When
Where
Why
Stop Arming Israel!
Blockade the harms dealers who are making a killing from genocide!
On Tuesday December 5th join the people of Bendigo at the gates of the Thales weapons factory in Finn St. It's time to shut this factory down.
What to bring: Food, water and songs to share. Picnic rugs and cushions and shade structures for comfort. Your friends, workmates, parents and kids. Wheelbarrows, trolleys, ladders and other gardening gear. (Don't bring tools that that could be construed as weapons!) Music equipment and instruments, toys and games. We are here for at least a day, maybe more.
What to expect: a peaceful exercise of our right to protest, our right to peace and our solidarity with the people being harmed by Australian made weapons right now.
Thales is a multi-billion $$ French weapons maker, currently partnering with Israeli companies ELBIT and Israeli Aerospace Industries. Thales and ELBIT own UAV Tactical, making killer drones for export and for use in the UK and Israel. The Thales / IAI partnership has produced the 'Sea Serpent', a surface-to-surface guided missile with a kill range of 200 kilometres. Thales is one of the richest weapons corporations in the world and they are manufacturing weapons and surveillance technology right here in Victoria.
The Thales factory in Bendigo produces the Bushmaster weaponised vehicles, which they sell to the notorious Indonesian special forces KOPASSUS. Australia has signed 50 export licenses to Israel just in 2023. Are weapons made in Bendigo being used in Palestine?
Thales, ELBIT and IAI are in the business of genocide. Their profits are our losses. Maiming and killing the people of Gaza is their product. Dispossession and displacement are their bottom line. War crimes start in corporate boardrooms, in the offices of Thales and other harms dealers. We are joining the people of Bendigo to tell Thales to retool. Make wheelbarrows not warheads. Drop seeds not bombs. Grow forests not profits.