Claim of Responsibility for Arson at Mercedes-Benz of Portland

After weeks of indiscriminate bombing and a ground military invasion of Gaza, leveling homes, hospitals, and schools, the cost to human life has been over 18,800 deaths — 8000 of which are children — and over 51,000 injured.

The bombings along with the ongoing Israeli blockage has created a humanitarian catastrophe leaving hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced with little to no access to food, clean water or medical care. This genocidal assault has also taken the form of intensified repression against Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank — mass arrests, targeted military raids, and an escalation of settler violence. We are all too aware that this war waged by Israel is made possible in large part by weapons and equipment supplied by the United States and their allies. As anarchists living behind enemy lines, we refuse to sit by and watch yet another genocide unfold before our eyes.

So, in the early morning hours of 12/11, a fire was started at the Mercedes-Benz dealership in downtown Portland.  The blaze destroyed a delivery van and burned out the exterior of their ‘wholesale parts’ garage on SW Market St. This was done as an act of economic sabotage against a corporation that develops military vehicles for the Israel Defense Forces and profits from the dispossession and occupation of Palestinians.

Apart from selling luxury cars Mercedes-Benz also produces weapons of war—in the form of light infantry vehicles — for militaries across the world. In regards to Israeli, Mercedes-Benz has partnered with Israeli based military contractor Plasan to produce a light-infantry vehicle. The Plasan Hyrax — which utilizes the Mercedes-Benz G-wagon chassis — was developed to replace the IDF’s aging fleet of ‘David’ patrol vehicles. As of 2019 the Hyrax has been certified for use with the IDF.

Mercedes-Benz’ sister company Daimler Trucks, and their subsidiaries — in which Mercedes-Benz owns a 30% share — has supplied transport vehicles to the IDF in the past. As recently as 2020 Daimler Trucks was awarded a contract to supply busses to Israeli based company Egged for inter-city bus transport. Egged provides transportation between Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. Egged busses use roads off limits to Palestinians and operates segregated busses. This racist apartheid system is a defining aspect of the Israeli settler colonial project, built on the displacement and denigration of Palestinians.

In the broader context of resistance throughout world against war and militarism — from the anti-war partisans in Belarus and Russia derailing trains of military cargo, to the Palestinian youth in the West Bank standing down tanks with a slingshot and stones — this action was our modest contribution to that struggle.

For a more dangerous solidarity