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elbit systems
North Dakota’s Drone Contracts Link The State to Genocide
Ultimately, we do not want a drone company that manufactures weapons that commit war crimes to operate in North Dakota.
Apr 10, 2025
Correction: An earlier version of this article said that the Hermes 450 can carry and deploy up to two medium-range missiles. It has been updated to reflect the fact that it can actually carry four.
Recently, Aviation International published a conversation between the Department of Commerce Commissioner of North Dakota and a director at Thales group. The article, titled “North Dakota: The Silicon Valley of Drone Innovation,” makes the case that North Dakota is the go-to state for drone technology.
North Dakota’s strong ties with the drone industry formed a few years ago, with the state’s goal of transforming the state into ground zero for drone technology. By taking advantage of the state, its resources, and its people, the mission to turn North Dakota into a silicon valley for drones has already produced a vast network of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technological hubs. However, in doing so it has also entangled North Dakotans into a deep relationship with Elbit Systems of America, a subsidiary of the Israeli company. This relationship is not comprehensively understood by North Dakotans nor our lawmakers.
Vantis is an aerospace company founded in North Dakota with an investment from the state five years ago. It helps facilitate commercial and private drone use by “utilizing North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) towers to deploy radars and other network technology around the state, lowering development costs by utilizing existing infrastructure.” Drone technology also helps monitor flooding, which is an issue in North Dakota on an annual basis. Thus, Vantis isn’t inherently a poor investment, and investing in drone technology for farming and environmental reasons isn’t necessarily a bad idea. However, three years ago, Vantis partnered with Thales, the 11th-largest weapons manufacturer in the world. Thales has long partnered with Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems to develop drone technology for various militaries around the world. Since this initial investment by the state of North Dakota into UAS, the state’s relationship with Elbit Systems started to cement itself as well.
North Dakota’s evolving relationship with drone technology presents both significant opportunities and serious ethical concerns.
In 2016, a researcher at North Dakota State University launched an initiative to bring an Elbit drone to help with agricultural research. The project was funded by North Dakota and Elbit Systems, which planned on selling the imagery from the research. The idea was that using a larger drone, the Hermes 450, would be a more cost-effective way to use drone technology for farming. But the Hermes drone isn’t just for farming; it’s also one of Elbit’s most deployed weapons by the Israeli army in Gaza. It’s been used to surveil and target Palestinians ever since it joined the Israeli air force fleet. It can carry and deploy up to four medium-range missiles. When the conversation about slaughtered civilians in Gaza comes up, many point fingers at the weapons giant Elbit.
On February 7, CODEPINK North Dakota visited our legislators in Bismarck to talk to them about Elbit. We sought clarity regarding the extent of the collaboration between North Dakota and Elbit Systems as North Dakotans concerned about our complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. What we learned was that our legislators knew—at best—about as much as we did or—at worst, and most commonly—nothing at all. State Sen. Bob Paulson (R-3) admitted to not knowing anything about Elbit Systems.
We delineated North Dakota’s disturbing relationship to Elbit—highlighting the atrocities that Elbit’s drones, particularly the Hermes 450, have been used to commit. One such atrocity was the well-documented attack on the World Central Kitchen in April 2024—widely considered to be a flagrant war crime under international law. However, Sen. Paulson denied the magnitude of Israel’s atrocities, dismissing our concerns and minimizing Israel’s responsibility with statements like: “That’s just war.” He also regurgitated Israeli propaganda, parroting the claim that Hamas uses “human shields” and put “babies in ovens” on October 7, 2023. We had to repeatedly rein in our conversation to get back to our main concern: Elbit Systems operations in North Dakota.
Our secondary concern was HB 1038, a bill to allocate $15 million in funding for the replacement of Chinese drones used by North Dakota state agencies and public institutions. Our worry is that, if passed, this bill could open up another avenue for North Dakota to deepen its relationship with Elbit Systems. We met with several other legislators over the course of the day. Some, like Sen. Randy Burckhard (R-5), were adamant that China “is out to get us,” while others, like Sen. Kathy Hogan (D-21) and Rep. Gretchen Dobervich (D-11), were far more sympathetic to our cause.
Ultimately, we do not want a drone company that manufactures weapons that commit war crimes to operate in North Dakota.
Northern Plains UAS Test Site (NPUASTS) in Grand Forks has voiced concerns about how overreliance on foreign technology could lead to disruptions if geopolitical tensions escalate. Geospatial data collected by a North Dakota drone could be hacked into and leveraged by foreign adversaries for intelligence or even used to disrupt infrastructure. If North Dakota is indeed worried about data from our UAS being hacked by a foreign adversary as a result of geopolitical tensions in the region of the technology’s origin, then we should be especially wary of sourcing our UAS from Israel.
