1w ago

Slammer with some heat (might be misdirected heat)

The appeal for drones, sent out to Gordon’s mailing list, has since grown into a “thermal drone matching campaign” run by the One Israel Fund, another charity based in the Five Towns that supports West Bank settlements. The group hosts tours of the West Bank and holds annual wine-tasting barbecues in the Five Towns to fund settlement security projects. Although it usually raises $3 million per year, the One Israel Fund took in $2.5 million in the month after Oct. 7, according to the Long Island Herald

From newlinesmag

Dunno, if it should be removed or not now, cause china can’t exactly control new york dipshits sales :(

48 comments

I had a back forth with someone from ml earlier today about this article, a post they have since deleted. These drones must have been bought between the July 31, 2023 export restrictions on drone tech and the July 2024 adjustments to those restrictions. The drones do not drop bombs, they have a universal mechanism that can drop anything and Israel has created a mechanism to attach to that universal mechanism to drop grenades.
Ministry of Commerce General Administration of Customs National Defense Science and Industry Central Military Commission Equipment Development Department Announcement No. 28 of 2023 on the implementation of temporary export controls on some drones.
Ministry of Commerce General Administration of Customs Central Military Commission Equipment Development Announcement No. 31 of 2024 Announcement on Optimizing and Adjusting UAV Export Control Measures.
As it stands now China will not ship these drones to Israel. According to Autel, they have banned the sale of their drones to the entire region. They've made two statements on the matter. Here:
https://www.autelrobotics.com/news/non-military-use-of-autel-robotics-products-statement-2/
https://www.autelrobotics.com/news/non-military-use-of-autel-robotics-products-statement/
DJI has a similar statement pre 2023:
https://www.dji.com/newsroom/news/dji-statement-on-military-use-of-drones
On Amazon and other platforms you can not get these drones shipped to Israel:
In the 9 months between the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the adjustments to drone exports Israel bought ~~20,000~~ Chinese made drones (likely through consumer channels) and also relied on civilian donations of drones.
“Soldiers independently launched crowdfunding campaigns,” L. explained. “Our company received around NIS 500,000 (approximately $150,000) in donations, which we also used to buy drones.” C., another soldier, recalled being asked to sign thank-you letters to Americans who had donated EVO drones to his battalion.
In a Facebook group named “The Israeli Drone Pilots Community,” many posts request EVO drone donations for units in Gaza. Multiple pages on Headstart (an Israeli crowdfunding startup) were also created to independently raise funds for drone purchases.
The timeline on this purchase is unclear. It's also unclear if the changes to the export restrictions are a response to this purchase.
correction: Israel intends to buy 20,000 Israeli made drones.
From everything I've read and seen there isn't currently direct sales of drones from China to Israel.
- good comment
- Good research, comrade.
- Waow, cool facts. But have you considered:
  China... BAD???
  
  Stuck between the
  "China must directly wage war with an entity backed by the ruling classes of Europe and the US with an infinite budget and commit its billion+ population to an uncertain, nuclear war."
  and the
  "China must sanction Israel even though sanctions have historically never succeeded in their intended goal and only drive the sanctioned party to pursue other means such as Israel having a blank check to do whatever they want and can always ask for more."
  and the
  "China should build military bases in resistance nations in West Asia even though none of them asked or even desired for one to be built"
- The drones do not drop bombs, they have a universal mechanism that can drop anything and Israel has created a mechanism to attach to that universal mechanism to drop grenades.
  those drones could deliver pizzas to bedroom windows.
  any fucking thing you design a drone to do is going to be used for weapons.
  
  Toyota should be marketing their pickups as "Lightweight, Tactical, improvised fighting vehicles".
- I love that they flat out admitted they weren't going to read your evidence.
  
  They eventually did, to be fair.
- The drones do not drop bombs, they have a universal mechanism that can drop anything
  "We didn't design our drones to drop bombs, we designed them to drop... you know... the wide variety of things drones are known to drop, like... uh..."
  
  Package delivery, food, emergency supplies, fire suppressants, surveying equipment.... It's strange that you can't think of any practical uses for a drone dropping mechanism aside from weapons
  
  I bought my Cutco knife from a yard sale to slice my veggies and my enemies, Cutco is complicit in my crimes!
Other comments have provided good context around things such as bans now in place for the drones, the drones being weaponised after the fact, etc. Cards on the table I am quite a lot more critical of China than the hexbear median seems to be.
If it was me running a socialist country I’d be having any executives of companies within that country that sold… anything? to Israel shot. But I understand things are complicated. Geopolitics etc etc.
As to why exactly my socialist country is full of giant capitalist corporations that are involved in international trade with imperialist countries in the first place… I would probably look into that, I dunno.
Soldiers most commonly use EVO drones, produced by the Chinese company Autel, which are primarily intended for photography and cost around NIS 10,000 (approximately $3,000) on Amazon. However, with a military-issued attachment known internally as an “iron ball,” a hand grenade can be affixed to the drone and dropped with the push of a button to detonate on the ground. Today, the majority of Israeli military companies in Gaza use these drones.
https://www.972mag.com/drones-grenades-gaza-chinese-autel/
Is it China (i.e. the Chinese government) themselves or a company in China that is selling photography drones that the Israeli army is attaching grenade launchers to......hm....
- Anyways not to say this isn't bad and that Xi shouldn't hang everyone at Autel but I think this meme is very stupid lol
- Yeah the article specifically says "weaponizing" meaning that they weren't weapons when they were made. So not as bad as the comic makes it out to be. However, why are you selling to Israeli military companies, Mr. Xi?
  
