFA), cultural organizations, and commercial entities to adopt boycott, exclusion, and divestment measures against Israel and Israelis. State-affiliated economic actors (such as Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global) and private companies (such as Ben & Jerry’s) have adopted divestment or trade-refusal policies on the basis of such reports. Second, and more consequentially for present purposes, they serve as the factual and normative foundation for legal and political proceedings – including the ICJ Genocide case, the ICC investigation, national challenges to arms exports, and in domestic courts.20 The Belgian Court’s July 2025 ruling halting arms transit to Israel, for example, relied explicitly on findings by UN entities and the ICJ. This feedback loop – in which quasi-legal reports are cited as authoritative evidence in judicial proceedings, which in 20. For examples of the reliance of courts on UN and NGO reports in domestic proceedings, see R (on the application of Al-Haq) v. Secretary of State for Business and Trade [2025] EWHC 1615 (Admin); European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights v. Federal Republic of Germany, Verwaltungsgericht [VG] [Administrative Court] Frankfurt, Sept. 11, 2024, Case No. 5 L 2333/24.F (Ger.).
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