By Hugo M.

In the midst of Israel’s relentless mass destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, it is urgent to know which Australian manufactured weapons, parts and ‘defence’ systems are being used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

Federal and state governments, numerous Australian universities and Australian companies have direct ties to high profile weapons manufacturers that are aiding and profiting off the murder of Palestinians.

Government Aid to Israeli Military  

In 2022, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) ranked Australia the 15^th largest exporter of arms globally. Over the past five years, the Department of Defence has approved 350 defence export permits to Israel – including 50 this year.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) determined that these exports include “lethal technology” such as: remote weapon stations, small arms, ammunition and armoured transport equipment – “A broad range of goods and technologies such as software, radios or chemicals that have legitimate civilian and commercial applications”.

The Federal Government is supposedly obliged under the Defence Trade Controls Regulation to ensure that Australian military exports will not be used in war crimes and the Greens have been calling on the Minister and Department to reveal exactly how these exports are being used by the IDF. 

In November, three Palestinian/Australia human rights groups – Al-Haq, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – also started legal action against the government to determine to what extent Australian weapons are being used to carry out atrocities in Gaza.

In response to these calls, the Federal Government has continually denied that Australia has provided any weapons to Israel. Defence Minister Richard Marles said on November 7, “Israel has not sought any weapons from Australia, and we have not provided any”.

While Marles claims that Australia has not sent Israel any weapons directly, he certainly ignores Australia’s role in the global supply chain of weapons, as well as ‘non-weapon’ defence technologies that can ultimately prove just as lethal.

At the state level, In 2021 the Victorian Government announced a partnership with Elbit Systems, an Israeli based military company. A government press release noted Elbit Systems for its “range of specialist technology systems and products that use artificial intelligence, sensors, data and networks in the areas of defence and homeland security”.

Australian defence analyst Gregor Ferguson specified that [NMD1] “The New Centre of Excellence will build on the previous work of Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA) in digitising the Australian Army’s operations in Project LAND 200 (the Australian military’s “Digital Revolution” focussing on battle management systems and communications networks) as well as the Israeli parent company’s work on digitisation, autonomy and AI”.

When questioned by Greens MP for Brunswick Tim Read about severing ties with the company, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said that the state government “will continue to support industry because they support jobs” – the position is seemingly that our ties to a modern-day genocide are fine because it’s good for jobs and the economy.

The Premier went on to not accuse the MP of playing politics, saying, “I don’t want to accuse the member of playing politics…”. Very good to keep politics out of parliament!

Australian Universities and the IDF 

The Royal Melbourne Institute for Technology (RMIT) has had two high profile partnerships with Elbit Systems, teaming with the Centre of Excellence. In initial press, Elbit Systems played up the how this would be fruitful for creating solutions to natural disasters, referencing devastating bushfires and floods in Australia.

While their partnerships were always relatively temporary (two-year programs), it should be seen as a success for the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement that RMIT no longer has ties to Elbit Systems.

Just as the federal government states that Australia does not “directly send weapons” to Israel, the recent RMIT University statement mentions that the university “does not design, develop or manufacture weapons or munitions”.

However, they did work building upon Elbit Systems AI capabilities: high-tech systems that are now being used to maximise the IDF’s genocidal campaign. A +972 investigation found that the IDF has an AI system that “can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible [which,] as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory””.

Will RMIT ever reveal the extent to which the university’s Elbit Systems partnerships worked on military uses of AI and can it confirm that such work is not currently facilitating war crimes? Not developing weapons or not directly sending complete weapons is not enough to prove no Australian culpability in Gaza. 

Since 2016, the University of Melbourne has had a multi-million-dollar research partnership with Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest weapons manufacturer and prominent supplier to the IDF. A press release from the University at the time stated that Lockheed Martin had an initial investment of 13 million dollars in its first research centre outside of the United States.

Again, similar to RMIT, there was an attempt at ‘greenwashing’ this partnership in initial press – the University works with Lockheed on CO2 monitoring, how nice!

In video captured by UniMelb for Palestine, Vice Chancellor Duncan Maskell said that this 13-million-dollar partnership was not true but refused to elaborate. As a result of increased pressure from students, the University has since updated its initial press release from 2016, clarifying that the 13 million dollars from Lockheed Martin was investment into its own centre, and the University has ‘only’ received 3.5 million dollars from Lockheed Martin.

