BDS-1000 Dossier: AXA

BRS Score: 235 - Tier D (Moderate)

Key Findings

• Economic: As of 30 June 2024, AXA held $150.43 million in shares and bonds across eleven Western defence manufacturers supplying Israel, and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July 2025 report names AXA as investing at least $4.09 billion in companies tied to the occupation.¹²³⁴
• Divestment: AXA fully divested from Elbit Systems (2018–2019) and from all five major Israeli banks (2022–2024), with CEO Thomas Buberl stating at the April 2024 AGM that AXA held “zero investments in Israeli banks, direct or indirect.”⁵⁶⁷
• Settlements: AXA states it “is not present and does not do business in the settlements” and does not appear on the OHCHR’s database of businesses linked to Israeli settlement activity.⁸⁹
• Not found: No public evidence was identified of AXA defence contracts, weapons manufacturing, surveillance-technology sales to Israeli state bodies, or any operational, branch, or franchise presence in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territory.¹⁰

Target Profile

Key Facts:

• Full divestment from all five major Israeli banks completed by 24 June 2024, following divestment from Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot and First International Bank of Israel by end-2022.⁶¹¹
• Full Elbit Systems divestment completed by end of 2019, following partial divestment in December 2018 and March 2019.⁵
• $150.43 million held across eleven Western arms manufacturers supplying Israel as of 30 June 2024; a broader accounting placed total holdings at $173.62 million across fourteen military companies.¹¹²
• Named alongside Allianz in UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July 2025 report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23).³⁴
• Sale of AXA Investment Managers - the entity that had held the divested weapons-manufacturer and Israeli-bank positions - to BNP Paribas Cardif, announced 1 August 2024 and completed 1 July 2025.¹⁰

Executive Summary

AXA is a French multinational insurer and asset manager with no retail, manufacturing, or goods-export business line, and no documented operational presence - office, branch, workforce, or tax registration - in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Its Israel/Palestine nexus, as established across four independent domain audits, is confined almost entirely to the financial-flows domain: historical and, in a narrower band, continuing investment-portfolio exposure to Israeli entities and to international arms manufacturers whose products are documented as used in the Gaza conflict.

The strongest documented vector is economic. AXA Investment Managers held, and by stages divested, equity and bond positions in Elbit Systems (fully exited by end-2019) and in all five major Israeli banks - Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi-Tefahot, and First International Bank of Israel (fully exited by 24 June 2024).⁵⁶ That divestment record followed nearly a decade of organised campaign pressure, beginning with the 2016 “Stop AXA Assistance to Israeli Apartheid” coalition and a 2018 SumOfUs petition.¹³¹⁴ Notwithstanding this divestment, AXA’s asset-management arm retained, as of 30 June 2024, $150.43 million across eleven Western defence manufacturers (Rolls-Royce, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, Textron, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, RTX, L3Harris, and BAE Systems) whose products campaigners link to Israeli military operations, and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July 2025 report names AXA - alongside Allianz - as an insurer investing “large sums in shares and bonds implicated in the occupation and genocide,” with secondary reporting citing a $4.09 billion aggregate figure.¹³⁴

What the evidence record does not support is any harder-edged nexus. No public evidence was identified across the military, digital, or political domains of AXA defence contracting, dual-use or ruggedised products, construction/infrastructure involvement in settlements or checkpoints, supply-chain integration with Elbit Systems, IAI, Rafael, or Israel Military Industries, surveillance or biometric technology sales to Israeli state bodies, cloud hosting tied to Project Nimbus, or an Israeli operating subsidiary of any kind.¹⁰ AXA is not listed in the OHCHR’s database of business enterprises involved in Israeli settlement activity, and the company has stated since 2017 that it “is not present and does not do business in the settlements.”⁸⁹

Politically, AXA’s documented posture is one of studied neutrality rather than alignment. CEO Thomas Buberl has stated that AXA “does not take a position on this serious geopolitical crisis,” while UK parliamentarians Lord Walney and Lord Austin have separately criticised AXA’s divestment decisions as capitulation to a “campaign of delegitimisation” - evidence that the pressure documented in the record runs toward AXA from activists and, in the opposite direction, from Israel-aligned critics, rather than AXA itself advocating a position.⁷

The BRS 235, Tier D (Moderate) score reflects this profile: a moderate, evidence-bounded economic exposure (Economic, the highest-scoring domain and the driver of V_MAX) combined with minimal-to-negligible exposure across the military, digital, and political domains, tempered throughout by a substantial and well-documented divestment record.

