To End the Genocide, We Must Hold Weapons Manufacturers Accountable (or Shut Them Down)
Image courtesy, Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank just passed its 800th day (and 77th year): at least 70,000 have been confirmed dead, including 20,000 children – and Israel shows no sign of stopping. Since a ceasefire was agreed to on October 10, Israel has attacked Gazans with bombs, snipers, and ground mobilizations nearly 500 times. In the West Bank, Israel has killed and detained hundreds of Palestinians and approved 19 new settlements.
None of this carnage is possible without assistance from the United States: we supply two-thirds of Israel’s foreign weapons and sent $12.5 billion in military aid in 2024 alone. While other countries reckoning with Israel’s war crimes have restricted or ended weapons transfers to Israel, the U.S. is contemplating legislation to fill in the “gaps” created by those embargoes.
For those of us living in the U.S., “Solidarity,” in the words of Gandhi Peace Award winner Omar Barghouti, “becomes moral duty.”
The weapons Israel is using to murder innocent Palestinians are manufactured right here in the United States. 2024 was the industry’s most profitable year on record, making $679 billion in revenue. Billions of dollars in profit are made every year off the weapons “battle-tested” against children in Gaza and the West Bank.
Our moral duty, then, is to hold these weapons manufacturers accountable for their complicity in Israel’s war crimes.
A new campaign in Brooklyn, New York, is doing just that. In October, the grassroots community organization PAL-Awda, which has advocated for the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homeland since 2000, launched a campaign against Mini-Circuits, a small company manufacturing radar and microwave technology – and several critical parts for weapons used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“It is our moral responsibility to organize against the companies in our own communities that enable and profit off of the genocide of our people,” a PAL-Awda spokesperson told me.
Mini-Circuits, headquartered in a dull concrete building in South Brooklyn, produces radar components for weapons manufactured by Lockheed Martin and used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. Public records on the HigherGov database show Mini-Circuits has won over $2.2 million in subcontracts with Lockheed Martin to produce these components in the last four years.
These Lockheed Martin weapons include the Hellfire Missile, Patriot Missile, and Joint Air-to-Ground Missile. Survivors in Gaza have found remnants of the Hellfire Missile – known as the “fire-and-forget” missile – in the rubble of residential buildings, schools, and health care centers. The U.S. has sold at least 3,000 Hellfire Missiles to Israel since October 2023.
PAL-Awda has held two rallies outside Mini-Circuits’ headquarters since the campaign began, hoping to speak with employees. Both times, the company sent all employees home before the rally began.
“We understand that many of these employees may not be aware of the impact of their work,” PAL-Awda’s spokesperson said. “We are here to remind workers that they too have agency: they can agitate within the company in support of our demands to cut weapons contracts, refuse to work on projects that are intended for weapons, or quit in an act of protest.”
PAL-Awda’s goal is to pressure Mini-Circuits to drop its contracts with Lockheed Martin and other weapons manufacturers complicit in genocide, “a victory that certainly feels possible, as these contracts make up only a fraction of Mini-Circuits’ total revenue,” the spokesperson said.
The Mini-Circuits campaign isn’t the only promising anti-militarism campaign in New York. Just ten miles north, there are two more military manufacturers hidden inside the old Brooklyn Navy Yard: Easy Aerial, a drone manufacturer; and Crye Precision, a tactical gear manufacturer. Both make products for the Israeli Defense Forces.
The Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard campaign has spent over a year fighting to evict these companies from city property. In September, State Senator Jabari Brisport joined the campaign at a press conference outside the Navy Yard: “Mark my words: they will be removed.”
These campaigns have a track record of success: in 2024, the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) Boston campaign forced Elbit Systems to vacate its office in Cambridge.
The U.K.-based Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, and they had initially chosen the Cambridge office to be in close proximity to Harvard and MIT. After two years of sustained protest, which included pickets, noise demonstrations, and spray paint, Elbit vacated the office. The local community made the weapons giant unwelcome in Cambridge’s tech sector.
While an office closure for a weapons giant like Elbit may not be financially devastating, the same can’t be said for a smaller company.
If evicted, Easy Aerial and Crye Precision would both need to relocate their headquarters – at a hefty cost. By leasing in the Navy Yard, they avoid real estate taxes and are eligible for multiple tax credits and reduced energy costs. These benefits should be reserved for the artist studios and small businesses that make up most of the Navy Yard’s tenants – not companies profiting off a genocide.
“When you know something unjust is happening in your own neighborhood, you have to speak up,” a parent who lives near the Navy Yard told me in June.
Mini-Circuits also appears to be vulnerable to community input, if their closure ahead of PAL-Awda’s rallies implies anything. They manufacture radio and microwave components for a variety of industries, including telecommunications, medicine, satellites, cable networks, aerospace, and defense. It is entirely within their power to stop making parts for Lockheed Martin’s horrific missiles – and they have a moral imperative to do so.
Lockheed Martin cannot manufacture its missiles without Mini-Circuits’ components. If PAL-Awda succeeds, Lockheed will need to find another supplier. It is up to us, in communities around the country, to make sure that no company in our neighborhood is complicit in genocide.
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