Elbit Systems is shutting down its facility in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, had been operating a business called Logos Technologies, which produced aerial surveillance equipment for ICE, Border Patrol, the U.S. military, and various police departments.
Since early 2025, the local group Triangle BDS has targeted the American Asset Corporation, a real estate company that owns the building from which Elbit was operating. Actions included protests, call-in days, community meetings, and the distribution of flyers at locations also owned by American Asset Corporation.
“A simple tactic that really seemed to bother them was flyering the cars at a mall they own,” one activist with the campaign told Mondoweiss.
On October 30, an official from American Asset Corporation informed activists that Elbit had closed the location. Two months later, the protesters were allowed to tour the site and confirmed that the offices had been vacated.
Triangle BDS drew inspiration from activists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who pushed Elbit out of the city in 2024.
“We will not consider ourselves victorious until Elbit Systems is dismantled and until Palestine is liberated,” said BDS Boston in a statement at the time.
Throughout the winter, Boston-area activists have targeted Capital One Bank locations for maintaining loan and credit lines with Elbit.
Triangle BDS says it will continue to organize locally. In recent weeks, they have protested a General Dynamics executive who lives in the area.
“While shutting down this Elbit facility is a major win, we won’t stop taking action until Palestine is Free, ICE is abolished, and ALL Genociders in Raleigh / Durham are shut down,” declared the group in an Instagram post.
“We must dismantle every organization and system that enables the production and delivery of weapons to the Zionist state, whether through shipping, data infrastructure, logistics, or any other contribution along the weapons supply chain,” said local organizer and Palestinian Youth Movement Network member Samira Haddad.
Stanford Case
The trial of five Stanford University students facing felony charges over a pro-Palestinian campus protest kicked off this week.
The students were part of a 12-person group who were charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism after barricading themselves in the school president’s office in June of 2024.
That action came amid widespread protests over the genocide in Gaza. Like many students across the country, the Stanford group was demanding that their university divest from Israel.
Stanford had originally suspended the students, allowing them to return to campus during the duration of their ban, but Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen pressed criminal charges against the individuals in April 2025.
One of the students involved in the action cooperated with prosecutors to avoid indictment, while six others accepted pre-trial deals. The remaining five are pleading not guilty.
“It is ridiculous for me or for any of us co-defendants to be accused of property damage,” German Gonzalez, one of the co-defendants, told The Guardian. “This is all just a distraction from the very real property destruction and crimes that are occurring in Gaza every day because of Stanford University’s investments and actions.”
The Mercury News reports that jury selection “grew tense” on the first day of trial, as the attorneys “sparred” over whether prospective jurors could be asked about Israel and Palestine.
Rosen argued that discussion of the issue could “poison” the jury pool. Pre-trial questionnaires showed that 26 potential jurors said they couldn’t be fair or impartial on the issue. One said his family faced ethnic cleansing at the hands of Israel, while another accused the country of genocide.
Further Reading
- Stunning Victories and Rising Repression: a look back at the global student movement for Palestine in 2025
- The last Columbia student protester in ICE detention: Leqaa Kordia on her 9 months in captivity
- New York Times: Israel’s Stinging Retort to Mamdani Was Meant as Retaliation in Kind
- Politico: Mamdani defends eliminating executive orders on antisemitism, boycotting Israel
- The Guardian: A top DOJ official trained Pam Bondi on ethics rules in the department. Then he was fired
- Jewish Insider: Outgoing Virginia AG reminds schools of obligation to adopt IHRA antisemitism definition
Re Elbit: the larger question is if a corporation can be complicit in war crimes and, if so, can it be held accountable? I gather the law is murky on this point ( legal experts can weight in ), but Sweden is trying to find out – this may have implications for Elbit and other companies. If this topic interests you then this editorial by M Gessen is must-read:
Can a Corporation Be Complicit in War Crimes? Sweden Is Trying to Find Out.….At the end of the 1990s, a Swedish company called Lundin Oil started drilling in a war-torn region of what was then Sudan….Two former executives of the company, which has since been renamed and reconfigured, are now defendants in the longest criminal trial in Swedish history; it began in September 2023 and is expected to continue through next May. They stand accused of complicity in war crimes….In 1963, when Hannah Arendt, in dispatches from Jerusalem, described “the banality of evil,” she was widely misunderstood as trivializing the crimes of which the Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann was convicted. In reality, she was describing the ease with which some people go along with hideous crimes. Not driven by deep conviction or rage, they simply don’t bother to think about the monstrous consequences of their actions…..Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied territories, has prominently advocated holding corporations responsible for enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza.
Opinion | Can a Corporation Be Complicit in War Crimes? Sweden Is Trying to Find Out. – The New York Times