Timeline of Relevant Events

Corporate Overview

AXA SA is a Paris-domiciled, publicly listed multinational insurance and asset-management group organised into regional and product hubs spanning France, Europe, AXA XL (specialty/commercial insurance), Asia, and Africa/EME-LATAM.¹⁰ Until its sale, AXA Investment Managers held the group’s equity and bond positions, including the divested Elbit Systems and Israeli-bank holdings and the continuing arms-manufacturer holdings described below; that unit was sold to BNP Paribas Cardif, with the transaction announced 1 August 2024 and completed 1 July 2025, after which those holdings are attributable to BNP Paribas Cardif’s platform rather than to AXA S.A. directly.¹⁰ AXA Partners separately markets a standard consumer travel-insurance product covering destinations including Israel - a routine retail offering unrelated to defence or state-security business.¹⁰

AXA’s Israel-linked technology exposure runs through its venture arms rather than any operating subsidiary: AXA Ventures (Hub Security, 2020), AXA Strategic Ventures (Neura, 2016, exited via Otonomo’s 2021 acquisition), and Kamet Ventures (Sayata Labs, exited September 2025 on acquisition by Penn-America Group/Global Indemnity).^16152423 AXA Venture Partners, the group’s independent VC arm, states it invests across Europe, North America, and Israel, and raised a $150 million early-stage fund in January 2019 under an Israel-inclusive mandate.²⁵ No public evidence identified of an AXA-branded operating subsidiary, insurance licence, branch office, or franchise relationship inside Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights, and AXA does not appear as a listed entity in the OHCHR’s database of business enterprises connected to Israeli settlement activity.⁹²⁶²⁷

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

AXA has no documented role as a defence contractor, manufacturer, or logistics provider to Israeli or allied military forces. Its only substantive military-domain nexus is financial: a formerly held equity and bond position in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, divested in full by the end of 2019, and continuing holdings - $150.43 million as of 30 June 2024, rising to a broader $173.62 million across fourteen companies in one accounting - in Western defence primes (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, RTX, L3Harris, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, Textron) whose weapons campaigners link, via the named suppliers rather than AXA directly, to specific incidents including the 26 May 2024 Rafah/Tel al-Sultan strike and the 10 September 2024 Al-Mawasi strike.¹⁵¹² UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July 2025 report situates AXA within a “Banking and Insurance” enablers category, alongside Allianz, describing insurers’ financial exposure and underwriting role as “de-risking” the operational environment for other companies operating in the occupation.³⁴

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

AXA’s own 2017 statement that it “is not present and does not do business in the settlements” is uncontradicted by any documented AXA branch, agency, or authorised-partner presence in West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Golan Heights settlements.⁸ AXA completed full divestment from Elbit Systems by end-2019, years before the current conflict, and in 2018 characterised its targeted Israeli-bank holdings as “approximately 0.004%” of group assets under management while calling divestment allegations “fragmentary and false.”⁵¹⁴ No formal court judgment or OECD National Contact Point complaint against AXA regarding Israel was identified, and No public evidence identified of any AXA defence contract, export licence, dual-use product, or construction/infrastructure role connected to Israeli military operations. AXA’s connection to the incidents cited by campaigners is limited strictly to its investment relationship with the named Western suppliers, not any direct involvement.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Elbit Systems (divested, 2018–2019); Rolls-Royce, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, Textron, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, RTX, L3Harris Technologies, BAE Systems (continuing holdings, $150.43M as of 30 June 2024); UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese/A-HRC-59-23; Al-Haq’s “Ensuring Genocide” report; Lord Walney and Lord Austin (UK parliamentary critics of AXA’s divestment); shareholder protest at AXA’s Paris AGM (Salle Pleyel).^1357222012

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

AXA has no documented technology-vendor or surveillance relationship with Israeli defence, intelligence, or law-enforcement bodies. Its Israel-linked digital-domain exposure runs through venture investments in Israeli technology firms: a $5 million Series A in Hub Security (2020), a self-described “military-grade cybersecurity” firm founded by veterans of IDF Units 81 and 8200, later SPAC-listed on Nasdaq in 2023 with AXA’s post-listing stake unconfirmed; an $11 million Series A in Neura (2016), a Herzliya IoT/behavioural-data company later acquired by Otonomo in 2021, at or before which AXA’s position would have exited; and backing, via Kamet Ventures, of Sayata Labs, a Talpiot-linked cyber-insurance insurtech acquired by Penn-America Group/Global Indemnity in September 2025.^1617152423 AXA is also a large-scale enterprise customer of the three major hyperscalers - running “AXA Secure GPT” on Azure OpenAI Service across roughly 140,000 employees since 2024, migrating its Swiss data lake to Google Cloud/BigQuery, and operating a global AWS “landing zone” migration since 2016 - the same hyperscalers that separately host Project Nimbus and Israeli cloud regions, though no evidence ties AXA’s own tenancy to Israeli infrastructure.^28293031 AXA maintains a marketing/partnership listing with SentinelOne, including inclusion in SentinelOne’s carrier-side “Risk Assurance Initiative” alongside roughly ten other insurers.³²³³

