PALESTINE and climate activists disrupted a Barclays meeting in London today demanding they stop “bankrolling Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

Campaigners blocked speeches at the bank’s AGM holding Palestinian flags and chanting: “Barclays, Barclays you can’t hide. You’re supporting genocide.”

Referring to the group chair of the bank, one activist shouted: “Shame on you Nigel Higgins. Everyone here is profiting from a genocide. Shame on you.”

Climate protesters later joined in the action, chanting: “Stop, in the name of love, before you break this Earth.” “This bank is financing the climate and nature crisis that we have to stop. Softly-softly, slowly-slowly is not good enough. You are endangering life on Earth.”

Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Campaign Against Arms Trade and War on Want have published research which found Barclays to have more than £2 billion in shares in nine companies complicit in Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.

They also found it provides £6.1bn in loans and underwriting to these same firms.

Solidarity campaigners also highlighted Barclays’ agreement with Israel making it the “primary dealer” for its government bonds.

Group chair Mr Higgins later said that Barclays had “no intention of backtracking on its commitments” relating to climate targets.

He later referred to a UN report from last year which identified the bank as a firm implicated in profiting from a “genocidal economy.”

“We’ve read it and we don’t agree with the characterisation of the financial sector in it,” he said, adding the bank follows the “policies set out by the British government.”

Despite his claims that “we all wish and pray for peace in the region,” Mr Higgins said: “I’m afraid I’m not going to go into our financing policies on specific clients.”

To which one shareholder responded saying there won’t be peace “unless commercial companies and banks stop financing Israel.”

PSC deputy director Ryvka Barnard said: “There can be no business as usual for Barclays while it bankrolls Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and wider regime of military occupation and apartheid.

“Rather than heeding voices of conscience, which includes thousands of former customers, it seeks to make more money from the misery, pain and death of Palestinians.

“The only way to get Barclays to do the right thing is by drawing public attention to their role in facilitating Israel’s genocide and hitting their profits.”