Palestine Action group shows no signs of slowing down

Times

4 hours ago

'We are tired of being ignored. It is up to all of us to stop this complicity' were the words that launched Palestine Action almost five years ago.
Founded by Huda Ammori, who has Palestinian and Iraqi heritage, and Richard Barnard, a veteran left-wing activist, the fledgling group said direct action should be taken against Elbit Systems, a weapons manufacturer that they claim 'profits from Israel's war crimes'.
Two months later, in September 2020, they did just that. Activists occupied a factory in Shenstone, in Staffordshire, smashing windows, drilling holes into ceilings, throwing air conditioning units to the ground and dousing the building in red paint.
The demonstration marked the start of co-ordinated attempts to damage both the defence firm facilities and finances across the country, which have propelled the group on a path towards proscription.
Throughout 2021 Palestine Action widened its activities, occupying a drone factory in Leicester. The occupation lasted six days, and ten arrests were made for conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass. The defendants were cleared after the trial judge instructed the jury to consider the common law defence of Necessity. After launching their Scottish branch, they targeted Thales, another defence firm. Having infiltrated its Glasgow facility in 2022, the activists allegedly caused more than £1 million of damage. Five were jailed after members of the group threw a smoke bomb into an area where staff were being evacuated.
Protesters in red suits and balaclavas also caused hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage to an electronics plant in Wales that year, which they believed was making circuit boards for Israeli drones.
The group's activities ramped up after the October 7, 2023 attacks. As Israeli forces announced a 'full siege' on Gaza, Palestine Action published a list of over 50 targets 'complicit in Elbit's murderous arms trade'.
A few days later they sprayed the headquarters of the BBC — which wasn't on the list — with red paint to 'symbolise complicity in genocide'. Protestors also blockaded Lockheed Martin in Bedford, smeared red paint over the Foreign Office and targeted the headquarters of aerospace firm Leonardo, at which two men were arrested for what the Met called racially aggravated criminal damage.
Their actions began to go beyond scaling roof tops and breaking factory windows. Members of the campaign group allegedly used a modified prison van to ram the entrance of Elbit's Bristol HQ last summer. Once inside they dismantled weapons, allegedly caused £1 million in damage and assaulted two officers were with a sledgehammer, police said. Eighteen people were charged and held on remand over the break-in.
Less than a month after members of Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers painting, two Palestine Action members squirted tomato ketchup at a statue of former prime minister Arthur Balfour.
The former foreign secretary has been a focus of activist anger as he was the signatory of the Balfour Declaration, a 1917 document that pledged support for the establishment of a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine.
In March 2024, the group used blades to slash a painting of Lord Balfour hanging in the University of Cambridge. Seven months later — to mark the declaration's anniversary — they reportedly stole two busts of Israel's first president from the University of Manchester's chemistry building.
As Palestine Action grew in notoriety and numbers, the British state also became a target. Early in 2024, six members were arrested for allegedly plotting to prevent the London Stock Exchange from opening.
Activists have inevitably attracted the attention of authorities and received jail time. Among the first to be hauled before the courts were five members in November 2022, who had covered Elbit's Kingsway offices in their, now signature, red paint.
They were, however, acquitted by a jury of 'conspiracy to commit criminal damage' and the offices later closed. Palestine Action declared a victory for this and for the closure of an Elbit factory in Oldham, where their sustained protests had resulted in 36 arrests.
In August 2024, five members of the group were handed custodial sentences for protest action. It took two years for the courts to hand out suspended prison sentences and order the protesters to pay more than £5,000 in compensation after seven activists broke into the Bristol headquarters of Elbit to destroy equipment.
Zoë Rogers turned 21 in prison. She had been charged with criminal damage, violent disorder and aggravated burglary in relation to the Bristol incident after telling her mother, Clare, that the pro-Palestine marches 'weren't working'. She was denied bail and is on remand with a trial set for November 2025.
Fatema Zainab was arrested and charged as part of the same operation.
As the court system caught up in December 2023, two members of a group known as the Elbit Eight, Genevieve Scherer and Jocelyn Cooney, were acquitted on charges relatingfrom July 2020 to January 2021. Their defence had argued that they were justified in 'working to disrupt manufacture of Israel's weaponry'.
Richard Barnard was convicted of one count of criminal damage at the now-closed Elbit factory in Oldham.