On April 20, 2024, the Dorset Palestine Solidarity Movement held a protest outside the Barclays Bank branch in Dorchester, England, with a Palestinian flag on the cash machine.
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barclays bank The British bank said on Wednesday it would not invest in companies that provide arms to Israel in Gaza after one of its branches in London’s financial district was targeted by pro-Palestinian activists.
The bank has also been criticized for providing financial services to defense companies that produce equipment used by the Israel Defense Forces.
In addition to urging customers to boycott banks, demonstrators have expanded their protests to include defacing buildings and branches and using red paint to symbolize the bloodshed in Gaza.
May 1 is a traditionally day of militant activity in many countries, and Barclays’ branch in Moorgate, central London, was the latest to be attacked.
“We have been asked why we invest in nine defense companies that supply Israel, but this is the wrong approach for us,” the bank said on its website.
“We trade shares in listed companies at the direction or request of our clients, which may result in us holding shares. We do not make investments for Barclays and Barclays is not in that sense a ‘shareholder’ or ‘shareholder’ in these companies. investor’.
Barclays, which will host the 2024 shareholder meeting on May 9, said its role as a bank is to provide financial services to defense companies, including US, British and European companies that supply products to NATO and other allied countries.
The bank said it would “continue to monitor developments in Gaza closely” given the civilian death toll and attacks on aid workers in the area.
New York City police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who were holed up in an academic building on the Columbia University campus late Tuesday.
Similar clashes broke out between activists and counter-protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Wednesday.
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