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raytheon
How to Bring Gaza Home
For any city or county in the U.S., simply find your population and area, then do the math to extrapolate the impacts of the genocide based on Gaza’s population and area.
Jan 04, 2025
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, this September, I was arrested with a long time activist friend, Cliff Kindy, for blocking the entrance to a Raytheon Corp. facility. We both requested jury trials, and the dates were set for mid-December and early January. Prosecutors dropped the charges in each case, and the trials did not happen.
For my defense, I planned to bring Gaza home to jurors from Allen County, home to Fort Wayne, with wire service photos and by extrapolating the effects of the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine to their own county.
That same approach can be used for any city or county in the U.S. Simply find your population and area, then do the math based on Gaza’s population and area. The genocide statistics were published by Al Jazeera for its summary report on one year of Israel’s U.S.-funded genocide.
U.S. census figures show that Allen County’s population is 395,000—or 18% of Gaza's 2.2 million people—and its area is 660 square miles, roughly 4.5 times that of Gaza’s 144 square miles.
Here, then, is how to bring Gaza home for your city or county.
✴ Tons of Bombs Dropped
As of October 2024, Israel’s military has dropped nearly 85,000 tons of bombs—591 tons per square mile—on Gaza, far exceeding that dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined in World War II.
For Allen County the comparable number is 390,000 tons of bombs at 591 tons per square mile.
✴ Casualties
More than 43,000 Palestinian bodies, mostly of women and children, were recovered last year. Many thousands more remain buried under the rubble—reliable reports say up to 200,000. Over 97,000 have been wounded. Anesthesia is rarely available.
For Allen County the comparable numbers (18% of the above) are:
- 7,740 bodies recovered.
- 17,460 wounded.
- Up to 36,000 buried under the rubble.
- Over half are women and children.
✴ Healthcare Infrastructure and Personnel
According to the Gaza Media Office, 34 hospitals and 80 health centers have been put out of service, 162 health institutions were hit by Israeli forces, and at least 131 ambulances were hit and damaged. Israeli attacks on hospitals and the continual bombardment of Gaza have killed at least 986 medical workers including 165 doctors, 260 nurses, 184 health associates, 76 pharmacists, and 300 management and support staff.
For Allen County the comparable numbers are:
- 20 hospitals and health centers destroyed.
- 30 doctors, 47 nurses, 14 pharmacists, and 54 support staff killed.
- 24 ambulances damaged.
✴ Disease
In the past year, 75% of Gaza’s population have been infected with contagious diseases from lack of sanitation, open sewage, and inadequate hygiene. At least 10,000 cancer patients can no longer receive the necessary treatment
For Allen County the comparable numbers are:
- 296,250 people (75% of pop.) infected with diseases from lack of sanitation and open sewage.
- 379,000 people (96% of pop.) endure severe lack of food and have not had access to clean water for months.
- 79,000 face outright starvation.
- 1,800 cancer patients do not receive necessary treatment.
✴ Imprisoned
More than 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons under grave conditions with at least 250 children and 80 women among them.
For Allen County the comparable numbers are:
- 1,800 residents held in prison, 599 of them without charges.
✴ Buildings damaged and destroyed
According to the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as of January 2024, 60% of Gaza’s residential homes and 80% of all commercial facilities have been damaged or destroyed.
For Allen County the comparable numbers are:
- 100,800 houses damaged or destroyed
- 7,668 businesses damaged or destroyed
✴ After the war
When the bombing finally stops, whoever attempts to rebuild Gaza—for luxury Israeli condos or refugee housing—will be exposed to unexploded ordnance (UXO), asbestos, PCBs, and carcinogenic ingredients from the toxic soup left by exploded bombs and artillery shells.
For example, in a heavily bombed area of Vietnam, Quang Tri Province (1,832 square miles), an intensive campaign to find and destroy UXOs has eliminated over 815,000 of them—everything from 1,000-pound bombs to cluster bombs and grenades. Given the area of Gaza and the tons of bombs dropped on it, some 64,100 UXOs may lie in wait.
For Allen County the number of UXOs would be 293,7000
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As Bombs Drop, Weapons Industry Stocks Take Off
One wonders how the executives of these companies feel about their products being used for mass slaughter in Gaza and dangerous escalation in Lebanon.
Oct 04, 2024
It’s a sad but familiar spectacle — as people die at the hands of U.S. weapons in a faraway war zone, the stock prices of arms makers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin soar. A piece posted yesterday at Forbes tells the tale: “Defense Stocks Hit All-Time Highs Amidst Mideast Escalation.”
One wonders how the executives of these companies feel about their products being used for mass slaughter in Gaza and dangerous escalation in Lebanon. For the most part they’re not talking, although they are glad to occasionally inform their investors that “turbulence” and “instability” means their products will be needed in significant quantities by our “allies.”
