🇨🇦 🇵🇸 REPORT | Hundreds of Canadians, in what organizers described as a “people’s arms embargo,” took to the streets across the country on Thursday, to put suppliers for notorious Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems on notice: divest or face sustained public pressure. Activists with the Arms Embargo Now coalition picketed and leafletted outside industrial facilities from British Columbia to Newfoundland, targeting more than 40 companies identified as suppliers, manufacturers, or logistics partners connected to Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons firm, and one that boasts of battle-testing its products in Gaza. They also launched a pressure campaign aimed at senior executives at dozens of the targeted companies, flooding them with emails. The message: Cut ties with Elbit now. One target is TTM Technologies in Ontario, which has shipped millions of dollars’ worth of circuit boards to Elbit for use in precision-strike munitions. “Providing circuit boards for Elbit’s Lizard laser-guidance kits isn’t some distant or neutral business relationship,” says Haneen Ismail, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement and Arms Embargo Now. “A company like Elbit is a dedicated war machine, but many of its suppliers in Canada operate largely outside of public scrutiny while providing the components and technology it relies on. We are ending that anonymity.” The movement has already seen significant victories. Last week, Montreal-based Elbit supplier Apollo Microwaves ended its contracts with the company after organizers with Arms Embargo Now pressed it to do so. And after campaigners targeted Scotiabank, Canada’s third-largest commercial bank and once Elbit’s largest foreign shareholder, it pulled its $500 million investment earlier this year. Elbit’s CEO later complained to the Israeli press that the divestment was the work of the damned Canadian public. ▪️By Christopher Ketcham (@cketchamwild) for Drop Site News