UN rights expert Francesca Albanese on Thursday denounced companies she said "profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide", in a report that provoked a furious response from Israel.

Some of the companies named in her report also raised objections.

Albanese presented her report, investigating "the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians", to the UN Human Rights Council.

Companies should stop all business activities and relationships that caused or contributed to rights violations and international crimes, she argued.

In response, Israel's mission in Geneva said Albanese's report was motivated by her "obsessive, hate-driven agenda to delegitimise the state of Israel".

It was "legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of office", it added.

Swiss mining and commodity trading giant Glencore, named in the report, also denounced her allegations as "unfounded".

Albanese is the UN's special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

She described the situation in the Gaza........

© International Business Times