Stop Bombing Hospitals: Genocide Manufactured in the Bay

San Leandro, CA: A coalition of over 100 healthcare workers, San Leandro residents, and Bay Area allies protested L3Harris, a local manufacturer responsible for developing weapons technology that has targeted medical workers and infrastructure in Gaza. After 110 days of Israel’s bombardment in Gaza, over 300 medical workers killed, healthcare workers rallied to demand an end to the systematic targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers in Gaza, put this local war profiteer on notice, and disrupt work at this site.

The Bay Area is one of the major hubs of the United States war machine. Weapons manufacturers like L3Harris are hiding in plain sight of our neighborhoods, hospitals, and schools. L3Harris’ Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) guided bomb technology, co-developed with Boeing, enables Israel’s military to precisely target and further devastate vital Palestinian infrastructure.

“Hospitals are being bombed and health care workers are being killed in Gaza because L3Harris is developing the technology to make Israeli bombs more precise,” said Dr. Jess Ghannam, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, who has worked in Gaza for over 25 years. “L3Harris is complicit in the crimes against humanity and genocide in Palestine.”

L3Harris is the ninth largest military contractor in the world. It works with some of the biggest names in the arms industry, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to make their bombs and warplanes even more lethal. L3Harris is a $17B company, largely funded by state and federal contracts, employing over 45,000 people. San Leandro’s L3Harris facility, established in 2022, manufactures components for Boeing bombs sent by the U.S. to Israel.

“When the bombs dropped on Gazan hospitals, ambulances, homes, schools, refugee camps, universities, libraries, stores and bakeries, are made and engineered to their most destructive capacities right here in our backyard, we as healthcare workers realize there is much less distance than the geographical 7,000 miles between the Bay Area and Gaza, and are called to demand an end to our complicity,” said Dr. Nida Bajwa, a family medicine resident doctor at San Francisco General Hospital.

“L3Harris is just as guilty in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Gaza as the people dropping the bombs themselves,” said Maisa Morrar, a physician assistant and San Leandro resident. “As healthcare workers it is our duty to stand for injustice especially when that injustice is manufactured in our backyards.”

After 110 days, Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip has killed at least 25,000 and destroyed over 70% of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure, including hospitals, homes, and schools. According to the World Health Organization, 36 hospitals are no longer working, and 15 are partially functioning while operating at up to three times their capacity, without fuel or medical supplies.

Today’s protest underscores the commitment from healthcare workers, residents, and people of conscience to work locally in ending the U.S.’s role in the genocide of the Palestinian people. The Bay Area joins millions across the world calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, a permanent ceasefire, and a free Palestine.