Podcast Ep 24: Stopping Israel’s arms industry

On Episode 24 of The Electronic Intifada Podcast, we speak with several boycott campaigners taking direct action against corporations involved in Israel’s military occupation and settlement industry.

Huda Ammori of Palestine Action tells us about their strategy to end the presence of Israeli arms dealers in the UK.

“The weapons that are being made to use against [Palestinians] are being made in front of you, and we have an ability to stop it,” she says.

And we speak to Dalit Baum and Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee in the US about the new No Dough for the Occupation campaign targeting baked goods company Pillsbury and its parent corporation General Mills.

Pillsbury manufactures its products inside the Atarot Industrial Zone, a settlement in occupied East Jerusalem built in violation of international law.

The land was confiscated from the Palestinian town of Beit Hanina, Baum tells us.

“What we’re asking the company to do is very, very simple,” Baum explains.

“This is illegal. It is a blatant violation. They should just move that factory out of that area.”

While activists protested outside of the General Mills headquarters in Minneapolis, Perry and other campaigners challenged the company over its settlement factory during its virtual shareholders’ meeting.

Baum discusses a recent direct action against US-based technology company Palantir, which sells surveillance technology and “predictive” intelligence systems to Israel to be used against Palestinians.

Palantir also works with US federal agencies to help detain and deport undocumented immigrants.

Articles we discussed

Photo: Members of Palestine Action protest on the roof of the UAV Engines factory owned by Elbit in Shenstone, England, September 2020 (Palestine Action).

Music: “MTAKTAK” (Shabjdeed)

Theme music by Sharif Zakout

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The international arms trade is a disgrace. As is the international order as a whole. Arms sales to regimes which oppress, colonise, defy UN resolutions should be illegal, enforceable in international courts. What drives it? Money. Despicable.

Nora Barrows-Friedman

Nora Barrows-Friedman's picture

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014).