I took a look at a dozen Israeli companies that do business in the West Bank settlements, and between my experience and that of other members of the questioner's group, here is an "answer" to this query.
As the questioner said, the Who Profits? project is the best starting point for researching connections between businesses and the Israeli occupation industry. The data on this site is compiled by The Coalition of Women for Peace, "a leading Israeli feminist peace organization, dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights and reaching a just peace in Israel/ Palestine" (from whoprofits.org/About.php).
Who Profits will give you names of CEOs, owners, parent companies, and subsidiaries. You can then search-engine them (as well as the names of the companies, of course) to see what comes up on the open Web. I added the terms "new york" and "brooklyn," plus terms related to the business in question, as needed to help channel the results into something relevant. For example, "'eyal peled' 'new york' engineering" (Eyal Peled is one of the owners of Peled-Klein Civil Engineering).
I also tried a number of subscription databases. Thomson Research and Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing's Osiris had profiles on the one publicly traded (on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange) company in the batch I worked on, and that information includes members of the board of directors and some institutional shareholders.
I work with a group that launched a campaign around the boycott of an
Israeli real estate developer named Lev Leviev several years ago. He both
builds settlements in the Occupied Territories ('67) and is a real estate
developer here in NYC, owning many large pieces of property with his former
business partner, Shaya Boymelgreen. We are currently in a research phase of
our campaign and trying to look into other targets along the same lines:
companies or individuals that develop, buy or sell property or engaged in
construction and contracting in NYC and either in the Occupied Territories
or in Israel proper (developers in Israel proper are highly likely to be
developing in land that was once Palestinian at some point).
WhoProfits, a database maintained by Israel activists on settlement
activity, offers this list of companies that build on Palestinian land:
http://whoprofits.org/Involvements.php?id=grp_inv_settlement#grp_inv_settlement_2
Other than just going through and starting to google each one of the people
on that list, any other tips or thoughts about how to approach this topic?
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
Yes, The Pantry/Kangaroo does get gasoline from Citgo.
According to Hoover's Company Records (accessed through LexisNexis), and last filed September 1, 2009:
"The company currently receives about two-thirds of its gasoline supply from CITGO (who also supplies the company's private label Kangaroo brand), Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil."
Citgo is not solely owned by Hugo Chavez, but by Petróleos de Venezuela, the national oil company of Venezuela (since 1990). It was formerly an American owned oil company and still employs 4,000 Americans in Houston. (From Snopes.com, last updated April 8, 2009.)
An anarchist friend of mine has started a business and could use some anarchist friendly business models to get things off the ground.
The type of model I'm thinking of would involve allowing employees to buy in, etc. Any other information or sources you could point me to would be much appreciated!
