Weapons makers treat genocide as a business opportunity

The destruction of Gaza has been facilitated by NATO.
Naaman Omar APA images

For the people of Gaza it is genocide. For weapons companies it is an opportunity to test new products.

Publications read by arms industry managers and their clients are trying to note each item that makes its debut on the battlefield.

An “all-terrain vehicle” with “light-reconnaissance” capabilities and designed for “special force units” in Israel’s military has been “spotted,” according to one such magazine.

Mortar munition called “Iron Sting” is being unveiled.

Even the Israeli Navy’s “newest missile ships” are getting a slice of the action.

It should be patently obvious that the weapons industry profits enormously from war and oppression. While decent people around the world are protesting against the massacres in Gaza, some “analysts” are speculating about which weapons Israel will use next.

Amid such obscenity, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, recently complained about the “misguided idea that the defense industry is somehow unethical.”

Everything is unethical about the “defense industry.”

But NATO – which actively promotes higher spending on weapons – would never admit that. Nor would this military alliance own up to how it facilitated the genocide now being perpetrated in Gaza.

No problem with Nazi language

On 12 October, Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant addressed his NATO counterparts via a video link.

Just three days earlier, Gallant had resorted to Nazi language by calling Gaza’s people “human animals.”

There is no indication that NATO expressed revulsion or even mild unease at that term. Rather, Stoltenberg assured Gallant that “Israel does not stand alone.”

NATO was sending similar signals to Israel before the latest war against Gaza was declared.

In late September, Rob Bauer, the Dutch admiral chairing NATO’s military committee, visited Israel to hang out with the top brass in its army. Baeur was given a tour of Erez – the checkpoint from which Israel has overseen its blockade of Gaza.

Bauer had previously welcomed Israeli representatives to NATO’s Brussels headquarters in May. On that occasion, he discussed the “innovation strategy” followed by Israel’s military and its development of “disruptive technologies.”

The limited details published by NATO did not specify which “technologies” may have been singled out. Yet it is certainly true that Israel is now disrupting all aspects of life in Gaza and – to a considerable degree – across historic Palestine.

Like-minded

NATO celebrates how its cooperation with Israel stretches over a period of almost 30 years. The cooperation is sufficiently intense for NATO representatives to describe Israel as one of its “like-minded partners.”

To prove that they are “like-minded,” some of NATO’s leading players are abetting the genocidal war against Gaza.

The US is the worst culprit. It is flying weapons to Israel nearly every day.

Boeing is among the American companies profiting from the holocaust being inflicted on Palestinians.

The “smart” bombs which Boeing manufactures theoretically can minimize civilian casualties.

It is apparent that Israel is slaughtering civilians in vast numbers on purpose. Members of the ruling coalition are not hiding that fact.

Galit Distel Atbaryan, Israel’s public diplomacy minister until recently, has recommended “erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth.”

Britain, meanwhile, is headed by Rishi Sunak, a prime minister who fervently hopes Israel will “win” its genocidal war.

Although Sunak has been blunt about his backing for Israel, the British authorities want to keep some elements of that support under wraps. Gag orders – known as “D-notices” – have been issued to newspapers following reports that Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) was primed to assist Israel’s war efforts.

France may be taking a slightly less obnoxious line than Britain by voting in favor of a UN resolution urging an “immediate humanitarian truce.” But that was after Emmanuel Macron, the president, sought to legitimize Israel’s absurd claims that it is fighting an enemy worse than ISIS.

NATO is a club which nominally promotes democracy and freedom. In reality, it is aiding the obliteration of Gaza.