Yves right here. This text usefully chronicles lots of the weapons equipped by America, in addition to Israeli arms, deployed within the battle on Goza. Authors Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies are on this writer’s humble opinion, too optimistic concerning the impact of divestiture campaigns on munitions-makers. They sadly have a safe place because the US is ratcheting up hostilities with China because it pushes its poodles in NATO to maintain the warmth on Russia too.
However it’s nonetheless helpful to get the US public to consider the arms business as a shameful enterprise. Recall how cigarette corporations discovered it laborious to rent chemists as a consequence of their in poor health reputation. And as we noticed with South Africa, divestiture marketing campaign power boards of endowments and foundations to need to debate the deserves of constant to carry positions within the corporations within the sizzling lights. These people are politically and socially linked, so they’re high-influence targets and can assist transfer the Overton window quicker.
On a sensible stage, boycotts towards Israel usually tend to have near-term influence, significantly since Israel is a small financial system that has already takes substantial harm from the results of battle. However the two programs of motion complimentary, not unique.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, the authors of Battle in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Mindless Battle, printed by OR Books in November 2022.
Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the writer of a number of books, together with Inside Iran: The Actual Historical past and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an impartial journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the writer of Blood on Our Palms: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
On Might 8, 2024, as Israel escalated its brutal assault on Rafah, President Biden introduced that he had “paused” a supply of 1,700 500-pound and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, and threatened to withhold extra shipments if Israel went forward with its full-scale invasion of Rafah.
The transfer elicited an outcry from Israeli officers (Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted “Hamas loves Biden”), in addition to Republicans, staunch anti-Palestinian Democrats and pro-Israel donors. Republicans instantly ready a invoice entitled the Israel Safety Help Help Act to ban the administration from withholding navy assist to Israel.
Many individuals have been asking the U.S. to halt weapons to Israel for seven months, and naturally Biden’s transfer comes too late for 35,000 Palestinians who’ve been killed in Gaza, primarily by American weapons.
Lest one assume the administration is really altering its place, two days after saying the pause, the State Division launched a convoluted report saying that, though it’s cheap to “assess” that U.S. weapons have been utilized by Israeli forces in Gaza in methods which might be “inconsistent” with worldwide humanitarian regulation, and though Israel has certainly delayed or had a destructive impact on the supply of assist to Gaza (which is prohibited underneath U.S. regulation), Israel’s assurances relating to humanitarian assist and compliance with worldwide humanitarian regulation are “credible and dependable.”
By this absurd conclusion, the Biden administration has given itself a inexperienced gentle to maintain sending weapons and Israel a flashing one to maintain committing battle crimes with them.
In any occasion, as Colonel Joe Bicino, a retired U.S. artillery officer, advised the BBC, Israel can “stage” Rafah with the weapons it already has. The paused cargo is “considerably inconsequential,” Bicino mentioned, “a bit of little bit of a political play for folks in the US who’re… involved about this.” A U.S. official confirmed to the Washington Put up that Israel has sufficient weapons already equipped by the U.S. and different allies to go forward with the Rafah operation if it chooses to disregard U.S. qualms.
The paused cargo actually needs to be seen within the context of the arsenal with which the U.S. has geared up its Center Jap proxy over many many years.
A Deluge of American Bombs
Throughout the Second World Battle, the US proudly referred to as itself the “Arsenal of Democracy,” as its munitions factories and shipyards produced an countless provide of weapons to combat the genocidal authorities of Germany. At present, the US is as an alternative, shamefully, the Arsenal of Genocide, offering 70% of the imported weapons Israel is utilizing to obliterate Gaza and bloodbath its folks.
As Israel assaults Rafah, dwelling to 1.4 million displaced folks, together with no less than 600,000 kids, many of the warplanes dropping bombs on them are F-16s, initially designed and manufactured by Common Dynamics, however now produced by Lockheed Martin in Greenville, South Carolina. Israel’s 224 F-16s have lengthy been its weapon of selection for bombing militants and civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
Israel additionally has 86 Boeing F-15s, which may drop heavier bombs, and 39 of the most recent, most wastefully costly fighter-bombers ever, Lockheed Martin’s nuclear-capable F-35s, with one other 36 on order. The F-35 is inbuilt Fort Price, Texas, however elements are manufactured all around the U.S. and in allied international locations, together with Israel. Israel was the primary nation to assault different international locations with F-35s, in violation of U.S. arms export management legal guidelines, reportedly utilizing them to bomb Syria, Egypt and Sudan.
As these fleets of U.S.-made warplanes started bombing Gaza in October 2023, their fifth main assault since 2008, the U.S. started dashing in new weapons. By December 1, 2023, it had delivered 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.
The U.S. provides Israel with all sizes and varieties of bombs, together with 285-pound GBU-39 small diameter glide bombs, 500-pound Mk 82s, 2,000-pound Mk 84s and BLU-109 “bunker busters,” and even large 5,000-pound GBU-28 bunker-busters, which Israel reportedly utilized in Gaza in 2009.
Common Dynamics is the most important U.S. bomb producer, making all these fashions of bombs. Most of them can be utilized as “precision” guided bombs by attaching Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Paveway laser steering system or Boeing’s JDAM (Joint Direct Assault Munitions) GPS-based focusing on system.
Little extra than half of the bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza have been “precision” ones, as a result of, as focusing on officers defined to +972 journal, their Lavender AI system generates hundreds of targets who’re simply suspected rank-and-file militants, not senior commanders. Israel doesn’t take into account it value “losing” costly precision munitions to kill these folks, so it makes use of solely “dumb” bombs to kill them of their houses—obliterating their households and neighbors within the course of.
