Palestine Action: Peace Activists, Not Terrorists

Palestine Action is a non-violent group, which only damages property owned by, or connected to, Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. Yet the order to ban it, approved by British parliamentarians, lumped the group in with violent, white-supremacist neo-Nazis such as the ​“Maniacs Murder cult.”

In response to Palestine Action’s sustained and effective five-year direct action campaign, Elbit has lobbied the Home Office (Britain’s Homeland Security department), alongside Zionist organizations like We Believe in Israel, to ban the group. The trigger — or perhaps merely the justification — for the state to finally do so was the recent infiltration of a British military base by Palestine Action members, who sprayed red paint sybmolizing blood onto Royal Air Force (RAF) planes. These planes continue to fly reconnaissance flights for Israel over Gaza to aid its genocide.

The activists who did this, like many of their Palestine Action comrades, can be seen grinning and waving in post-arrest photos. These are the faces of people with moral clarity. They are calm in the knowledge that while they’re likely to be charged with criminal damage to property or similar, they are breaking the law to prevent a far bigger crime: Israel’s genocide. 

The British government meanwhile, flouts Article 1 of the Genocide Convention, which stipulates its duty to act to prevent genocide. Our leaders merely pay lip service to human rights, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, for instance, declaring in May that Israel blocking aid trucks seeking to enter Gaza to feed starved Palestinians was ​“repellent”, ​“extremist” and ​“monstrous.” Yet he continues to trade arms with Israel, despite the majority of the public wanting an embargo and the government’s admission in a recent legal challenge of the serious risk that weapons exported to Israel could be used in violations of international law.

Palestine Action members, however, act on the courage of their convictions. Indeed the group speaks mostly through its actions, and explodes the false dichotomy between ​“material sabotage” and supposedly ​“exclusively symbolic” acts of protest in the process. I have long been active in the Palestine solidarity movement, and I can personally attest to the deep impact the organization has had. 

The group has cost the arms industry millions, and likely saved many Palestinian lives in the process. And by meticulously documenting and widely publicizing its actions, it has also embodied the anarchist concept of propaganda of the deed, setting an example for others to follow. The stark visuals of its actions, and an element of self-mythologizing, has helped it become remarkably sustainable, as new recruits have stepped up to join.

Palestine Action’s appeal lies in its message to ordinary people: not merely the staid ​“your voice matters” but also ​“you have a body, and since our voices are being ignored, here’s how you can use it”. Its acts of militant resistance to the war machine have seen the group surpass the institutionalized solidarity movement in this country, demonstrating a grassroots leadership of ordinary people willing to make extraordinary personal sacrifices. Several of the ​‘Filton 18’, for instance, have already been remanded in custody awaiting trial for over a year.

While protest in Britain and beyond has been increasingly criminalized, and space for dissent eroded in the name of the ​‘war on terror’, this moment is nonetheless an unprecedented escalation. It could not be clearer, now, that the Palestine movement is also about our democracy, our rights, and the common good. 

The state of emergency in Palestine is also our emergency.

Because Palestine Action will not be the last protest group to be outlawed. The real cause for terror, in this upside down Orwellian world, is how the hard center’s determination to defend Zionism and crush the left is paving the way for fascism.