Bay Area Health Care Workers Protest Arms Sales To Israel

“We stand against the destruction of any health care facility, any hospital, the killing of any doctor, any nurse,” said Jess Ghannam, a Palestinian American clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF who has worked in Gaza for decades.

By Nik Altenberg, KQED

Bay Area health care workers rallied outside the San Leandro facility of military contractor L3Harris on Wednesday. About 200 nurses, pediatricians, psychiatrists and other doctors and activists gathered to protest what they call “war profiteering” by the company, which has provided surveillance technologies to Israel for years and whose components are used in missiles, warplanes and tanks.

“We are here today in front of L3Harris because we know with certainty that they are complicit in mass civilian casualties,” said Dr. Nida Bajwa, a family medicine doctor at San Francisco General Hospital.

Protesters pointed to “joint direct attack munitions,” or JDAMs, which Boeing manufactures with components from L3Harris. In a December report from Amnesty International, these weapons were linked to “two deadly, unlawful air strikes on homes full of civilians” in Gaza on Oct. 10 and Oct. 22 that killed 43 people, including 19 children.

Joint direct attack munitions are essentially an upgrade that converts unguided “dumb” bombs into precision-guided “smart” bombs. Protesters said this technology is being used to target hospitals and other vital civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.