ACTIVISTS CLAIM VICTORY AS RMIT ENDS ELBIT PARTNERSHIP Activists are celebrating the announcement by RMIT that it has ceased its research partnership with Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, which develops, tests, and provides weapons and drones to the Israeli military for use against Palestinians.
This victory comes just over a year after RMIT was targeted by BDS Australia due to its advertised partnership with Elbit Systems in the development of AI systems. In 2022, Palestine’s largest academic and tertiary union (PFUUPE), representing over 6,000 academics and staff, wrote to RMIT and urged it to suspend all collaboration with Elbit Systems. Subsequently staff and students held on-campus protests and speak-outs. RMIT did not respond to any of these representations nor to the large online petition with 2000+ signatures calling for an end to all ties with Elbit Systems.
Throughout 2023, two Melbourne activists, Shane McCartin and Mark Bradbeer, took the campaign to RMIT’s doorstep and for 8 and a half months picketed each week outside the campus. They were joined by members of Free Palestine Melbourne and Students for Palestine (Victoria) distributing information about the use of Elbit technologies in war crimes against Palestinian civilians and calling for an end to RMIT’s complicity with these crimes.
“At first, many students and staff we spoke to knew nothing about Elbit Systems or its relationship with RMIT,” said Mark Bradbeer. “It was slow work but our support grew steadily as people learned of the partnership.”
The campaign received a boost in July when high profile journalist and author Antony Loewenstein denounced the RMIT-Elbit partnership,
“If you partner, as a state or a university, with a company like Elbit, you have blood on your hands because the record of Elbit in Israel-Palestine, on the US-Mexican border and elsewhere is so damned clear”, said Lowenstein. “So RMIT needs to answer very serious questions about it, and actually feel pressure about that – a lot of pressure.”
On 19 October 80 activists associated with Students for Palestine (Victoria) marched on the RMIT campus denouncing the university for its complicity in ongoing Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip.
In response to this protest, RMIT released a statement that it no longer has any partnerships with Elbit Systems or Elbit Systems of Australia. When clarification was sought, RMIT confirmed that their planned partnership with Elbit Systems was terminated, and that they have no relationship with the company or any of its subsidiaries.
“This is a significant victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Australia,” said Hilmi Dabbagh, from BDS Australia, which partnered with Free Palestine Melbourne throughout the campaign. “Australian universities have been put on notice that they will be targeted if they partner with any Israeli company or institution complicit in human rights abuses and attacks on Palestinians.”
There is no doubt that many global companies, as part of the global structure of the economy (racial capitalism), are complicit in the genocidal war waged by Israel today against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, and some of these companies are involved in apartheid Israel’s economy to varying degrees. All peaceful popular efforts, including boycott and divestment, to hold these entities accountable for their support of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians are justified and called for.
In our work in the BDS movement, we rely on the operational principle of targeted and strategic boycotts, which means focusing on a specific number of the most complicit targets, where we have a better chance of success, to maximize our impact, rather than non-targeted boycotts. For example, the movement has called for boycotts and divestment against HP, PUMA,Elbit, among others, due to their proven involvement in apartheid and complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights.
Some companies, like Carrefour, have doubled down on their complicity by donating thousands of personal packages to the Israeli occupation army, thus directly supporting its commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Other companies, including McDonalds, Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, and Papa Johns have also made generous donations to Israel’s genocidal army. They all deserve to be boycotted and divested from, regardless of the claim that their branches in various countries are wholly or partially owned by local businesses.
The parent company is complicit for allowing its Israel branch to support an ongoing military aggression that leading scholars of genocide have described as a “textbook case of genocide.”
We encourage continued pressure on entities that support apartheid Israel and its genocidal war against our people in Gaza.
And don’t forget to #checkyour super Ask your superfund if they invest in companies linked to illegal Israeli settlements. We’ve made it easy for you to do here.
Tilda Swinton among 2000+ artists calling for Gaza ceasefire
They accuse governments of “aiding and abetting” Israel’s “war crimes” in Gaza
Palestinians face “collective punishment on an unimaginable scale”
Governments should “end their military and political support for Israel’s actions”
Renowned actors Tilda Swinton, Charles Dance, Steve Coogan, Miriam Margolyes, Peter Mullan, Maxine Peake and Khalid Abdalla are among more than two thousand people from across the arts who have signed a letter saying that: “Our governments are not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them.”
The artists, including Robert del Naja and playwrights Tanika Gupta and Abbie Spallen, condemn “every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them”.
THE LETTER IN FULL
We are witnessing a crime and a catastrophe. Israel has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, and cut off the supply of water, power, food and medicine to 2.3 million Palestinians. In the words of the UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, ‘the spectre of death’ is hanging over the territory.
Gaza is already a society of refugees and the children of refugees. Now, in their hundreds of thousands, bombarded from air, sea and land, Palestinians whose grandparents were forced out of their homes at the barrel of a gun are again being told to flee – or face collective punishment on an unimaginable scale. Dispossessed of rights, described by Israel’s minister of defence as “human animals”, they have become people to whom almost anything can be done.
Our governments are not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them. There will come a time when they are held to account for their complicity. But for now, while condemning every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them, our obligation is to do all we can to bring an end to the unprecedented cruelty being inflicted on Gaza.
We support the global movement against the destruction of Gaza and the mass displacement of the Palestinian people. We demand that our governments end their military and political support for Israel’s actions.
We call for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of Gaza’s crossings to allow humanitarian aid to enter unhindered.”
We mourn the loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives.
