[News] Builders of Israel's apartheid walls profit from US border militarization
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Oct 9 10:41:19 EDT 2019
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/builders-israels-apartheid-walls-profit-us-border-militarization
Builders of Israel's apartheid walls profit from US border militarization
Nora Barrows-Friedman
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman> - 8
October 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A major Israeli weapons company has been named as one of the top
profiteers of US border militarization.
Elbit Systems <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/elbit> has secured
border contracts worth $187 million from the US government, according to
research by journalist Todd Miller.
The largest, awarded during the Obama administration
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-war-industry-profits-violent-us-immigration-reform/13283>,
is to build more than 50 surveillance towers near the US-Mexico border
for the US government’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency.
Ten of those towers
<https://theintercept.com/2019/08/25/border-patrol-israel-elbit-surveillance/>
will be on land belonging to the Indigenous Tohono O’odham Nation in
Arizona.
A 2014 Bloomberg analysis
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-27/israel-s-elbit-wins-u-s-border-surveillance-contract>
predicted that Elbit’s initial profits could multiply if Congress
authorized more funds to militarize the border.
Miller’s report – “More Than a Wall: Corporate Profiteering and the
Militarization of US Borders
<https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/more-than-a-wall-report.pdf>”
– was recently published by human rights research group the
Transnational Institute <https://www.tni.org/en>, in collaboration with
No More Deaths <http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/about-no-more-deaths/>, a
humanitarian organization which protects migrants along the southern US
border.
The report profiles the top 14 companies profiteering from US border
militarization, including Elbit.
14 corporations have shaped Trump’s cruel border policy and are
profiting while families suffer. https://t.co/MP4ya88Gtt #DefundHate
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/DefundHate?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
pic.twitter.com/ZaRsu9bb1O <https://t.co/ZaRsu9bb1O>
— TNI (@TNInstitute) September 18, 2019
<https://twitter.com/TNInstitute/status/1174234376504299520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
A new report from @TNInstitute
<https://twitter.com/TNInstitute?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> shows that
border militarization long pre-dates the Trump administration, in
which both Republicans and Democrats have forged “profitable”
partnership between security firms to form a "powerful
border–industrial complex." https://t.co/7yfZu51N4z
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) September 19, 2019
<https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/1174563773341982720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
In 2004, Elbit won a US government contract to supply Hermes drones
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-war-industry-profits-violent-us-immigration-reform/13283>
for use along the border.
Israel “has ‘field tested’ those drones in attacks on Gaza which left
many Palestinians dead, including children,” the UK charity War on Want
stated
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/new-uk-drones-field-tested-captive-palestinians>
in 2013.
Notably, Elbit “sells its experience of walling in the West Bank and
Gaza,” the new report states.
Since Israel began constructing its wall
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israels-wall-west-bank> around
Jerusalem and elsewhere inside the occupied West Bank in 2002, Elbit and
its subsidiaries have cashed in on contracts to install electronic
surveillance technologies “designed to feed into [the Israeli army’s]
command and control centers.”
The West Bank wall is illegal under international law and must be
dismantled, according to a landmark 2004 ruling
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/international-court-rules-against-israels-wall/1743>
by the International Court of Justice.
In 2013, Elbit installed similar systems in the occupied Syrian Golan
Heights in a contract worth $60 million.
Two years later, Elbit began developing “tunnel detection technology”
for use around the besieged Gaza Strip, the report states. That
technology would become part of a 130-foot deep underground wall that
Israel began building in 2017.
When vying for the US-Mexico border contract Elbit advertised itself as
having more than 10 years “securing the world’s most challenging
borders” and that it had a “proven track record.”
Bonanza
Along with Elbit, war industry corporations including Raytheon, Lockheed
Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, G4S
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/g4s>, IBM and Northrop Grumman have
cashed in what the report describes as a “border-security bonanza.”
US border militarization contracts with such corporations added up to at
least $80.5 billion between 2006 and 2018.
But this money is “certainly less than the true figures,” the report
estimates, as the agencies issuing the contracts have consistently
failed to be transparent.
Annual US border militarization budgets have more than doubled in the
last 15 years and have increased by more than 6,000 percent since 1980,
according to the report.
Some corporations contracted by CBP have committed significant ethical
<https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-62.html> violations
<https://corpwatch.org/article/us-technology-company-hired-after-911-charged-too-much-labor-audit-says>.
But repeated scandals involving some of the biggest border security
corporations “have done little to slow down the revenue stream,” the
report says.
G4S, the world’s largest security company and a major US contractor, has
faced legal proceedings over the abuse and death of detainees
<http://investigate.afsc.org/company/g4s> in the US and UK.
Campaigners have successfully pressured institutions and governments to
drop contracts <https://bdsmovement.net/g4s-timeline> with G4S due to
human rights abuses.
These abuses include involvement
<https://whoprofits.org/company/g4s-israel-hashmira/> with Israeli
prisons where Palestinians are routinely tortured.
Lobbying legislators
Corporations have lobbied US officials and made campaign contributions
in an effort to expand CBP contracts.
Elbit, for instance, has funded Republican congresswomen Martha McSally
of Arizona and Kay Granger of Texas.
McSally has used rhetoric demonizing people who are immigrants or who
seek asylum
<https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/opinion/report/052318_mcsally_asylum/mcsally-asylum-seekers-enrich-cartels-vulnerable-ms-13-recruitment/>.
She is a staunch
<https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2019/03/13/sen-martha-mcsally-set-uphold-trump-border-emergency/3152460002/>
supporter
<https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2018/06/12/mcsallys-office-removes-video-supporting-compassionate-fix-daca/692897002/>
of the Trump administration’s harsh border policies.
And Granger is a ranking member
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/us/politics/congress-border-wall.html>
of the House Appropriations Committee which allocates border
militarization funding.
The report says it is time to expose how the firms that profit from
cruelty and militarization at the border influence lawmakers.
“The constant push for more border walls, more technologies, more
incarceration, more criminalization is in a holding pattern, stuck in a
corporate dynamic with a growth doctrine,” it states.
--
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