In June and July, during a supposed cease-fire, Israel sent fighter jets screaming into the Gaza Strip to deliver several air strikes. Home to two million Palestinians suffering under a barbaric 14-year siege of land, sea, and air, Gaza was — and still is — reeling from the destruction wrought by Israel’s bombing campaign in May. The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) said “the violence had been worse in intensity and terror than 2014.”

The following talk was delivered on May 27, by Sarah Martin of Women Against Military Madness, soon after Israel had bombed Gaza continuously for 11 days and nights in what was clearly a merciless, asymmetrical attack on the besieged area. The talk was delivered at an antiwar rally in front of Northup Grumman’s Armament Business Systems office in the Minneapolis suburb of Plymouth and was based on facts from an investigation of weapons manufacturers by the Friends Service Committee.

This merchant of death is the fifth largest military company in the world and the third largest in the U.S., and has had the blood of Gazans on its hands for years.

Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; the prominent Israeli group, B’tselem; and UN Human Rights experts have denounced Israel’s attacks as human rights violations, collective punishment, and, at times, war crimes.

In fact, F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, and other weapons systems containing parts manufactured by Northrop Grumman have been used repeatedly by Israel in its attacks that have resulted altogether in thousands of civilian casualties in Lebanon; the occupied Palestinian West Bank; and the Gaza Strip, which Israel has held under siege for years now.

These murderous attacks include those in Operation Cast Lead. which Israel conducted December 2008 into January 2009. 1,394 Palestinians were killed in attacks from F-16 fighter jets on civilian homes and refugee camps, and with missiles fired from Apache helicopters targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure, and clearly marked ambulances.

Northrup Grumman Sa’ar 5 missile ships used by the Israeli Navy in 2006 on Lebanon were deployed again in Operation Cast Lead to enforce the illegal naval blockade of the sea along the Gaza Strip.  They were also used in the Israeli attack on the unarmed Free Gaza Flotilla in 2010, resulting in the killing of 10 humanitarian activists.

In 2014, using Grumman-made weapons, Israel conducted an assault on Gaza called Operation Protective Edge, in which more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed. F-16 fighter jets were repeatedly used in 2018 to conduct air strikes on Gaza, again resulting in many civilian deaths.

No good comes from this company. But it is, of course, the unconditional and unequivocal political and military support of Israel by the U.S. government that makes this death and suffering possible — not to mention the $3.8 billion per year of financial aid which the U.S. gives to Israel that is one of the biggest problems.

But there’s a crack in this unwavering wall of complicity between the U.S. and Israel. During the latest 11-day bombing of Gaza, several members of the progressive caucus, including Minnesota Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Betty McCollum, signed on to a House resolution, introduced by AOC, to block the sale of $735 million arms to Israel. Bernie Sanders also introduced a resolution in the Senate.

They did this, of course, because of the pressure from Palestinian solidarity activists demonstrating in huge numbers all over the world, including 4,000 — mostly young, brown and black — here in Minneapolis, on Saturday, May 22.

Public opinion has been shifting over several years against Israel’s atrocities and toward justice for Palestine. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has contributed to this change.  Northrup Grumman has been the target of many of these campaigns as students in several universities have successfully organized and proposed and passed resolutions calling for divestment from the company.  The first was as far back as 2006 at the University of Michigan in Dearborn.  Since then, they were joined by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Tufts Community Union, the College Council of the University of Chicago, the University of South Florida Student Senate, Oglethorpe University Student Senate, the University of California-Los Angeles, Wesleyan University’s Student Senate, and the University of California-San Diego.

Now we join them in calling out Northrup Grumman for the war criminals they are.