An anti-militarist group has claimed responsibility for setting fire to a total of 35 commercial vehicles from Amazon and Deutsche Telekom in Berlin in the early hours of Tuesday. The Amazon vans were torched on a site on Koppelweg, in the south of the German capital, while Telekom parking was situated in Lichtenberg in Berlin’s east, reported German media. No people were hurt. In a communiqé, the un-named group said it was “celebrating” the opening of the new Amazon Tower in Berlin, citing disgust with the company’s lending its computing power to the Israeli military (along with Google and Microsoft). “The destruction and starvation in Gaza unfolding before our eyes, the planned complete relocation of the population, and the AI-based massacre and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of people, including many children, are being calculated and stored on Amazon Web Services’ servers”, said the group. It also named Amazon as a key contractor for the American military and a “generous sponsor of King Trump’s military parade … State and capital in lockstep toward fascism”. Telekom was targeted due to its “support for the Bundeswehr” and as a “supplier of IT to border authorities, police, and intelligence services”, said the communiqué. The activists also cited T-Systems, which works in collaboration with Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network. Citing Amazon’s competing Project Kuiper, the text said that “Musk and Bezos, with their corporate networks, are thus technocrats who not only profit from wars but can now influence their course”.

“Demanding life against militarism and technologies of death is right, just as it is right to claim and defend antimilitarism against nationalism”, concluded the commuiqué, “It is right to liberate life from all militarism and war, from the state and patriarchy”. Amazon condemned the act, a spokesperson told Reuters, while Deutsche Telekom said it could not comment on pending investigations. These attacks are not unusual, noted observers. In 2020 and 2021 more than 400 cars were set alight in Berlin. In 2021, the total number of cars, including those that caught fire when vehicles in the vicinity were torched, surpassed 700.