MIT activists force university to end pro-Israeli cooperation with US weapon maker

Activists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have succeeded through repeated protest to force the university into ending its pro-Israeli cooperation with US weapon manufacturer Lochheed Martin.

The activists announced the triumph on Saturday, putting it down to the demonstrations that they have been holding against the cooperation since October 7, when the Israeli regime began a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip with enormous political and military support on the part of the United States.

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“As of today, and due to pressure from students and scientists at MIT, the university has discontinued the Lockheed Martin Seed Fund and does not plan to renew it,” they said.

Explaining the reason for their sustained pressure that led to the fund’s closure, the activists mentioned that the company, which is one of the world’s largest weapon makers, had sold several billion dollars of weapons to the “apartheid” regime and “profited from the genocidal war on Gaza.”

As a case in point, they cited its having supplied the regime with Hellfire precision missiles, warplanes, and heavy artillery.

The regime has used the weapons towards “destroying the Palestinian society in Gaza over the past year: Its schools, hospitals, universities, holy sites, and vital infrastructure – directly killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and expelling millions in the process,” the campaigners noted.

Lockheed Martin has also enabled, what they denounced as, the “far-right, fanatical” regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to run “torture camps” for Palestinians at the regime’s notorious Sde Teiman detention facility, and “impose a regime of apartheid” in the occupied West Bank.

The students and scientists vowed to keep up the pressure until the university ended its other types of research collaboration with the Israeli military too, including its partnerships with Elbit Systems, the regime’s largest weapons manufacturer, and Maersk, the Danish shipping company that transports weapons for the military.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners have been ramping up pressure on their countries’ governments, companies, and universities to sever their ties with the regime since the launch of the war that has so far claimed the lives of at least 41,182 people, mostly women and children.

Pro-Israeli governments, particularly those in the United States and the UK, have, on the other hand, been coming down hard on the protests.

Activism is not terrorism: Israel-US-UK campaign to silence pro-Palestinian voices

Many pro-Palestinian activists and journalists have been arrested in recent weeks in the UK on terrorism charges for campaigning against Israeli genocide in Gaza.

They have rounded up and taken legal proceedings against hundreds, besides removing protest camps across university campuses after accusing the involved activists of “anti-Semitism” and “terrorism.”

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