Thankfully, HB 1038 was divided up into two separate parts in the North Dakota Senate. One part, “Division A,” included the allocation of $15 million to replace Chinese drones in North Dakota agencies and institutions. “Division B” had more to do with implementing a data management program, including an $11 million allocation to enable Vantis to ensure that data collected in North Dakota remains under state control. Division A ultimately failed in the Senate, whereas Division B passed and was signed into law by Gov. Kelly Armstrong on February 24, 2025.
Yet the reality remains. North Dakota’s evolving relationship with drone technology presents both significant opportunities and serious ethical concerns. While the state’s investment in UAS has the potential to enhance agricultural and environmental monitoring, it also links North Dakota with Elbit Systems, a company directly responsible for war crimes. The lack of transparency and awareness among state legislators about this relationship highlights the need for more informed discussions on the role of foreign technology in our state.
North Dakotans should consider the ethical implications of its partnerships and ensure that state resources are not connected to companies that are blowing up innocent men, women, and children, thereby making taxpayers complicit in such war crimes.
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Netanyahu Was Right: Israel Acts Like a US Aircraft Carrier
That is how Israel, as a military colony, serves its imperial master.
Mar 03, 2024
Although it may seem puzzling why the United States supports and provides cover for Israel’s most outrageously authoritarian, lawless, and even brutal actions, the reason is hiding in plain sight. It is not, as many speculate, primarily because of AIPAC. It is because Israel is a military colony of the United States.
From its inception, Zionism viewed a Jewish state as the handmaiden of colonialism. The founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, described his proposed Jewish state in his 1896 book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) as “a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” (Astute readers will find echoes of this racism in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent justifications for Israel’s conduct in Gaza; one can decide for oneself if the echo is intentional.)
Some argue that Zionism was not a colonial project because Jews had lived in Palestine for thousands of years. This ignores the fact that the Jews who had been living in Palestine for the nearly 2,000 years prior to the European Zionist intrusion into Palestine often were at least as loyal to their Palestinian identity as to the incoming Zionist colonizers.
In the two current wars being fought with American weapons but without congressional appropriations for those weapons, only one state is running out of ammunition.
In 1947, the United Nations—controlled by European colonial powers such as France and England and their ally, the United States—voted to create a Jewish state. The new state was surrounded by victims of European colonialism: Jordan, which became independent from Britain in 1946; Syria and Lebanon, which became independent from France in 1946 and 1941, respectively; and Egypt, which did not become independent from Britain until 1952. In 1956, when Egypt dared to declare itself the owner of the Suez Canal, which ran entirely through Egyptian territory, Israel joined its colonial sponsors France and England in making war on a country which had been a former colony of both, fulfilling Zionism’s promise to be “a wall of defense.”
U.S. military aid to Israel was almost never more than about $13 million annually until after the Six-Day War and,in the early 1970s exploded into the hundreds of millions and then multiple billions of dollars. Almost all of the aid had to be spent on weaponry from U.S. defense manufacturers. In an era when the U.S. dared not engage directly with the Soviet Union, Israel made war on Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, pitting U.S. advanced military hardware against Soviet hardware. This made Israel the only actor who could use American weapons against Russian weapons without risk of provoking world war, essential for testing American weapons under battlefield conditions.
Israel also developed its own defense industry, specializing in selling arms to dictators that U.S. presidents wanted to support but could not. The Guatemalan Army used Israeli weapons and training from Israeli advisers to carry out its genocide against its Indigenous Mayan population in the 1980s. Guatemalan rightists called it “Palestinianization.”
By the mid-1980s, just about everyone in the world except then-President Ronald Reagan and Israel had cut military relationships with apartheid South Africa. U.S. aid stopped when Congress overrode Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. But Israeli aid only stopped when the U.S. threatened to end military aid to Israel.
Today, with interstate warfare increasingly rare, the real need of power elites is to control civilian populations. Israel is a major exporter of civilian control weaponry. According to Eran Efrati, speaking on behalf of the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence at a private home in Albuquerque on February 6, 2014, highly trained, Arabic-speaking Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers (“musta’ribeen”) infiltrate peaceful Palestinian demonstrations to provoke violence. IDF troops then deploy multiple types of tear gas or weapons to see which works best. After the IDF reports the results, these products are marketed internationally as “battle-tested”—including to American police.
The chickens are roosting here. Israeli technology is turning the U.S. into a surveilled state. Israeli defense manufacturer Elbit Systems sells so much advanced surveillance technology for use at our southern border that Elbit has opened a subsidiary in El Paso. But this goes beyond desperate immigrants: A network of surveillance cameras modeled on Israeli technology blankets Atlanta, making it virtually impossible to go anywhere or do anything in the city without being seen and watched by an unblinking eye.
NSO Group, a private Israeli company, developed Pegasus, a software that, once introduced into a cellphone, makes every bit of data inside the phone available to the software operator. Unlike most of the malware we all receive, no click is necessary. License to use the software can only be sold with Israeli government approval. Who gets to buy a license? Dictators around the world have it. The Saudi government installed it on the phone of the fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents. FBI Director Christopher Wray has admitted to Congress that, yes, the FBI has purchased Pegasus but would never use it. How’s your cellphone?
