Morningstar Hasn’t Followed Through on Promise to Eradicate Anti-Israel Bias From Ratings System

Two companies working with Israel to counter terrorism are still on the blacklist by Morningstar subsidiary (Getty Images)

Morningstar, the financial rating giant, has not kept its promises to eliminate anti-Israel bias from corporate ratings systems. It is still blacklisting companies who work with Israel.

Morningstar subsidiary Sustainalytics—which rates companies based on Environmental, Social, and Corporate (ESG) governance guidelines—placed at least two companies on its investment watchlist for their work with Israel’s security sector: Motorola Solutions and Elbit Systems, both of which provide counterterrorism surveillance technology that helps the Jewish state combat terrorism, an issue that is taking on renewed importance as Israel faces a New wave Of violence in Palestine

Sustainalytics was accused of supporting the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which wage economic warfare against Israel by downgrading businesses that do business with Israel. The issue has attracted media attention, including a Series Of Reports By the Washington Free BeaconMorningstar was forced by this to announce a number of reforms, which it claimed would counter anti-Israel bias. But, several months later, Middle East experts and ex-U.S. officials worry that Sustainalytics is punishing companies for their work in preventing terrorism from Israel. Sustainalytics’s ratings serve as a guide to investors concerned about social issues, and any company placed on its watchlist can suffer as a result.

“The events of this past year confirm that Morningstar’s ESG ratings subsidiary, Sustainalytics, is infected with systemic hostility to the State of Israel,” Elan Carr, who served as the State Department’s special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism during the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon. “The ratings giant continues to discriminate against companies that do business in Israel by giving them heightened ‘controversy’ ratings or even worse, by placing them on ‘watchlists’ for human rights abuses.”

Carr said that these are the so-called abuses of and controversies. “consist of nothing other than providing services to residents of disputed territories or supplying Israel with life-saving anti-terrorism technologies. In attempting to drive investments away from Israel-related companies, Morningstar has joined the global BDS campaign, whose aims are to delegitimize and economically suffocate the Jewish state. There is a word for this sort of pernicious discrimination: Anti-Semitism.”

Morningstar claimed last year that it had initiated a Process that is implemented across the company Motorola Solutions and Elbit Systems are still on the watchlist to eliminate anti-Israel bias.

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