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No public evidence identified of an AXA-operated R&D facility, engineering office, or innovation lab in Israel. No public evidence identified of any AXA-branded technology deployed for military, intelligence, or law-enforcement surveillance in Israel or the OPT, of AXA developing or licensing offensive cyber capabilities, or of AXA participating in Project Nimbus or any Israeli state-backed cloud programme. The Neura and Sayata Labs positions were minority venture stakes that have since exited via acquisition, and No public evidence identified of AXA holding a controlling stake in any Israeli operating company. The SentinelOne relationship is a carrier-side risk-reduction/discount arrangement for insured clients rather than a confirmed internal security deployment, and No public evidence identified of any AXA relationship with Check Point, Wiz, CyberArk, Claroty, NICE, Verint, or Palo Alto Networks.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Hub Security (IDF Unit 81/8200-founded, AXA Ventures/OurCrowd, 2020); Neura (Herzliya, AXA Strategic Ventures, 2016, exited via Otonomo, 2021); Sayata Labs (Kamet Ventures, exited to Penn-America Group/Global Indemnity, September 2025); SentinelOne (partner-page and Risk Assurance Initiative listing); Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, AWS (enterprise cloud vendors); AXA XL/Darkweb IQ (March 2025 cybersecurity partnership, confirmed non-Israeli origin).^{16152423323334}

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

This is AXA’s dominant nexus vector. AXA Investment Managers held equity and bond positions in Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi-Tefahot, and First International Bank of Israel, and in Elbit Systems, built up prior to 2016 and divested in stages: Elbit Systems fully exited by end-2019; Mizrahi-Tefahot and First International Bank of Israel by end-2022; and the three remaining banks by 24 June 2024, when Buberl confirmed at the AGM that AXA held “zero investments in Israeli banks, direct or indirect.”⁵⁶⁷ Notwithstanding divestment from Israeli-domiciled holdings, AXA’s retained $150.43 million (as of 30 June 2024) across eleven Western defence manufacturers supplying Israel - and a broader $173.62 million across fourteen companies in one accounting - continues to draw scrutiny, with the June 2024 PAX/Don’t Buy Into Occupation coalition report grouping AXA with Allianz, Aviva, Zurich Insurance Group, and RSA (Intact) as insurers collectively holding $1.7 billion across fifteen companies involved in Israeli “militarism.”¹²¹² UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July 2025 report names AXA directly as an insurer investing “large sums” in occupation-linked companies, with secondary reporting citing a $4.09 billion aggregate figure against Allianz’s $7.3 billion.³⁴ AXA’s controversial-weapons exclusion policy (in place since 2008) was alleged by an October 2024 Ekō/AFSC investigation to be breached by $134.91 million of AXA’s holdings in producers of depleted uranium, white phosphorus, or nuclear-related components.¹²¹⁰

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

AXA’s divestment from all five Israeli banks and from Elbit Systems is fully documented and complete, executed years ahead of, and continuing through, the current conflict, and was confirmed independently by campaign coalitions (BDS Movement) and by AXA’s own CEO.⁶²¹⁷ AXA has no retail, agricultural, or goods-sourcing business to which country-of-origin or settlement-produce concerns would attach, and No public evidence identified of AXA XL underwriting Israeli state, military, or settlement-related political-violence risk, of AXA involvement in Israeli sovereign “war bond” issuances, or of reinsurance treaties with Israeli primary insurers. AXA’s remaining exposure runs through mainstream, broadly held Western defence stocks rather than Israeli-domiciled entities, and AXA’s own framing is that its responsible-investment policy is “one of the most complete and ambitious” in the sector.¹⁴ No public evidence identified of any institutional investor divesting from AXA itself on these grounds - the documented divestment actions are AXA’s own portfolio decisions.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi-Tefahot, First International Bank of Israel (divested); Elbit Systems (divested); Rolls-Royce, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, Textron, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, RTX, L3Harris, BAE Systems (continuing holdings); AFSC Investigate; Ekō; the PAX/Don’t Buy Into Occupation coalition; UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese; BNP Paribas Cardif (acquirer of AXA Investment Managers, 1 July 2025).^1234561012