Finally, in the two current wars being fought with American weapons but without congressional appropriations for those weapons, only one state is running out of ammunition. Unlike Ukraine, Israel has no shortage of bombs or ammo. Given the scale of the devastation visited upon Gaza, how is this possible?
The United States used its military colony to cache billions of dollars’ worth of munitions, ready for deployment against any real or perceived enemy of the U.S. As an unforeseen “benefit,” President Joe Biden has been able to release those bombs and bullets to Israel without a congressional appropriation. Now, in addition to vetoes at the U.N., Israel is being serviced with tangibly destructive assets. The restocking costs will no doubt be buried in next year’s trillion dollar defense appropriation.
It is no accident that on July 3, 2017, standing aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, Benjamin Netanyahu likened Israel to a mighty American aircraft carrier. That is how Israel, as a military colony, serves its imperial master. America repays its military colony, Israel, in kind.
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'Stop Arming Israel': Protesters Target Weapons Makers Supplying the Gaza Bombardment
"People are rising up to shut down the production of weaponry destined for use in Israel's ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people," Palestine Action said.
Oct 27, 2023
Protesters with Palestine Action on Thursday disrupted three different weapons factories in the U.K. that send arms to Israel as the country continues its siege and bombardment of Gaza that has killed thousands of people and prompted warnings of genocide.
In the largest gathering, more than 100 people blockaded both entrances to the Instro Precision factory in Sandwich, Kent, which is owned by Israel's largest arms company Elbit Systems. Elbit has also been targeted by activists in the U.S. since Israel began its latest assault on Gaza following an October 7 attack by Hamas.
"Across the country, people are rising up to shut down the production of weaponry destined for use in Israel's ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people," Palestine Action wrote on Instagram.
In a statement Thursday, Palestine Action said that its activists forced the closure of the plant, which "specializes in military-grade electro-optical equipment for target location." Instro Precision has licenses to export ML5b surveillance/target acquisition systems, in particular the XACT th64 sights. Palestine Action said that the plant had sold thousands of these systems to Israel, which are likely used by snipers surrounding Gaza. In addition, it makes components for military ground vehicles and other military electronic equipment.
The protesters carried signs reading "Workers for a free Palestine," "Stop arming Israel," and "U.K. funds genocide," according Palestine Action and EuroNews.
"Free, free Palestine!" and "In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians," participants chanted.
Also on Thursday, a single demonstrator locked themselves to the entrance of the UAV Tactical Systems (U-TacS) military drone factory in Leicester, co-owned by Elbit Systems and the French weapons maker Thales.
The factory most likely makes Hermes drone components for Israel, Palestine Action said. Israel has used the Hermes 900 and 450 drones in previous bombing campaigns against Gaza.
"Either dropping explosive payloads for bombing strikes, in the case of the Hermes 900, or by providing targeting for guided missile strikes in the case of the 450, these drones are responsible for vast numbers of Palestinians killed and are certain to be playing a role in the current genocidal terrorism being committed by the Israeli military," Palestine Action wrote.
In a final action in Leicester, a group of activists climbed onto the roof of Howmet Fastening Systems, which makes components for Israeli F-35s that have been used "extensively" in airstrikes over Gaza in the last weeks. The demonstrators used sledgehammers to attempt to disarm the factory.
"These actions represent the strength in numbers of those willing and ready to take direct action to shut down the Israeli war machine—while our politicians and media rally behind Israel's criminality, the grassroots movement against Israel's war machine sees people power as the only way to stand against genocide," Palestine Action said.
The push to target Elbit Systems for its role in arming Israel extends beyond the U.K. On October 19, the U.S. branch of Palestine Action announced a campaign to "shut Elbit down." The group first targeted Elbit's Innovation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 12, blocking the entrance and coating it in red paint.
Activists returned later that evening to cover the building in graffiti reading, "Elbit Profits From Genocide" and "War Criminals Work Here." Three days later, someone smashed scanners that enable access to the building and covered it with more red paint and graffiti reading, "Gaza Resists" and "Elbit Arms Genocide."
Elbit makes several weapons for Israel including bullets, tear gas, and 85% of the drones used by the Israeli army.
"Solidarity with Palestine mandates that we expose Elbit Systems and all weapons developers as manufacturers of genocide," Palestine Action U.S. said. "Solidarity with Palestine mandates that we take direct action until Elbit can no longer 'innovate' its instruments of surveillance, oppression, and terror from within our communities."
The group is calling on those who don't live near an Elbit location to call its Cambridge tenants and landlords to tell them how they feel about its presence.
Meanwhile, in Roanoke, Virginia, Appalachians Against Pipelines held a rally outside of an Elbit location Friday morning.
"Living in the belly of the empire means we have a duty to intervene as the United States funds and arms genocide," one participant said. "We must continually rise up and fight back until Palestine is free!"
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