The University states that the lab is “off campus [but] proximal to the University’s engineering and science innovation precinct”. It is believed that the recently built Melbourne Connect building houses the Lockheed Martin STELaRLab (Science, Technology, Engineering, Leadership and Research Laboratory).

Many locations in this building and the general precinct are considered to be part of the Melbourne University Parkville campus, though it is not solely a Melbourne University building (it is “powered by The University of Melbourne in partnership with a consortium led by Lendlease”). UniMelb for Palestine has recently protested outside this building, demanding “No blood on our degrees!”.

When approached by UniMelb for Palestine organising member Dana Alshaer, vice chancellor Maskell argued that the partnership was acceptable because even though Lockheed Martin supplies Israel with weapons, it also supplies weapons to Ukraine – “are you okay with Ukraine not being able to defend itself?”

He has expressed annoyance at the campaign to get the University to cut ties with the biggest weapons manufacturer in the world.

Finally, the University of Sydney has partnerships with Honeywell, an American company involved in the defence sector, and with French defence company Thales. Honeywell and Thales both have connections to the IDF.

In 2018, a University of Sydney spokeswoman defended these controversial partnerships in a Triple J Hack report, once again deploying a type of greenwashing when stating “arms manufacturing accounts for 10 per cent of Honeywell’s wide-ranging activities while 45 per cent of Honeywell’s revenue comes from climate solutions”.

Australia’s role in the globalised production of weapons

When we demand that the Australian government and Australian universities reveal their connections to the IDF’s war crimes, this should not just be limited to fully Australian made weapons – it has to take into account Australia’s role in the globalised production of weapons.

Recent reporting in Declassified Australia reveals that Australia is deeply intertwined in the global supply chain for F-35 fighter jets, a Lockheed Martin product that is sold by the United States to Israel and used by the IDF in Gaza. Australian journalist and author Anthony Loewenstein argues that Palestine is essentially a “laboratory” for the military exploits of the imperialist nations.

More than 70 Australian companies are involved in producing essential parts of these fighter jets; Melbourne based Rosebank Engineering (RUAG Australia) produces the “‘uplock actuators’ that open and close the weapons bay doors to drop its payload”. Meanwhile the Brisbane based Ferra Engineering website boasts about its role in the supply chain for the ‘biggest and best’ weapons manufacturers – Lockheed Martin, Thales, Northrop Grumman, Boeing.

The 15 biggest Australian companies involved in F-35 production – as highlighted by the Department of Defence in 2018 – are: AW Bell, BAE Systems Australia, Ferra Engineering, GKN, Heat Treatment Australia, KBR, Levett Engineering, Lovitt Technologies Australia, Marand, Quickstep, Rockwell Collins Australia, RUAG Australia, TAE Aerospace, Varley Group, Western Australia Specialty Alloys.

NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge questioned Foreign Minister Penny Wong about Australia’s contribution to these jets and how they are used in Gaza; Wong did not directly respond but instead reaffirmed that:

“Australia has not supplied weapons to Israel since the Hamas-Israel conflict began and … that has been the case for at least the last five years”.

Similar to Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, the Foreign Minister then attacked Senator Shoebridge for “trying to make this a political issue in here” – too true, we wouldn’t want political issues discussed by politicians in parliament. 

The discussion was promptly ended and minutes later Wong went on to praise the “jobs and economic investment for years to come” that the AUKUS deal is going to provide. When it comes to weapons, both federal and state governments seem exclusively concerned with the jobs they’ll create and not how they might be used!

The Fight to End Australia’s Support for Israel

There has been considerable traction gained for the BDS movement recently aimed at cutting any Australian ties to the IDF’s genocidal operations, but not without pushback.

The New South Wales (NSW) state government criticised the “Block the Boat” protest movement aimed at stopping trade with Israel, with Premier Chris Minns calling out the protestors for not getting “down [to] the port when it comes to trading with Cuba…” – perhaps because Cuba is not currently carrying out an ethnic cleansing of an occupied territory.

Melbourne University students have adopted a variety of tactics to put pressure on the University to axe its Lockheed ties, but the University has moved to silence students, including kicking students out of their graduation ceremonies and erasing graduation footage of students showing solidarity with Palestine. Organisers in Melbourne’s Southeast are putting pressure on local manufacturers to cut ties.

While Australian companies operate in the shadows with little to no public awareness, Australian universities and multiple levels of government are constantly employing the same tactics to make excuses for our deep ties to international weapons manufacturing and obfuscate the extent of Australia’s complicity in the constant atrocities unfolding each day in Gaza and Palestine.