We call for peace with justice and an end to Israel’s occupation, apartheid and ongoing genocide;
We call on the Australian government to condemn Israeli war crimes, recognise Palestine and support the ICC investigation;
We call for immediate sanctions on Israel;
We call on Australian trade unions to impose boycotts against Israeli apartheid as they did to isolate apartheid in South Africa;
We call on all Australian organisations and entities that have investments or partnerships in Israeli companies which are complicit in Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and apartheid, to divest from such ties.
BDS Australia believes that this tragedy is wholly the result of the impunity given to Israel since 1948 by Western and other governments which have allowed Israel to constantly violate international law and impose its violent military occupation and colonisation throughout the occupied Palestinian Territories and the inhumane 16-year blockade of Gaza.
Palestinians have long called for justice in international law only to be progressively dispossessed and subject to an apartheid regime while Israel and its allies including Australia, maintained the lie of a 2-state solution.
The silence from the Australian government over Israel’s current indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, and the rapidly mounting civilian death toll and widespread destruction, continues this long and disgraceful record of double standards and gives Israel increased impunity and incentive to commit further war crimes.
This year has already seen more Palestinians killed, and more arrested and held without charge, than for three decades. The armed campaign of ethnic cleansing, led by settler militias that enjoy near-complete impunity, has intensified, with their leaders now sitting in the Israeli cabinet. The Hamas attack on Israel came in response to an incursion by these armed thugs supported by Israeli forces, into Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, with the clear aim of forcing out Muslim worshippers. It also came after increased ethnic cleansing of Palestinian rural communities and major military incursions into the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin this year.
The building of Jewish-only illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank has reached a record level this year. The entire settlement-building programme is a war crime, in breach of the unambiguous prohibition in the Fourth Geneva Convention: “An occupying power must not move any part of its population into the territory it occupies”.
Key international, Palestinian and Israeli human rights reports have shown conclusively that Israel is committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians, both grave crimes against humanity in international law. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, his government and the Opposition do not even acknowledge these findings, yet Australia as a signatory to international conventions, is obliged in law to take action to end these crimes.
Labor in 2022, went to the election with a national policy platform that committed it, once in office, to recognising Palestine as a state “as an important priority”. No progress has been made on even this modest demand.
This is significant in withholding Australia’s support for the investigation by the International Criminal Court into war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories since June 2014, when indiscriminate Israeli bombardment killed over 2,000 civilians in Gaza.
As the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: “It is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”.
Through its collusion in closing off legal, diplomatic and political pathways to justice, Australia has blood on its hands. The Palestinians have been driven, by Australia among other countries, to the last resort of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.
Oppose apartheid? Support justice for Palestinians? Don’t fund your retirement on the dispossession of Palestinians. Ask your superfund if they invest in companies linked to illegal Israeli settlements.
Send your super fund a letter and ask the question and bring it to their attention. A couple of minutes of your time may contribute towards the ultimate cessation of these crimes.
Can one member influence how a massive super fund invests its money? The answer is yes, because often investing in such corporations actually breaches the funds own rules. All you need to do is to bring it to their attention and hold them to their own policies. If you jump onto your super fund’s website, you’ll notice a section that refers to their investment policy; often with the term “responsible investing”. This refers to their investment decision criteria focusing on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors. Any investment and contribution to such corporations contradicts their publicly promoted ideals.
Send your super fund a letter and ask the question and bring it to their attention. A couple of minutes of your time may contribute towards the ultimate cessation of these crimes.
More info on our Superannuation divestment campaign: https://bdsaustralia.net.au/campaigns/superannuation-funds-divestment-campaign/ https://bdsaustralia.net.au/check-your-superfund/
All over the world, grassroots groups are committed to the rights of indigenous people to land and raw materials, to sustainability, against the exploitation of farmers, against climate colonialism and the wrong solutions to combat it.
Palestine is part of these mobilizations. Apartheid Israel has been carrying out ethnic cleansing against the native Palestinians for decades, driving them from their land, villages and farms. Israeli companies like Mekorot and Netafim steal raw materials from Palestinians and funnel them into illegal colonial settlements. These same companies gloss over their crimes by posing as companies offering sustainable “solutions” around the world, when in reality these false solutions enable the privatization of resources and exploit local communities. Other Israeli companies such as Haifa Chemicals and Adama contribute to the agrotoxic destruction .
So-called “charities” like the racist and colonial Jewish National Fund are building “parks” on the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages to hide them. And companies like Siemens and Chevron profit from the fossil gas business , which fuels Israeli apartheid and its serious violations of Palestinian rights on the one hand and the climate crisis on the other .
Companies like HD Hyundai, PUMA, AXA and Barclays claim to care about climate justice while also being complicit in apartheid against Palestinians . Climate summits like the upcoming COP28 offer these companies an opportunity to greenwash their crimes while silencing the voices of grassroots democracy.
These struggles are linked to global grassroots struggles for indigenous land rights, sustainability and against the climate catastrophe caused by corporate greed. Together we oppose the global structures of neoliberalism and colonialism and challenge the severe inequalities these structures create in our communities.
On September 4th we will host a day of action on social media to highlight the ongoing campaigns to expose Israeli greenwashing and bluewashing , including at global summits such as COP28 . Join us to present a united, progressive, grassroots front against oppression and especially against attempts to greenwash oppression everywhere.
This website is maintained by BDS Australia, which is affiliated with the coalition of Palestinian organisations that leads and supports the BDS movement and by the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a BNC member organisation.
