WHY MOTOROLA

http://boycottisraelnyc.org/category/goodbye-moto/472/why-motorola

Since the founding of Israel in 1948, Motorola has been involved in assisting the state in carrying out its repressive policies towards Palestinians. Motorola established Motorola Israel as its first wholly owned subsidiary outside of the United States in 1964.

Motorola Israel profits handsomely from Israel's militarism and ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands, earning over $1 billion in annual revenues in 2007. As Motorola's chief operating officer Mike Zafirovski put it: “Our investment in Israel is one of the most successful we have made”.

Motorola today enables Israeli apartheid as Motorola South Africa once enabled South African apartheid. Forty percent owned by its American parent, Motorola South Africa supplied mobile radio transmitters to the South African police. These radio transmitters helped police suppress protest against white rule. Motorola’s dealings with the apartheid regime came to an end in 1985, when Motorola sold its South African operations to South African electronic company Allied Technologies Ltd. (Altech) on the condition that the latter cease equipment sales to South African agencies. The agreement was a win for US anti-apartheid activists, who had pressured Motorola to break its ties with the South African regime and had helped to pass municipal laws, in New York and elsewhere that prohibited city governments from doing business with companies supplying equipment used to enforce apartheid in South Africa.

Motorola enables Israel’s apartheid policies and violations of international law through the development and sale of products specifically designed for and used by the Israeli Army to maintain its settlements and perpetrate war crimes in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and elsewhere. There are 3 basic categories of Motorola products that are integral to sustaining the state of Israel’s criminal policies:

Munitions and components for munitions.?
Specialized communications equipment and systems
Specialized ‘surveillance and security’ equipment and systems

1. Motorola Israel: Fuzes and Munitions**

Motorola Israel has been the leading Israeli designer and manufacturer of fuzes for bombs and guided munitions used by the Israeli military, according to a website of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. It has been the central provider of fuzes to the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and to a number of Israel’s military-industrial corporations, including Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael, which themselves design missiles and precision weapons, among other military products.

Motorola Israel’s fuzes have been used in cluster bombs, ‘bunker-buster’ bombs, and a variety of other bombs. These fuzes determine when and how certain munitions are detonated.

Cluster munitions are a notorious anti-personnel device whose export was recently banned by the US government. Each cluster bomb is composed of hundreds of exploding 'bomblets' that spray metal shrapnel over a large area. Cluster bombs also typically leave behind unexploded 'bomblets' which continue to pose a lethal threat, much like landmines, after military conflict has ended.

During the 2006 Lebanon war, Israeli forces fired some 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million bomblets, into southern Lebanon. These cluster munitions had a failure rate of 14%, and left behind at least 100,000 unexploded bomblets. The United Nations determined in 2007 that 26 percent of southern Lebanon's cultivatable land remained affected by cluster bombs.

Motorola also has made ‘proximity’ fuses which cause bombs to detonate in the air just above ground (prior to impact), producing an aerial fireball, and ‘delay’ fuses which may be timed to explode up to 48 hours after combat deployment.

Motorola Israel has exhibited its munitions products at several global defense trade expositions, among them the International Air and Space Fair 2008 and Seoul Air Show 2007.

** In April 2009, Motorola Israel sold its Government Electronics Department (GED) unit that produced fuses for the Israeli military to the Israeli company Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd., a close partner of Motorola Israel, with whom Moto Israel co-develops other technologies.

Initially, no explanation was offered in the media reports for the sale by Motorola Israel. Later, Motorola spokesman Rusty Brashear said the sale of the unit was not triggered by the protests. “We’re selling it primarily because it doesn’t fit in our portfolio,” Brashear said. “We’ve been getting out of all our military units, except for communications.”

The sale came after several groups in the U.S. had been drawing attention to Motorola Israel’s support for Israeli apartheid, and only days after the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel launched the “Boycott Moto, Boycott Apartheid” campaign.

2. Motorola Israel: Communications

In 2000 Motorola Israel acquired a $100 million dollar contract to provide a nationwide military cellular network for the Israeli Defense Forces. Code named "Mountain Rose" (vered harim in Hebrew), the system became operational in 2004. Mountain Rose is a data encrypted communications system that allows for military commanders, soldiers, and civilian leaders to communicate securely and exchange information on the move anywhere they operate.

Users of Mountain Rose enjoy secure voice communications, text messaging, and transmission of satellite and reconnaissance photography and other data on an integrated, self-contained network. In the field, commanders can link to terrestrial networks or satellite communications systems to “facilitate direct and seamless connectivity from the lowest echelon up to the national command level.” The system is installed in armored vehicles using intercom systems that eliminate the need for underlying infrastructure.

The Mountain Rose system enhances the Israeli military’s command and control capacities, and will augment and strengthen its military operations. In May 2008, the IDF announced a new, independent land force division whose sole purpose is to provide forces and supporting equipment to ongoing operations. The Mountain Rose network provides critical support to these units. As one commander noted, “Imagine taking a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) from one spot and attack weapon from someplace else, together with a video conference with people spread in various locations you'll have a network that is exploding.”

3. Motorola Israel: Surveillance

Motorola facilitates the continued presence of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank, in violation of international law, by providing Israeli forces with high-tech radar systems to “protect” these settlements from the Palestinian communities that surround them.

Operating under the pretext of security, Motorola is complicit in Israel’s rapid encroachment on Palestinian land. Surveillance devices are themselves part of the infrastructure of occupation and colonization, and are installed directly on occupied Palestinian territory with the stated intention of preventing Palestinians from “infiltrating” Israeli settlements. These mechanisms, composed of a network of radar sensors and cameras connected to a command center, enable the detection and surveillance of Palestinians on their own land from as far as 700 meters.

The creation and installation of such surveillance systems has cost at least $93 million, and likely more than this, since first being put to use in 2005 in Har Bracha settlement, near Nablus. By 2006, slightly over a year after its debut, it was in use near at least 47 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, many of which are deep in Palestinian territory and far away from the Green Line. Some settlements have received as many as 30 radar stations. The system is currently known to be in use in the Hebron region, including around the settlement of Karmei Tzur and in Hebron itself, where a handful of settlers with a history of violent attacks on Palestinians are spread throughout the city.

Motorola also currently markets a surveillance system on the above model called Stronghold, which was developed in collaboration with Aeronautics Defense Systems.

The deployment of these surveillance systems buttresses the occupation not only militarily, but also economically and in terms of Israeli law. The installation of these systems, which have high initial costs but subsequently increase surveillance while reducing manpower, is evidence that Israel has no intention of dismantling the settlements or ending its occupation of Palestinian land. Furthermore, Israeli forces have installed the surveillance systems on Palestinian land outside of the settlements with the approval of the Justice Ministry, even though they serve exclusively to continue the occupation.

The project was recently inspected by the United States government, which is considering using the Motorola-developed radar on the Mexican border.

דרג את התוכן: