European Banks Are Stopping Financing Israel’s Genocide

Barclays has quietly stopped underwriting Israeli wartime bonds, Novara Media can reveal, as pressure grows on European institutions to distance themselves from Israel.

Data seen exclusively by Novara Media reveals that Barclays has not publicly underwritten a single Israeli government bond since January 2024, despite publicly claiming that it would continue doing so, and despite numerous opportunities to get involved since.

The data, sourced by Profundo, an Amsterdam-based sustainability research and consultancy firm, shows that French bank BNP Paribas has also withdrawn from its role as underwriter of Israeli bonds since early 2024, but, unlike Barclays, it has openly acknowledged the move.

Government issued bonds have been crucial to the financing of Israel’s war in Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank. Without their key underwriters, Israel’s multibillion-dollar international bond issuances would not have been possible. Barclays’ and BNP’s withdrawal from underwriting is a blow to Israel’s carefully curated image of institutional and ethical legitimacy among its allies.

The near-hegemonic support for Israel across British, European and US politics has long given the impression that Benjamin Netanyahu is beyond accountability. But cracks are forming. Governments in Spain, Ireland and Norway have broken ranks, and a small but significant group of financial institutions have followed suit.

The UK’s largest private pension fund – the Universities Superannuation Scheme – sold £80m in Israeli assets in 2024 as part of what the Financial Times described as “a wave of global retirement funds retreating from the conflict-ridden region following public pressure over Israel’s human rights record.” In August 2025, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, divested from 11 Israeli companies and excluded Caterpillar and five Israeli banks over links to settlements. The following month, Ireland’s Central Bank stepped back from approving Israeli bond prospectuses, and Denmark’s academics’ pension fund excluded Israel entirely .

Were banks to boycott Israeli assets, it could spell trouble for Israel’s heavily indebted wartime economy. Israel relies on borrowing to finance its massive military spending and plug its ballooning deficit. The country’s bond issuance hit historic highs in both 2024 and 2025, at above $75bn (£55bn) and $60bn (£44bn) respectively. While the majority of this money has come from domestic investors, the Israeli government has also relied on huge sums from foreign investors, selling $6bn (£4.4bn) in bonds in January of this year alone.

Profundo’s data shows that, between October 2023 and January 2026, a group of seven major western banks – Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas and Barclays – underwrote $29.1bn (£21.6bn) of Israeli government bonds. In that time period, Barclays stands out for having participated in just two bond issuances: one for $278m (£206m) in November 2023, and the other for $223m (£165m) in January 2024. The bank has not underwritten a single Israeli bond since. BNP has not underwritten any Israeli bonds since March of that year.

Profundo’s figures only capture publicly disclosed bond deals, leaving open the possibility that Barclays and BNP may have continued underwriting Israeli debt through private placements – smaller transactions that do not appear in public datasets and are far harder to trace.

‘Hot air’.

Barclays’ and BNP’s retreat comes as Europe’s largest financial institutions are under increasing pressure from activists and politicians.

In mid-2024, Barclays briefly considered stopping its underwriting of Israeli bonds, following pressure from Palestine activists. This included hundreds of artists boycotting Barclays-sponsored music festivals over the bank’s provision of financial services to Israel, activists smashing windows and spraying red paint at twenty branches of the bank across the UK. The pressure was significant enough that Barclays CEO CS Venkatakrishnan wrote op-eds in both the Guardian and the Times in June 2024 , defending the bank’s position and attacking protesters’ “lack of respect for facts” – a remarkable intervention that only served to amplify the controversy further.

In the end, the summer of 2024 saw Barclays U-turn and reaffirm its role as one of Israel’s key underwriters. Yali Rothenberg, Israel’s accountant general, thanked Barclays for its “continued commitment to the state of Israel” and commended the bank for resisting “anti-Israel pressures, particularly those promoted by BDS movements.”

Profundo’s data suggests that Barclays’ commitment was “hot air”, said Max Hammer, a campaigner for BankTrack, which monitors commercial banks’ impacts on human rights and climate change. He believes that Barclays’ silence has been partly shaped by the threat of anti-BDS legislation , laws that in the US have created a climate in which financial…