And, not unlike the Biden administration, they tend to couch their rhetoric in terms of a “right to self-defense.” They act as if Israel’s killing of 40,000 people and displacing millions more — the vast majority of whom have absolutely nothing to do with Hamas, nor any way to influence their behavior — can somehow be white washed by calling it a defensive operation.
No one who steps outside the bankrupt world of official Washington to look at the impacts on actual human beings in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon can take the notion that U.S. weapons are being used for defense in the current Middle East war seriously.
Peter Thiel and his colleagues at Palantir are an exception to the closed mouthed approach of executives at the larger weapons companies. When asked how he felt about his company’s technology to pick targets in Gaza, he said “I'm not on top of all the details of what's going on in Israel, because my bias is to defer to Israel. It's not for us to second-guess every, everything.” And Palantir CEO Alex Karp flew the entire company board to Israel earlier this year to show solidarity with Israel’s war effort in Gaza.
At least Palantir’s leaders are honest and open about where they stand. Leaders of firms like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing that supply the weapons that have laid waste to Gaza and are now pounding Lebanon prefer to hide behind euphemisms about promoting defense, deterrence, and stability, and assisting allies.
But what about when those allies are engaged in widespread war crimes that prompted the International Court of Justice to say that Israel’s war on Gaza could plausibly be considered a genocide? Is it morally acceptable to just cash the checks and avert one’s eyes, or do the companies profiting from this grotesque humanitarian disaster have a moral responsibility for how their products are being used?
A few years ago, during the height of Saudi Arabia’s brutal invasion of Yemen — enabled by billions of dollars of U.S.- and European-origin weapons — Amnesty International probed this very point. In a report entitled “Outsourcing Responsibility,”the group provided the findings of a survey it had done of 22 arms companies, asking them “to explain how they meet their responsibilities to respect human rights under internationally recognized standards.”
Amnesty noted that "many of the companies investigated supply arms to countries accused of committing war crimes and serious human rights violations, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.” None of the companies queried provided evidence that they were doing any sort of due diligence to ensure that their weapons weren’t being used to commit war crimes or human rights abuses. Fourteen companies failed to respond at all, and of the eight that did answer Amnesty’s questions gave variations on the theme of “we just do what the government allows.”
This casts influential arms makers as innocent bystanders who await government edicts before marketing their wares. In fact, weapons manufacturers spend millions year in and year out pressing for weaker human rights strictures and quicker decisionmaking on the sale of arms to foreign clients.
The weapons merchants are right about one thing. It is going to take changes in government policy to stop the obscene trafficking of weapons of war into the world’s killing zones. That will mean breaking the web of influence that ties government policy makers, corporate executives, and many members of Congress to the continued production of weapons on a mass scale. We can’t expect a profit making entity like Lockheed Martin to regulate itself when there are billions to be made fueling conflicts large and small.
Which means the responsibility for ending the killing and the war profiteering it enables falls to the rest of us, from students calling for a ban on arming Israel to union members looking to reduce their dependency on jobs in the weapons sector to anyone who wants a foreign policy driven by what makes us safe, not what makes Palantir and Lockheed Martin rich.
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Sanders Says 'Congress Must Investigate' War Profiteering by US Military Contractors
"The greed of these companies is fleecing the American taxpayer and killing Ukrainians," said the senator.
Aug 29, 2024
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday said "there's a name for" the billions of dollars in stock buybacks and dividends that major U.S. defense contractors have doled out to their shareholders while taking taxpayer money, and it's this: "war profiteering."
Sanders, the independent from Vermont who chairs the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate, took aim at Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and RTX—formerly known as Raytheon—for taking in $255 billion in public funds since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, only to reward shareholders and executives with $52 billion via the benefits of stock buybacks and dividends.
"The greed of these companies is fleecing the American taxpayer and killing Ukrainians," said Sanders. "Congress must investigate."
Sanders reiterated his strong support for backing Ukraine as it continues to defend against Russia's incursion, but said he does not support military contractors "making huge profits on the weapons systems they produce."
With the companies increasing prices for weapons systems and equipment while showering their shareholders with payouts, he said "our taxpayers pay more than they should, and Ukraine receives less weaponry than it needs."
Following the consolidation of dozens of defense contractors into just five companies in the 1990s, the cost of weapons and supplies have risen dramatically. As CBS News reported last year, a stinger missile costs more than $400,000 at Raytheon, now the weapon's sole supplier—a seven-fold increase over its cost in 1991, even accounting for inflation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted when introducing the Stop Price Gouging the Military Act in 2022 that defense contractors "regularly charge the military excessive prices, including $71 for a pin that should have cost less than a nickel and $80 for a drain pipe segment that should have cost $1."
Sanders said the companies are price gouging "all while saying they need emergency supplemental funding to ramp up production for the war effort."
"I strongly support getting the Ukrainians what they need to defend their country," said Sanders. "What I do NOT support is the war profiteering of major defense contractors."
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