US arms industry giants rejoice as Israel rains bombs on Palestinian children

News Network
November 7, 2023

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As the Israeli killing machine continues to wreak havoc in the besieged Gaza Strip, the arms manufacturers in the United States are making merry, expecting a big boost in their profits.

The United States has vowed unconditional and unwavering support to the Israeli regime in its genocidal campaign in the besieged coastal strip with top US officials dashing off to Tel Aviv in recent weeks.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is again in Tel Aviv, the second time in less than a month, as the Joe Biden administration seeks to assure the beleaguered regime of its support and solidarity.

One of the means of support is the supply of lethal weapons to the Tel Aviv regime, which has spread cheer on Wall Street as arms companies look for ways to maximize profits from the Gaza war.

According to a report published by The Guardian and Responsible Statecraft, major military firms in the US are eyeing big gains from the war that the Israeli regime has imposed on the people of Palestine.

After the Israeli regime launched its bombing campaign on Gaza on October 7, the stock prices of major American and European arms manufacturers have seen substantial increases.

Israel has been bombing the densely-populated civilian areas in Gaza since October 7 when the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched an unprecedented operation in response to the Israeli regime’s relentless crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen over 9,500, including over 3,800 children and 2,400 women, besides leaving more than 23,500 people wounded.

It has significantly depleted the regime’s military arsenal. The refilling of these stockpiles means huge new orders of arms funded by Washington and supplied by Wall Street arms corporations.

Leading American weapons firms

Major US weapons manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics, have been singled out in a report by Eyes on the Ties.

These firms collectively reported $196.5 billion in military-related revenue last year, according to the report. All five arms corporations have a history of providing weapons to Israel for use against Palestinians and have recently been linked to weapons sales during the current Gaza assault.

"The top shareholders in these five defense companies largely consist of big asset managers, or big banks with asset management wings, that include BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Capital Group, Wellington, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Newport Trust Company, Longview Asset Management, Massachusetts Financial Services Company, Geode Capital, and Bank of America," the news outlet noted.

Notably, US President Joe Biden has asked the US Congress for $106 billion in military aid for Israel and Ukraine. This financial support could be a windfall for the aerospace and weapons sector, which saw a 7 percent increase in value in the immediate aftermath of Israel's attack on October 7.
Managing director and senior research analyst at TD Cowen, Cai von Rumohr was quoted as saying that the “additional demand” has been created as a result of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, noting that they “have this $106 billion request from the president.”

“The Israel situation obviously is a terrible one, frankly, and one that’s just evolving as we speak,” said Jason Aiken, the company’s executive vice president of technologies and chief financial officer, during General Dynamics’ earnings call on October 25.

“But I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight, and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”

Aiken was quoted as saying by media outlets that they have been under pressure amid the Ukraine war, and now the Israeli war on Gaza is going to only increase that pressure.

"Obviously that's been a big pressure point up to now with Ukraine, one that we've been doing everything we can to support our Army customer,” he noted.

“We've gone from 14,000 rounds per month to 20,000 very quickly. We're working ahead of schedule to accelerate that production capacity up to 85,000, even as high as 100,000 rounds per month, and I think the Israel situation is only going to put upward pressure on that demand.”

Gaza genocide and US arms firms

The remarks were followed by protests by pro-Palestine activists outside of General Dynamics' weapons plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts last week, with hundreds of people gathering to call for a ceasefire, holding signs with slogans like, "Genocide: Brought To You By General Dynamics."

During Raytheon's earnings call on October 24, Kristine Liwag, the Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research at Morgan Stanley, discussed the financial implications of the White House's $106 billion supplemental funding request about the ongoing war.

“Looking at [the White House’s $106 billion supplemental funding request], you’ve got equipment for Ukraine, air and missile defense for Israel, and replenishment of stockpiles for both. And this seems to fit quite nicely with the Raytheon Defense portfolio,” said Liwag.

Liwag also noted that the war against Palestine appeared to be an “opportunity” that “fits quite nicely” with the company’s product offerings.

It's noteworthy that Morgan Stanley owns over $3 billion worth of Raytheon stock, constituting a 2.1 percent ownership share in the weapons company.

Ignoring the earlier warnings by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the leaders of major weapons corporations made statements that contradict their own "statements on human rights" and their commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

In the early days of the Israeli war against Palestinians, the UNHCR issued a warning that “there is already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed” in Gaza, adding that those who have violated international law and targeted civilians “must be held accountable for their crimes.”

