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1/ Our latest visual with Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance ( @az2palestine) builds on our previous work on Elbit Systems, Israel's largest weapons company. Find APSA's new report, “Facing Down Settler Colonialism: O’odham-Palestinian Struggles” here: https://bit.ly/2WQx29Z
2/ In 2014, Elbit Systems of America (a subsidiary of Israel’s Elbit Systems) was given a $145 million U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) contract to construct a network of 53 camera and radar-equipped Integrated Fixed Towers (IFTs) in Southern Arizona.
3/ Ten of Elbit’s IFTs are situated on Tohono O’odham reservation, placing this Indigenous community under round-the-clock surveillance with the same TORCH electronic system it first developed for Israel’s annexation wall.
4/ Surveillance towers also make these lands deadly for migrants. The Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants documents 3,270 people who have died trying to come to the U.S. via Arizona, a fraction of total estimated to be dead or missing in U.S.–Mexico borderlands.
5/ US Customs & Border Patrol turns surveillance tech inward, lending drones to police at Standing Rock and, more recently, flying drones over Minneapolis BLM protests “to provide live video to aid in situational awareness at the request of our federal law enforcement partners.”
