[News] Shutting Down The Israeli Arms Industry

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/shutting-down-the-israeli-arms-industry/>
Shutting Down The Israeli Arms Industry
By Lowkey, MintPress News.- May 19, 2023
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Even as Israel’s war against Palestine continues unabated, a new movement
has arisen in the United Kingdom, challenging the Israeli war machine – and
it has been winning some impressive victories.

Founded in 2020, Palestine Action is a grassroots activist movement that
seeks to end British complicity in Israeli war crimes by shutting down arms
manufacturing sites across the U.K. Today, Lowkey welcomes back Palestine
Action co-founder Huda Amori to talk about the rise of her organization
that has taken the country by storm and has weapons manufacturers fleeing.
Born in the U.K., Amori is a Palestinian-Iraqi whose father was chased out
of his home by Israeli soldiers in 1967, and forced to flee, without even a
pair of shoes.

Decades later, Amori has found a way to fight back, using direct action to
occupy and shut down Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms firm. With the
help of the community in her native Oldham, Amori and Palestine Action’s
occupation has forced Elbit Systems to leave the town and sell their
factory at a substantial loss. Last summer, they abandoned their London
headquarters. And last winter, the British Ministry of Defence canceled
around £280 million (around U.S.$350 million) of contracts with the company.

Elbit’s products, such as drones and surveillance tech, are directly used
on the civilian population of Palestine, Amori explained. They are then
marketed as “battle tested” around the world and sold to countries like
Australia and India.

“If you are building weapons here to be sent back to Israel to be used
against Palestinians, or if you are a customer of weapons that have been
developed on the Palestinian people, then you are just as guilty,” Amori
said, adding:

For example, the British Ministry of Defence buy many of these weapons
after they have been developed and used against the Palestinians, which
only encourages the further development and use of weapons on Palestinians,
and to continue the occupation. This cycle of violence just continues to
benefit the oppressors and work against the oppressed.”

What happens to Palestinians reverberates throughout the world. The people
of the West Bank and Gaza function as guinea pigs for the world’s most
oppressive technologies. Those technologies are then exported globally. As
Amori told Lowkey, because their electronics and other tech in Israel’s
annexation wall proved so effective, Elbit Systems won a contract to build
the Trump administration’s controversial wall on the Mexican border.

While Amori and Palestine Action are constantly charged and regularly
appear in court for criminal damages, they are yet to be convicted. Indeed,
once they get in front of a jury to tell their story, it is often Elbit
Systems that seems to be on trial. At the end of last year, a jury at the
Crown Court unanimously found Amori and her colleagues innocent, accepting
that they were trying to prevent an even bigger crime from taking place.
The jury even proceeded to thank the activists for their bravery publicly.
Some, Amori claimed, went so far as to blow kisses at them.

While it is not clear whether they will continue to grow and be successful,
what is obvious is that Palestine Action’s direct action strategy is
achieving success and that arms manufacturers the world over are watching
on, worried.

*Lowkey* is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political
campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys,
Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War
Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and
The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and
performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and
Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam
Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.
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