Allianz Ireland exec makes feeble attempt to defend funding genocide

It is a question any parent with a conscience has no doubt asked themselves at this point: what will I tell my child when they one day ask what I did during the Gaza holocaust?

If he has any offspring, Allianz Ireland’s chief customer officer, Geoff Sparling, now has an answer he can give them: “I wrote a column in a national newspaper defending my company’s ongoing funding of the ‘Israeli’ war machine.”

Researchers have identified the Allianz crime family as the biggest foreign financier of the Zionist entity. Pro-Palestine campaigners in Ireland have placed particular focus on the company due to its sponsorship agreement with Ireland’s largest sporting body, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).

Sparling might continue: “Not only that, kids, the column in question was an utterly shambolic effort, riddled with non sequiturs and facile nonsense.”

The primary target of Sparling’s ineptitude is the meticulous Economy of Genocide report from the brilliant UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese. Despite the man’s attempt to claim Allianz Irelands dealings with so-called ‘Israel’ are “legal”, Albanese made clear that pumping money into the apartheid settler-colony amounts to “joint criminal enterprise“.

Allianz Ireland can’t be separated from criminal parent company

Starling goes on to abdicate responsibility by saying:

Allianz is cited primarily through Allianz-owned asset manager PIMCO’s holdings of Israeli sovereign bonds and alleged investments in multinational companies identified in the report. Allianz Ireland has no investments or underwriting activities in the Middle East.

This pathetic attempt at sleight of hand won’t wash, however.

PIMCO might be the main player in funding the Tel Aviv terror regime, but as an Allianz-owned company, it is making money for Allianz. Furthermore, the fact that Allianz Ireland doesn’t invest in ‘Israel’ themselves is irrelevant. As part of the Allianz corporate entity, the insurance company benefits from the success of the entire company.

It promotes the Allianz brand, most notably through the GAA’s shameful partnership with the German finance behemoth.

Sparling proceeds to paint a rosy picture of Allianz’s role in Irish society. He said:

It is the claims handler helping a family rebuild after Storm Éowyn, the underwriter supporting local businesses and the volunteers coaching under-age GAA teams every weekend. That has been Allianz’s place in Irish life for almost a century.

Millions of people entrust Allianz with their savings, pensions and investments. Our responsibility is to manage them professionally, prudently and within the law.

Firstly, Allianz Ireland receives largely middling reviews from the Irish public. It is not the beloved institution outlined above. Furthermore, this is all utterly irrelevant to the matter at hand: Allianz’s funding of Zionist atrocities.

The company’s Irish arm could spend every millisecond of every day helping old ladies across the road and rescuing cats from trees; it wouldn’t make up for the fact that it is promoting, making money for, and receiving money from, a global corporate entity that is financially aiding the worst crimes imaginable.

Allianz executive misleads again and again

Sparling goes on to repeatedly frame campaigners’ primary grievance as being that Allianz is “responsible for” the actions of the ‘Israeli’ regime, as if Allianz executives are whispering prospective strategies into Benjamin Netanyahu’s ear. This is not the claim.

Once again, the argument made by experts like Albanese and Irish campaigners is that entities like Allianz are culpable by providing the funding to the settler-colony’s economy. Funding that can then be used to buy the bombs used to wreck Gaza, and pay the salaries of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) — the murderers that drop those bombs.

A straightforward thought experiment proves the point — were the likes of Allianz, and all other companies not to pump money into the apartheid entity, would it have the financial means to continue its crimes?

A straightforward look at history confirms what one ought to conclude when doing the above — the collapse of apartheid South Africa stemming from boycotts. That effort really gained pace when previously complicit financial institutions like Barclays Bank pulled out of the racist state.

Govt inaction doesn’t excuse corporate criminality

Sparling went on to say:

None of the relevant institutions – including the United Nations, the European Union, the United States or the Government of Ireland – has prohibited the activities at the centre of this debate.

This shameful abdication of responsibility is precisely why grass-roots campaigners have focused attention on local complicity by the likes of the GAA. It is why they attempt to hold companies to account, in the hope that with enough low level pressure, eventually states will start to fulfil their responsibilities. That would mean enacting sweeping sanctions against the criminal pseudo-state squatting on historic Palestine.

Sparling might have thought finally breaking cover to defend Allianz Ireland was a smart move, but all this feeble effort has done is heap embarrassment upon the existing shame. That the Irish Independent was willing to publish this shit is a damning indictment of its editorial standards. Facilitating an attempt to whitewash holocaust funding is an indictment of its moral standards.

It is a disgrace it too will struggle to explain to future generations.

Featured image via Irish Times

By Robert Freeman

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