“[The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human rights] are clear in their expectation of companies to respect human rights throughout their value chain,” said Cor Oudes, program leader of humanitarian disarmament, business conflict and human rights at PAX for Peace, a Netherland based non-governmental organization advocating for the protection of civilians against acts of war.

US, Europe arms exports to Israel

A report from SIPRI sheds light on the arms sales from Europe to Israel from 2013 to 2022. Italy and Germany have been significant suppliers of crucial weapons and equipment to the Israeli regime, which are currently being used on the ground in Gaza.

The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has lucrative deals involving the supply of equipment to the regime’s Air Force, as highlighted by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT).

More recently, Biden requested over $14 billion in military aid for Israel's ongoing war against Palestinians. It is in addition to the $877 billion the US government allocates annually to its military.

The United States has been the all-weather supporter of the Israeli regime, providing guided missile carriers, F-35 fighters, and various other military equipment. Israel stands as the largest recipient of US foreign aid, having received approximately $263 billion between 1946 and 2023.

In 2023, US military funding to Israel reached $3.8 billion, as part of a record-breaking $38 billion deal over ten years, initially signed during the tenure of former US President Barack Obama in 2016.

Notably, half a billion of the military aid provided this year is designated for the Israeli regime's missile systems, with the commitment from Washington to replace Israeli munitions used in the ongoing war against Gaza.

Shana Marshall, an expert on finance and arms trade and the associate director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University emphasized that the interpretation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights largely depends on the host government.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is only as good as how it’s interpreted by the host government, which in this case would be the US,” Marshall explained.

“These analysts can feel safe in the knowledge that the US government is never going to interpret that law in such a way that they will be prevented from exporting weapons to a country that the US doesn’t have an outright embargo on, which probably won’t have anything to do with human rights law anyways.”

The Leahy Law prohibits the export of US defense articles to military units complicit in human rights abuses. However, as of now, no Israeli unit has faced penalties under this law.

Pertinently, the substantial military assistance provided by the US to Israel has significant implications not only for the region but also for workers in the United States.

The effects of this support are felt across the US, impacting concerns such as healthcare, infrastructure, wages, environmental issues, and housing insecurity.

US lawmaker Summer Lee (D-Pa.) recently slammed the US arms exports to the occupied territories, stressing that it doesn't address the broader challenges faced by Americans.

Unlike the CEOs of firms like Lockheed Martin and RTX, "moms who can't afford childcare, young folks who can't pay off their debt, veterans who can't keep up with housing costs, and children who go to school hungry don't have million-dollar lobbying budgets," stated Lee. 

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News Network
January 27,2025

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Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have begun returning to the northern part of the war-wracked Gaza Strip after a deal was reached between Hamas and Israel over exchange of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners.

It was announced that Hamas has agreed to release female Israeli captive Arbel Yehud and two others by Friday and provided information on the conditions of those set to be freed in the first phase of the ceasefire deal.

Gazans describe the return as historic, saying this is a victorious day.

The displaced Palestinians had been stranded behind Israeli military barriers despite the ceasefire.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was reached after 15 months of the regime's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The implementation of the first phase of the deal began on January 19 and is expected to witness release of more than 1,890 Palestinians for 33 Zionists, who are among the 240 that Gaza’s resistance groups captured in October 2023.

The captives were ensnared during the historical Operation al-Aqsa Flood that served as an instance of retaliation against the regime’s decades-long campaign of Western-backed occupation and aggression against Palestinians.

The subsequent war claimed the lives of at least 47,306 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The regime approved of the ceasefire after falling short of realizing any of its wartime objectives, including enabling the return of the captives, “eliminating” the Gazan resistance, and causing forced displacement of Gaza’s entire population to neighboring Egypt.

On Sunday, Hamas lambasted the regime for delaying the implementation of the ceasefire deal after Israeli forces killed and injured the Palestinians trying to return to the north.

Earlier, however, the regime said Palestinians could begin returning to the north on Monday after Gaza’s Islamic Jihad resistance movement confirmed that Israeli captive Arbel Yehud would be released before the next scheduled captive/prisoner swap.

Qatar, which had mediated ceasefire talks between Tel Aviv and Hamas alongside Egypt, had also announced that Hamas had agreed to release Yehud and two others by Friday and provided information on the conditions of those set to be freed in the first phase of implementation of the ceasefire deal.

Hamas calls it a victory

The movement, itself, issued a statement, describing the return of the displaced people as “a victory” for Palestinians and a defeat for the Israelis.

It said the scenes of the return of Palestinians to the areas from which they had been displaced, confirmed their connection to their land and once again proved “the failure of the occupation to achieve the aggressive goals of displacing people and breaking their steadfast will.”