With a purpose to threaten and bomb its extra distant neighbors, comparable to Iran, Israel is dependent upon its seven Lockheed Martin KC-130H and 7 Boeing 707 in-air refueling tankers, with 4 new, state-of-the-art Boeing KC46A tankers to be delivered in late 2025 for over $220 million every.
Floor Pressure Weapons
One other weapon of selection for killing Palestinians are Israel’s 48 Boeing Apache AH64 assault helicopters, armed with Lockheed Martin’s notorious Hellfire missiles, Common Dynamics’ Hydra 70 rockets and Northrop Grumman’s 30 mm machine weapons. Israel additionally used its Apaches to kill and incinerate a nonetheless unknown variety of Israelis on October 7, 2023—a tragic day that Israel and the U.S. proceed to take advantage of as a false pretext for their very own violations of worldwide humanitarian regulation and of the Genocide Conference.
Israel’s predominant artillery weapons are its 600 Paladin M109A5 155 mm self-propelled howitzers, that are manufactured by BAE Techniques in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. To the layman, a self-propelled howitzer seems like a tank, but it surely has a much bigger, 155 mm gun to fireside at longer vary.
Israel assembles its 155 mm artillery shells from U.S.-made elements. One of many first two U.S. arms shipments that the administration notified Congress about after October 7 was to resupply Israel with artillery shell elements valued at $147.5 million.
Israel additionally has 48 M270 a number of rocket launchers. They’re a tracked model of the HIMARS rocket launchers the U.S. has despatched to Ukraine, they usually fireplace the identical rockets, made by Lockheed Martin. U.S. Marines used the identical rockets in coordination with U.S. airstrikes to devastate Mosul, the second largest metropolis in Iraq, in 2017. M270 launchers are now not in manufacturing, however BEA Techniques nonetheless has the amenities to provide them.
Israel makes its personal Merkava tanks, which fireplace U.S.-made tank shells, and the State Division introduced on December 9, 2023, that it had notified Congress of an “emergency” cargo of 14,000 120 mm tank shells value $106 million to Israel.
U.S. shipments of artillery and tank shells, and dozens of smaller shipments that it didn’t report back to Congress (as a result of every cargo was rigorously calibrated to fall beneath the statutory reporting restrict of $100 million), had been paid for out of the $3.8 billion in navy assist that the US provides Israel every year.
In April, Congress handed a brand new war-funding invoice that consists of about $14 billion for extra weapons. Israel may afford to pay for these weapons itself, however then it may store round for them, which could erode the U.S. monopoly on supplying a lot of its battle machine. That profitable monopoly for U.S. retailers of demise is clearly extra essential to Members of Congress than absolutely funding Head Begin or different home anti-poverty packages, which they routinely underfund to pay for weapons and wars.
Israel has 500 FMC-built M113 armored personnel carriers and over 2,000 Humvees, manufactured by AM Common in Mishawaka, Indiana. Its floor forces are armed with a number of several types of U.S. grenade launchers, Browning machine-guns, AR-15 assault rifles, and SR-25 and M24 SWS sniper rifles, all made within the USA, as is the ammunition for them.
For a few years, Israel’s three Sa’ar 5 corvettes had been its largest warships, concerning the dimension of frigates. They had been constructed within the Nineteen Nineties by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, however Israel has just lately taken supply of 4 bigger, extra heavily-armed, German-built Sa’ar 6 corvettes, with 76 mm predominant weapons and new surface-to-surface missiles.
Gaza Encampments Take On the Retailers of Loss of life
America has a protracted and horrific file of offering weapons to repressive regimes that use them to kill their very own folks or assault their neighbors. Martin Luther King referred to as the U.S. authorities “the best purveyor of violence on this planet,” and that has not modified since he mentioned it in 1967, a 12 months to the day earlier than his assassination.
Lots of the enormous U.S. factories that produce all these weapons are the most important employers of their areas and even their states. As President Eisenhower warned the general public in his farewell handle in 1960, “This conjunction of an immense navy institution and a big arms business” has led to “the acquisition of unwarranted affect, whether or not sought or unsought, by the military-industrial advanced.”
So, along with demanding a ceasefire, an finish to U.S. navy assist and weapons gross sales to Israel, and a restoration of humanitarian assist to Gaza, the scholars occupying school campuses throughout our nation are proper to name on their establishments to divest from these retailers of demise, in addition to from Israeli corporations.
The company media has adopted the road that divestment could be too difficult and expensive for the colleges to do. However when college students arrange an encampment at Trinity Faculty in Dublin, in Eire, and referred to as on it to divest from Israeli corporations, the faculty shortly agreed to their calls for. Drawback solved, with out police violence or attempting to muzzle free speech. College students have additionally gained commitments to think about divestment from U.S. establishments, together with Brown, Northwestern, Evergreen State, Rutgers and the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Whereas many years of even deadlier U.S. war-making within the higher Center East failed to impress a sustained mass protest motion, the genocide in Gaza has opened the eyes of many hundreds of younger folks to the necessity to stand up towards the U.S. battle machine.
The gradual expulsion and emigration of Palestinians from their homeland has created an enormous diaspora of younger Palestinians who’ve performed a number one function in organizing solidarity campaigns on school campuses by means of teams like College students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Their shut hyperlinks with prolonged households in Palestine have given them a visceral grasp of the U.S. function on this genocide and an genuine voice that’s persuasive and provoking to different younger Individuals.
Now it’s as much as Individuals of all ages to comply with our younger leaders and demand not simply an finish to the genocide in Palestine, but additionally a path out of our nation’s navy insanity and the clutches of its deeply entrenched MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media- academia-think-tank) advanced, which has inflicted a lot demise, ache and desolation on so a lot of our neighbors for thus lengthy, from Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam and Latin America.
