Photo: Maen Hammad
In mid-November, four young women will start two-month jail sentences for an action attempting to halt operations last November at a weapons factory in Merrimack, New Hampshire, operated by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.
It could have been far worse for the Merrimack 4, as the women are called by fellow activists. New Hampshire prosecutors had originally charged them with multiple felonies carrying sentences up to 37 years — an extreme overreach given that the defendants were alleged to have engaged in trespass and minor property damage at the facility.
After a drawn out process, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office eventually dropped the felony charges and the co-defendants pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief and criminal trespass. Alongside jail time, they received a 24-month suspended sentence and a stay-away order from every Elbit Systems facility, including 6 factories.
The Merrimack 4 are not worried about 60 days in jail. Or, as two of them told me, they keep their situation in perspective.
“I’ve talked with friends from Palestine who’ve been arrested and interrogated and tortured in prisons,” said Calla Walsh, 20, a co-founder of Palestine Action U.S. She contrasted her own sentence with the Israeli practice of detaining Palestinians indefinitely in “administrative detention” without trial: “At least we know how long we’ll be in for.”
The activists’ concern, rather, is that the wrong lessons will be taken from their cases. What they don’t want is for movement participants to look at their sentences and shy away from escalation and direct action. There remains, they said, an urgent need to shut down the production and circulation of arms deployed in the ongoing atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon.
The action in November last year, less than two months after Israel’s war on Gaza started, was part of a campaign, under the banner of Palestine Action U.S., where autonomous groups around the country targeted Elbit for demonstrations. In Merrimack, activists blockaded the road leading to the Elbit facility, threw red paint on the building’s facade, broke several windows, and released green, white, and red smoke flares from the roof — Palestine’s national colors.
“Our action has only become understood as more logical and reasonable and righteous.”
“I think our action, when it happened, was seen as illogical and dangerous. And the more that the genocide has gone on and the more that the movement in the U.S. has grown in militancy, especially with the student encampments,” said Walsh, “I think our action has only become understood as more logical and reasonable and righteous, while also acknowledging we did not engage in these tactics perfectly.”
“We don’t want anyone to replicate what we did,” Walsh told me. “We want them to learn from it and whatever they’re going to do, do it more effectively than us.”
Rupturing Supply Chains
Questions of strategy and tactics hang heavily over a movement that, a year into Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide, is run through with desperation. Efforts like the “Uncommitted” movement to put pressure on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign have, while impressive in garnering numbers, extracted no concessions from the Democratic nominee.
Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses, although powerful in their politicizing and radicalizing effects, were swept away with violent police raids, with participants facing unprecedented campus repression.
Countless mass marches, boycotts, and open letters calling for a ceasefire and an end to U.S. complicity have been met with silence, if not outright disdain. Money and arms continue to flow, without conditions, to Israel’s expansionist campaign.
It is only reasonable that activists would search for ways to directly rupture the supply chains on which Israel’s war machine runs.
Paige Belanger, 33, an herbalist and co-founder of Palestine Action U.S. One of the members of the Merrimack 4 expressed their views on the response in the United States, criticizing the emphasis on nonviolent protests that they deemed ineffective in bringing about change. They believed that direct action was necessary to challenge the importation of weapons into Israel for the purpose of committing atrocities against Palestinians.
The founders of Palestine Action U.S., including Belanger, emphasized the need for escalation and direct action to challenge what they saw as fascist morality. They believed that peaceful protests were not enough to create meaningful change in the world.
Palestine Action U.K. had already been active in dismantling Israel’s weapons trade, leading to successes such as the closure of Elbit facilities in various locations. In the U.S., protests at Elbit’s offices forced the company to end its lease in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
However, the activists faced risks, with some being jailed for their actions. The FBI opened an investigation into Palestine Action U.S., despite it being a decentralized movement.
The closure of weapons facilities may seem like small victories in the face of ongoing genocide and profits for companies like Elbit. The movement faces opposition and demonization, with prosecutorial overreach being a common challenge.
Despite these obstacles, the activists saw their reduced charges and jail time as a victory. They emphasized the importance of continuing their efforts to challenge the Israeli assault on Palestinian and Lebanese people through direct action.
Overall, the article highlights the need for more militant direct action in the Palestine solidarity movement and the importance of pushing boundaries to create change. Please rewrite this sentence for me.
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