DOZENS of activists braved the Glasgow rain today to back calls for Barclays from its own workers to end its economic support of the Israeli war machine.

Organised by Glasgow for Gaza and the Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee (GGEC), campaigners rallied outside Barclays’ sprawling new campus on the Clyde, waving the flag of Palestine and placards showing solidarity with Barclays workers challenging the bank’s Israeli links.

The bank has long been under fire for its role as the only British-based bank acting as a primary dealer for Israeli government bonds, essential for funding Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s onslaught on Gaza.

This criticism has been compounded by Barclays being one of just two global banks named in UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese’s report on the Economy of Genocide.

Ms Albanese noted: “The corporate sector, including its executives, must be held to account, as a necessary step towards ending the genocide and disassembling the global system of racialised capitalism that underpins it.”

Vowing to do just that, a GGEC spokesperson said: “Alongside underwriting arms supplies to Israel, Barclays bond raising and corporate services are playing a direct part in the bombing, invasion, destruction, displacement and starvation of Gaza, as well as the occupation, settlements, pogroms and final takeover of the West Bank.

“Many conscientious Barclays workers are voicing their own alarm over being forced to partake in this criminal business, placing them in ethical, and potential legal, jeopardy.

“We are here to support them in their brave and moral concerns, to denounce the bank’s boardroom executives over their complicit support for Israel, and to condemn Barclays nefarious surveilling and disturbing intimidations of their workers for opposing the bank’s shameful part in the genocide.”

Barclays was contacted for comment.