The Islamic Jihad also described the return as a response to all those, who used to harbor the dream of enabling forced exodus of Palestinians.

“In an epic scene, hundreds of thousands of our displaced people are returning to northern Gaza, an area, which had been turned into a heap of rubble as a result of Zionists’ atrocities,” the group said.

It also described the Israeli regime’s conditioning the return of the displaced to Yehud’s release as an international move on the part of Tel Aviv to “destroy our people’s happiness in Gaza.”

“On this occasion, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement asserts that our people’s steadfastness would destroy whatever Zionist dream there is of stealing happiness from our hearts, and break the chains of the prison guards and occupiers.”

Former Israeli minister furious 

The Israeli regime’s former minister of so-called “national security,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, however, decried the return as a victory for Hamas.

“The opening of the Netzarim highway this morning and the entry of tens of thousands of Gazans into the northern Gaza Strip are images of Hamas’ victory and another humiliating part of the reckless deal. This is not what ‘complete victory’ looks like – this is what complete surrender looks like,” he wrote on X, former Twitter.

The Israeli soldiers did not fight and give their lives in the Gaza Strip to make these photos possible, he said, adding, “We must return to war – and destroy!”

Ben-Gvir resigned from his post earlier this month in protest at the ceasefire deal.

He has long been opposed to cessation of the brutal Israeli military onslaught and called for the regime to “occupy” Gaza.

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News Network
January 18,2025

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Israel’s Unit 8200 is a secretive cyber warfare team that is said to be building the artificial intelligence (AI) systems that helped the regime commit the genocide against Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. According to a report, Unit 8200 is building AI systems for global tech and AI companies.

Former Unit 8200 members who specialize in AI, machine learning and big data are working for Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Open AI and Nvidia, which is an AI company determined to be the biggest in the world, the ¡Do Not Panic! website reported on Friday.

Former Unit 8200 spies specializing in AI are based worldwide, from San Francisco to New York, Spain to Switzerland, and London to Jerusalem al-Quds.

The report also said that AI leaders from Unit 8200 are now working for AI start-ups or heralded by corporate media as the next generation of AI.

The report revealed that most of these AI people have expressed support for Israel’s genocidal war against the people in Gaza. It was also exposed that not a single person from these people ever voiced opposition to Israel’s mass murder in Gaza.

Advocacy groups have also said AI and machine learning is central to the architecture of occupation and apartheid established before the genocidal Gaza campaign, from the use of facial recognition technology, and AI-directed guns at checkpoints, to spy apps known as ‘Blue Wolf’ and ‘Red Wolf’.

According to another report published in November last year, Israel has been employing an AI firing system jointly manufactured by an Indian arms company during its genocide in Gaza.

Citing documents and news reports, the Middle East Eye (MEE) news portal reported on November 20 that the occupation forces have been using the Arbel system since the beginning of the Israeli regime’s bloody war on Gaza.

Arbel was unveiled at a defense expo in Gandhinagar in the Indian state of Gujarat in October 2022 as a co-venture between Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI) company and India’s Adani Defense & Aerospace.

At the time, several Indian media described it as “India’s first AI-based firing system.”

In April 2024, IWI introduced Aber as a new “computerized small arms system” designed to increase combat lethality.

India, which is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, has in recent years become a major co-producer of Israeli weapons.

Israel unleashed its bloody Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 46,788 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 110,453 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

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News Network
January 28,2025

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Mangaluru, Jan 28: The cricketing community of Mulki on the outskirts of Mangaluru, is mourning the untimely demise of 41-year-old Mansoor Mulki, a cherished member of the 7-Star cricket team. On January 26, Mansoor tragically suffered a cardiac arrest while driving in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, leaving his family, friends, and fans in shock.

Hailing from the Bappa Byari Doddamanai family, Mansoor was not just a skilled cricketer but also an active member of the Manish Youth Club. Known for his warm personality, he had a touching conversation with his mother over the phone just 15 minutes before the fatal incident, a memory that now resonates deeply with his grieving family.

His sudden passing has left a void in the lives of his mother, wife, and three daughters. Plans are in place for the funeral rites to be conducted in Saudi Arabia, where Mansoor had been working for the past 15 years.

Amid the sorrow, his employer, Siraj, a businessman from Hejamady, has taken on the responsibility of ensuring all arrangements for Mansoor’s family. Recently returning to Saudi Arabia from India, Siraj is facilitating travel and formalities for Mansoor’s mother, wife, daughters, and brother-in-law so they can bid their final goodbyes.

This tragedy has not only left a family in grief but also a community that cherished Mansoor as a friend, mentor, and cricketing icon.

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