We want Americans to know their money funds genocide of Palestinians: Activist

By Press TV Website Staff

A member of the ‘Elbit Out of South Carolina’ campaign says their efforts have made "significant" progress, successfully raising awareness about how the money that belongs to Americans is used to destroy Palestinian lives and communities. 

In an interview with the Press TV website, Matt Colburn said the campaign's goal is to inform Americans about Elbit Systems of America, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, a key Israeli weapons and surveillance manufacturer, which is operating in their communities and producing weapons being used in the ongoing US-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

‘Elbit Out of South Carolina’ is a coalition of local groups and neighbors in South Carolina united in opposition to Elbit Systems, which manufactures deadly weapons for the Israeli regime.

Elbit has been granted tax incentives approved by Charleston County in South Carolina, which the campaign states is diverting much-needed funds away from the county’s struggling infrastructure and schools, according to the campaign’s website.

“They (people) have also been made aware that Elbit opened with the financial support of the Charleston County Council via a seven hundred thousand dollar set aside grant and decades of tax incentives/breaks while our education & infrastructure suffer and the price of living rapidly rises,” Colburn told the Press TV website.

He also pointed out that North Charleston, South Carolina, had the “highest eviction rate in the US” in 2023, adding that the community is holding the county council accountable, planning to attend and speak at every monthly meeting to push for the revocation of Elbit’s tax incentives.

“Most importantly we have put direct pressure on Elbit staff with weekly pickets for three months straight now. Elbit is located in an industrial area with heavy traffic. Hundreds of community members see us on a weekly basis and when they're stopped at the red light we hand out flyers relaying all of this every chance we get,” Colburn remarked.

“The facility and its employees feel this pressure and now rely on a security/police escort to get them in and out of the facility as our presence makes it difficult to enter or exit Elbit. The police officer who arrested our comrade on Jan 2nd, 2025 mentioned to him the “people in there hate yall’s guts.” This is all due to our ongoing campaign and the weekly pickets are to make sure the pressure never eases.” 

Pertinently, Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, supplies 85 percent of the occupying regime’s drone fleet along with 85 percent of its land-based equipment and internationally banned weapons, which are mainly used to kill and maim Palestinians.

The notorious arms firm also maintains the surveillance technology deployed at the apartheid wall, Gaza border, and military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank to ensure and consolidate Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian people.

In late October, two weeks into the genocidal war on Gaza, Elbit Systems President and CEO Bezhalel Machlis boasted that the company was “critical” to the genocide in the besieged Palestinian territory.

On why they chose to protest against the Elbit Systems, Colburn told the Press TV website that it is a way to “materially impact the occupation and do our part to assist the Palestinian people in their national liberation struggle.”

“Elbit produced the drone that murdered the seven World Central Kitchen workers in April of 2024, one of which was an American citizen. This facility we’re fighting builds truck-mounted Howitzer cannons, which it brags as being “next generation.” It’s not just weapons but surveillance equipment being used to criminalize refugees on our Southern border fleeing conditions brought on by western imperialist meddling in Central & South America,” he explained.

“Elbit sells a variety of surveillance towers and equipment to the border patrol which are also used on indigenous communities living on reservations. Elbit produces up to 85 percent of the Israeli occupation forces' supply of weapons. Weapons used to inflict the violence necessary to maintain and defend the occupation. These weapons are being built here in our own backyard, we have a duty to act and are in a position to literally disrupt this flow of weapons for genocide. We have a responsibility to act against a company that is building the majority of the weapons for the occupation.”

The activist associated with the ‘Elbit Out Of South Carolina’ campaign further said that by protesting against Elbit and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, they are also protesting against their own government “who could end this genocide with a phone call.”

“It cannot be made any clearer that this is a US-backed genocide. This only continues because of the military, diplomatic, political & economic support of the US to Israel as it would collapse without this support. Israel not only relies on US funding for its offensive support but for its defensive support which is the iron dome. The US has even put boots on the ground to defend Israel from retaliatory airstrikes,” the activist told the Press TV website.

“Israel is a creation of Western imperialism. It is an illegal occupation and Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology that serves the interests of US imperialism in the Middle East, which is to safeguard American domination of the global oil trade, cheap access to resources and trade routes and prevent Arab independence in the region.”

Colburn said the US passed laws criminalizing free speech against Israel, threatened the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), cut the funding of UNRWA and made a “brutal mockery of the international and humanitarian laws they claim to support.”

“People have seen how their own government neglects issues like poverty, homelessness, lack of healthcare, and police violence and continues to send billions of dollars to an apartheid state committing genocide. This has sharpened contradictions and exposed the brutality and criminality of the US government to its own citizens in a way never seen before,” he noted.

On their future plans, Colburn said they are part of an international struggle that gives them the strength and courage to “apply and steadily increase the pressure on Elbit facilities.”

“We have seen the results of campaigns against Elbit in not only US states but in the UK as well. Whether it’s getting contracts dropped, suppliers of Elbit ending relations, or the shutting down of facilities completely. We have successful examples to follow in our own campaign against Elbit,” he stated, referring to successful campaigns against Elbit in the US and the UK.

He said ‘Elbit Out Of South Carolina’ will continue to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and continue to “organize, educate and agitate around the issue of Elbit and the genocide in Palestine.”

“To let people know of the absurdity and contradictions on display, to let the Charleston community know money is being stolen from our communities to destroy Palestinian communities, that our taxes are paying the wages of police officers to protect Elbit's flow of weapons to a nation accused of war crimes and genocide by the entire international community,” he said.

“We have a duty and obligation to act and will continue to do so until Palestine is free.”

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