Why we are all Palestine Action

Horror as MPs shamefully pass the first legislation ever proscribing a direct action group as a terrorist organization.

Please read my new article on my website, Why We Are All Palestine Action, and Why Direct Action to Prevent Genocide Is the Opposite of Terrorism, my response to the horrific news that MPs have voted, by 385 votes to 26, to uphold horrific legislation introduced on Monday by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to proscribe Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization.

Formed in 2020, Palestine Action’s sole, razor-sharp focus is on disrupting the work of companies involved in providing weapons used by the State of Israel to murder Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, illegally occupied by Israel since 1967; primarily in the Gaza Strip, a besieged death camp for the last 20 months, but also in the West Bank.

The group’s main focus is Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, which supplies the Israeli military with 85% of their drones, including the armed quadcopter drones that have been used in the targeted killing of numerous children in Gaza. Elbit has factories and other facilities in the UK (as well as in many other countries in the west), although they have also targeted financial organizations and other companies supportive of, or complicit in their deadly trade.

The group is resolutely opposed to any actions that would endanger human beings in any way. Most of its direct action has involved occupations designed to temporarily shut down operations. On some occasions, it has engaged in what, at most, is limited criminal damage aimed at disabling the manufacture and/or delivery of weapons, and on other occasions it has done nothing more than spraying red paint on buildings.

The decision to proscribe the group took place after two activists embarrassed the government by entering RAF Brize Norton on June 20, spraying two British military planes with red paint, and evading security and police.

Under the legislation, it is now a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, for anyone to become a member of, or even to support the direct action of Palestine Action.

I wrote most of this article before the vote, and in it I run through the long and noble history of direct action in the UK against arms companies and the government’s involvement in war crimes and genocide, which have generally led to jury acquittals, with jurors having recognized, as was the case with activists who damaged an arms factory in Brighton in 2009, that, “by supplying weapons to the Israeli air force, the factory was implicated in violations of international law.”

This latest move, which was condemned yesterday by UN experts, who insisted, correctly, that “mere property damage, without endangering life, is not sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism”, not only seeks to equate property damage with mass murder; it also, most chillingly, demonstrates how the Starmer government is working not for the interests of the UK, but for the interests of its masters in Israel.

Half of the Labour Cabinet — including Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, David Lammy, and one others — have all received significant donations from pro-Israeli lobbyists.

Can there be any doubt that this is a betrayal not only of all sense of proportionality when it comes to terrorism, but also of the UK’s fundamental sovereignty, with MPs having now effectively handed control of dissent in the UK to the Israeli government?

An infographic by TRTWorld, drawing on research by Declassified UK, showing donations by pro-Israeli lobbyists to senior officials in the Labour government.