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

AXA’s political-domain nexus is reactive rather than advocacy-driven: the company is the sustained target of the “Stop AXA Assistance to Israeli Apartheid” campaign (from 2016, coordinated with BDS-aligned groups, Ekō, and AFSC) and of continued “#BoycottAXA” pressure over its remaining arms-company holdings.¹³²¹³⁵ AXA’s divestment decisions are framed by the company as ESG/responsible-investment determinations rather than geopolitical positioning; CEO Thomas Buberl has stated AXA “does not take a position on this serious geopolitical crisis,” while also condemning “physical attacks suffered by our agents and employees.”⁷ The documented pressure runs in both directions: UK peers Lord Walney and Lord Austin publicly criticised AXA’s divestment as capitulation to “militant activists” and a “campaign of delegitimisation,” with Lord Austin stating he would write to AXA’s chairman directly.⁷

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No public evidence identified of AXA accepting Israeli state honours, partnering with Israeli government bodies, sponsoring Israeli state initiatives, lobbying for or against Israel-related policy, or making corporate donations to pro-Israel advocacy or settlement organisations. No Israeli state ownership stake, board appointee, or golden share in AXA was identified, and no AXA executive was found to have made personal political statements on the conflict - Buberl’s documented statements are corporate and confined to AGM contexts. AXA’s founding-mutual governance structure (AXA Assurances IARD Mutuelle and AXA Assurances Vie Mutuelle) shows no state or Israel-linked ownership. A possible residual indirect Elbit Systems exposure via a non-controlling stake in the former subsidiary AllianceBernstein was flagged by AFSC Investigate but remains unresolved and is carried here as an evidence gap rather than a confirmed holding.¹⁰

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Thomas Buberl (CEO); Antoine Gosset-Grainville (Chairman); Lord Walney and Lord Austin (UK parliamentary critics); the BDS National Committee / “Stop AXA Assistance to Israeli Apartheid” coalition; Ekō and AFSC (campaign co-sponsors); “Boycott Bloody Insurance” coalition.^7133511

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

• V_MAX: 3.37 Sum_OTHERS: 1.95
• BRS Score: 235 Tier: D (Moderate)

V_MAX is driven entirely by Economic, reflecting AXA’s documented, ongoing portfolio exposure to Western arms manufacturers supplying Israel and its explicit naming in the UN Special Rapporteur’s July 2025 report - the domain with both the highest impact-type rating and the greatest directness of financial proximity. The three other domains score low: Military and Digital register only residual, largely divested or minority-stake exposure, and Political captures AXA’s status as a campaign target rather than an advocate. The resulting Tier D (Moderate) placement reflects a company whose nexus is real, evidence-documented, and financial in character, substantially - though not completely - mitigated by a multi-year divestment record. Method: scale-free Impact × magnitude/proximity scoring, built exclusively from evidence identified in the four domain audits, human-vetted.

Methodology Note

• Every claim in this dossier traces to the four domain audits (Military, Digital, Economic, Political); where those audits’ checks found nothing, this dossier states “No public evidence identified” rather than inferring a gap as either confirmation or exoneration.
• Scores are scale-free: I (Impact) reflects the type of activity documented (e.g., financial investment vs. direct contracting); M (Magnitude) reflects the scale of that activity; P (Proximity) reflects how directly the activity connects to Israeli military/settlement operations.
• A temporal rule applies throughout: divested, exited, or discontinued exposures (Elbit Systems, Israeli banks, Neura, Sayata Labs) are treated as mitigating rather than current, and are described with their completion dates rather than presented as ongoing.
• Entity attribution follows a no-transitive-guilt rule: holdings in Western defence primes are attributed to AXA as an investor in those companies, not as evidence AXA itself manufactures, sells, or deploys weapons; incidents linked to those primes’ products are not attributed to AXA directly.
• Settlement-linked economic activity, where documented, is dual-counted across Economic and Political per methodology; here, AXA’s settlement exposure was found to be indirect only (via now-divested bank holdings) and is discounted accordingly rather than treated as a direct operational nexus.
• Caveats carried in the source audits - “unresolved,” “unverified,” “could not be confirmed” (e.g., the AllianceBernstein residual-exposure question, the post-2025 DBIO report’s AXA-specific figure) - are preserved in this dossier rather than hardened into confirmed findings.

End Notes