  Yeah I get what you're saying but idk personally anytime I hear "X, Y, and Z companies in China are doing this!!" I'm always willing to give the country/government itself a bit of slack given there's 1.5 billion people living and like 100+ million business entities in China. Saying "The Chinese government was definitely aware of these companies' sales to Israel" to me just sounds ridiculous because you could argue that the US/EU with their far smaller populations and consequently number of companies should be able to prevent any sale of illegal/restricted/etc stuff but that kind of shit happens 24/7. (One could argue that is just a natural consequence of capitalism of course but you know what I'm trying to say)
  
  there's basically no feature you can put in a drone that won't get used to murder people
- Not sure how the restrictions work, but if you use a VPN and select the Zionist settler-colony as your location, Autel won't ship to you either from Amazon or AliExpress, from what I've seen other users try. I don't doubt that the IOF is using them, but they don't seem to be through direct channels.
  
  Would not be impossible for Israel to just procure them through the US, like they do with basically everything else in their arsenal. Not trying to play defense for Autel, but I think having the DoD order a bunch of 'photography drones' and load them on a ship with their monthly supply of interceptor missiles is probably a bit more reasonable than like 'backroom deals with Israel and Autel'.
  
  I mean considering the lengths that the mossad went through to infiltrate the supply chain of an international pager manufacturer...... The whole point is pretty moot. Intelligence agencies are perfectly capable of evading export restrictions.
  If there is an iota of legitimate criticism in this post, it would be that state owned corporations are still operating under the conditions of profit motive, which can lead them to seek to turn a profit on human conflict.
- It more like the latter, since there also this to a few months ago. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/8/israel-retrofitting-dji-commercial-drones-to-bomb-and-surveil-gaza [Israel retrofitting DJI commercial drones to bomb and surveil Gaza]
The CIA near the height of the cold war was able through front companies to buy USSR titanium for their weapons programs such as the B2 and other high performance planes without the USSR detecting this.
Frankly if you're China and you don't control global monetary flows, don't have ins at every bank, every shipping company, every logistic company, don't have a global illegal wiretap network and do have a policy of openness and trade wherever possible there is just no way for them to totally stop this.
I mean the west hasn't been able to completely stop Russian imports of western products through intermediaries and they really want to and have a lot more visibility throughout the supply chain than China.
As long as this obscenity persists, China is an enemy of the collective working classes of the Middle East
The old critiques of "Socialism in One Country" are hitting real hard right now
- China is an enemy for producing commercial drones that are banned from being sold to Israel? That's the same rhetoric as the US blaming China for fentanyl because they produce some of the ingredients that, after exchanging many hands, end up being used by cartels to make drugs.
  And by the same rhetoric I mean racist, imperialist nonsense.
  China produces the parts for Irans drones too, are you gonna complain about that next?
  Is China responsible for colonialism because they introduced gunpowder to the Europeans before they went conquesting?
  
  You don't understand the perfidious Chinese gave the Europeans gunpowder so they could start off a chain of events to finally allow themselves the privilege of making all of those sweet drones.
  
  The 'they said, we said' situation involving the drone bombers aside
  YES China is an enemy of the working classes of the middle east, China is still trading with Israel and Arab comprador regimes, that's a fact
  Sorry if that bricks your brain and makes you reach for nonsensical comparisons like the "fentanyl conspiracy", Chinese foreign policy on the Middle East is pretty clear; western defined "stability" at all costs and pumping billions more into Israeli and Gulf state coffers
  China produces the parts for Irans drones too, are you gonna complain about that next?
  It's almost like Chinese foreign policy famously works cross purposes with itself; on one hand selling Iran "drone parts" and on the other maintaining a 10 billion dollar trade infrastructure with Israel despite 20 months of genocide
- don't think ussr has sunk so low tbh, although czechoslovakia did (but was significantly less obvious at the time due to news travel)
  
  Well the Soviets had a complicated relationship with Zionism (pushed for 47 partition for one thing when even the Brits knew it was a bad idea). It took a while for them to figure that one out.
- Turns out this obscenity is not actually happening, see elsewhere in this thread
The previous post on this was closed for having a misleading title after people said China didn't actually sell any drones to Israel, no idea if it's true.
Really sucks if China is doing this, of course, but I also don't want to preemptively jump on board any possible attempt to obfuscate who the main supporters of Israel actually are
Holy shit that newlinesmag article is something else. Fucking wild.
- Yeah, that’s why I’m debating leaving post as is, let it and your comments provide some contrast/plausible explanation, or remove it for people not reading stuff
Back to endless doomerism

48 comments