[News] Direct-Action Targets UK Firms Arming Israel

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/direct-action-targets-uk-firms-arming-israel/>
Direct-Action Targets UK Firms Arming Israel
By Sam Perlo-Freeman, Khem Rogaly and Anna Stavrianakis, Consortium News.
December 2, 2023
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[image: 2023122-1.jpg]

Above photo: Palestine Action activists blockading Elbit Systems Instro
Precision factory in Sandwich, Kent, on Nov. 6. Palestine Action.
Dozens of companies that supply Israel’s war machine face a growing
campaign to end U.K. complicity in crimes against Palestinians.

U.K. arms sales are in the spotlight again because of the ferocity and
genocidal intent of the Israeli assault on Palestinians and the reliance of
Israeli forces on British military hardware.

While the U.S. is far and away Israel’s biggest and most important arms
supplier and military-diplomatic advocate, the U.K. is also a leading
military and political ally of Israel.

>From the Balfour Declaration of 1917 [expressing British support for the
establishment of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people] to the
recent failure of the British Parliament to back a ceasefire, Westminster
policy has had detrimental consequences for Palestinians across generations.

In this context, the call from Palestinian trade unions to people of
conscience across the world to end the arms trade with Israel takes on an
even more urgent resonance.

Two things are becoming increasingly visible in the current war: the highly
internationalised character of arms production and trading; and the
internationalisation of resistance to it.

The biggest U.S.-headquartered arms companies — Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics — are all intimately involved
in arming Israel. Since the start of the current war, their share value has
increased by $24.7 billion.

All five companies have subsidiaries overseas, predominantly in western
Europe. And major weapons systems are produced by increasingly
international supply chains. More than 400 companies are involved in the
supply chain for the F-35, for example — a fighter jet that the Israeli
military is using in the air assault on Gaza and has used in previous
assaults as well.
Companies in Britain

Of the companies in the F-35 supply chain, at least 79 are located in
Britain. Information newly released by the Department for Business and
Trade provided the names of all companies registered for the government
licence that allows unlimited exports for the F-35.

These include very small firms such as Buoyancy Aerospace, which  engages
in the precision manufacturing of hard and soft metals such as aluminum,
titanium and steel, as well as major internationalised U.K. companies such
as BAE Systems and Rolls Royce, and U.K. subsidiaries of U.S. companies
such as Northrop Grumman, Honeywell and L3 Harris.

The U.K. is the only “Tier 1” partner for the F-35 programme and has
ordered 48 for the RAF, with more purchases planned. As such, 15 percent of
the value of every F-35 is made in the U.K., whoever the final recipient –
including the 50 ordered by Israel, of which 36 had been delivered by the
end of 2022.

The U.K.’s leading military goods manufacturer, BAE Systems, is the U.K.
company most involved in the F-35, producing the components for 13-to-15
percent of the value of each plane, between the company’s U.S. and U.K.
operations.

BAE’s production sites in the U.K. are spread unevenly around the country:
the rear fuselage of every F-35 fighter is made by BAE at Samlesbury
Aerodrome in Lancashire.

The “active interceptor system” that the pilot uses to direct and maneuver
the plane is made by BAE in Rochester, Kent. “Durability testing” for the
F-35 is undertaken at the BAE structural testing facility in East Yorkshire.
Across the Country

Many other British companies are also involved in the F-35 programme.
Examples include Martin-Baker, which makes the ejector seats in Higher
Denham, Buckinghamshire; Dunlop Aircraft Tyres, maker of the aircraft tyres
in Birmingham; and Cobham Mission Systems, in Wimborne, Dorset, maker of
the refuelling probe. (Cobham Mission Systems was sold to Eaton in 2021 and
is now known as Mission Systems Wimborne Ltd.)

Leonardo —  an Italian multinational with eight main sites across the U.K.
— makes the laser targeting system for the F-35 in Edinburgh and
Rolls-Royce makes the “LiftSystem” fan propulsion system for the F-35 in
Filton, Bristol.

These are a combination of household names and smaller companies: all are
involved in the international project of arms manufacture.

British-made equipment is also found in the F-16I fighters that are one of
the mainstays of Israel’s air force bombing Gaza since 2003. BAE Systems
provided components for the aircraft’s head-up displays (HUDs), which
provide information to pilots as they fly.

There continues to be a steady stream of U.K. export licences for
components for head-up/down displays to Israel, which are most likely spare
parts for these F-16 HUDs. BAE’s plant at Rochester is also its
manufacturing site for HUDs, and presumably for such components.
Taking to the Streets

As the U.S. and U.K. political establishments offer unbridled support for
the Israeli war machine, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people have
taken to the streets across the U.K. to voice their protest and demand a
ceasefire.

A growing number are also taking direct action to do what the government is
failing to do: shut down the production and transfer of weapons to Israel.

In response to a call from over 30 Palestinian trade unions and
professional associations to end the international arming of Israel and
complicity with its crimes against Palestinians, U.K. trade unionists,
activists and campaigners have taken action at the sites of arms production
and transfer.

The recent wave of action has seen hundreds of trade unionists block the
entry to BAE Systems in Rochester, Kent, and Instro Precision Systems, a
subsidiary of Israeli arms company Elbit.

Activist group Palestine Action intervened against Leonardo in Edinburgh
and at their London headquarters as well as the Foreign Office on the 106th
anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
Union Solidarity

There has been an upsurge in trade union solidarity in response to the
Palestinian call. Members of the trade union Unite sent an open letter to
its leadership and branches are passing motions in solidarity with
Palestine.

Another union, Unison, supports the call for an immediate ceasefire and the
RMT calls for an immediate end to hostilities on all sides and an end to
the siege of Gaza.

The New Socialist is serving as a clearing house for intra- and cross-trade
union solidarity. School and university students have walked out in protest
against government and opposition support for Israel and against university
partnerships with Israel.

Beyond the U.K., activists have disrupted the passage of a boat carrying
military goods to Israel from Oakland and Tacoma in the U.S.

BLOCK THE BOAT: Anti-genocide protesters here at the Port of Tacoma this
morning, attempting to block the MV Cape Orlando from picking up weapons
for Israel pic.twitter.com/6TCmWBYLoK <https://t.co/6TCmWBYLoK>

— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) November 6, 2023
<https://twitter.com/hannahkrieg/status/1721531550230274387?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Activists in Missouri have perhaps taken the action most directly
disruptive to Israeli military supply chains — blockading the Boeing
factory that produces precision-guided munitions used by the Israeli Air
Force in Gaza.

Boeing is one of the companies most complicit in Israel’s genocidal
assault, having exported at least $2.8 billion in military goods from the
U.S. to Israel since 2000.

Factories and ports in Italy, Spain and Australia, as well as the U.K.,
U.S. and Canada are being blockaded by trade unionists acting in chains of
solidarity with Palestine. Given that the arms trade is an international
project, so is the resistance to it.

*This article is from **Declassified UK* <https://www.declassifieduk.org/>
*.*

*Sam Perlo-Freeman *is research coordinator at Campaign Against the Arms
Trade.

*Khem Rogaly *is a researcher, with a focus on UK arms production and
industrial strategy.

*Anna Stavrianakis *is director of research and strategy at Shadow World
Investigations.
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