Palestine Action members charged after incident at Elbit Systems
Earlier this week, a draft order was laid before Parliament requesting an amendment to the Terrorism Act 2000 to include Palestine Action as a proscribed organisation.If approved, it would become a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison to be a member of the direct action group or to support it.Palestine Action are seeking a legal challenge against the government's bid to proscribe it, with a hearing expected on Friday to decide whether the ban can be temporarily blocked, pending further proceedings to decide whether a legal challenge can be brought.Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.Since then, 56,500 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
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The Independent
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MPs vote to support proscribing Palestine Action as terror group
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Meanwhile, pro- Palestine demonstrators have hit out at the government, accusing it of 'hypocrisy' as it prepares to ban an activist group under anti-terror law. The decision to proscribe the group comes after two planes were vandalised at RAF Brize Norton on June 20. Speaking to The Independent while demonstrating outside parliament, David Collins, a retired veteran with no links to Palestine Action and who served with the Marines for nine years, said: 'In comparison to some of the atrocities that this government is approving – and sending arms to Israel – amongst some people that is justified action. They are warplanes that can be repaired. There was nobody hurt. I would say that is a legitimate form of protest.' Jonathan Fluxman, 69, a retired doctor who was also demonstrating on Wednesday, said a ban was 'utterly ridiculous'. 'Palestine action are a direct action group. They are avowedly non-violent and I think this is much more about them embarrassing the British government by being incredibly effective in terms of interrupting the flow of weapons from Britain to Israel to try and stop the awful, awful genocide', he said. Four people, including 'a man who blocked the gates of Downing Street with his mobility scooter', were arrested following the protest in Westminster, the Metropolitan Police has said. On Tuesday, two more arrests were made after Palestine Action claimed to have blockaded the entrance of an Israeli defence company's UK headquarters. A spokesperson for the group said activists had blocked the entrance to Elbit Systems in Bristol and covered it in red paint 'to symbolise Palestinian bloodshed'. Kat, another protester demonstrating outside parliament on Wednesday morning, accused the government of a 'complete clampdown on our right to protest'. She said: 'There are many groups that use the same tactics and have used the same tactics in the past and they've never had this extreme a response to it. I think they're shutting it down because its effective. It is making an impact on the profits of Elbit Systems who is Israel's largest weapons manufacturer.' But home secretary Yvette Cooper said 'violence and serious criminal damage has no place in legitimate protest. The right to protest and the right to free speech are the cornerstone of our democracy and there are countless campaign groups that freely exercise those rights.' The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the action at RAF Brize Norton was 'disgraceful' and an 'act of vandalism'. While the government is rushing through parliament absurd legislation to proscribe Palestine Action, the real terrorism is being committed in Gaza Palestine Action The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, also condemned the group, saying: 'This attack on Britain's military is totally unjustified. They are undermining the very organisation that protects us all. Palestine Action should be pursued, prosecuted and banned for what they have done. In this country we settle disagreements through debate and democracy, not through acts of vandalism and violence.' A spokesperson for Palestine Action said: 'While the government is rushing through parliament absurd legislation to proscribe Palestine Action, the real terrorism is being committed in Gaza. Palestine Action affirms that direct action is necessary in the face of Israel's ongoing crimes against humanity of genocide, apartheid and occupation, and to end British facilitation of those crimes.' Opening the debate in the Commons on Wednesday, security minister Dan Jarvis said proscription of the group would 'reaffirm the UK's zero tolerance approach to terrorism, regardless of its form or underlying ideology'. 'Proscription is rightly ideologically neutral. It judges an organisation on its actions and the actions it is willing to deploy in pursuit of its cause', he said, adding that proscription was 'one of the most powerful counter-terrorism tools available to government. Any decision to proscribe is taken with great care and following rigorous consideration.' Unveiling the intention to ban the group following the incident on June 23, Cooper said it was the latest in a 'long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action'. The group, which intends to bring a legal challenge against the government, has staged a series of demonstrations in recent months, including spraying the London offices of Allianz Insurance with red paint over its alleged links to Elbit, and vandalising Donald Trump's Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire. Palestine Action's website says it uses disruptive tactics to target 'corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex' and seeks to make it 'impossible for these companies to profit from the oppression of Palestinians'. Some 81 organisations have been proscribed under the 2000 Act, including Islamist groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda, far-right groups such as National Action, and the Russian private military company the Wagner Group. The draft order laid on Monday also lists neo-Nazi group Maniacs Murder Cult and far-right nationalist group Russian Imperial Movement, including its paramilitary arm, Russian Imperial Legion, to be proscribed in the UK. Belonging to or expressing support for a proscribed organisation, along with a number of other actions, are criminal offences carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
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The National
an hour ago
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In a dangerous era journalism needs to show some backbone again
Having spent almost my entire working life in journalism, it's almost a given then that at some point during a break, I reflect on the nature of the job and profession that has engaged me for the best part of 40 years. Two things added to that sense of questioning journalism's meaning during my brief time off. The first was my choice of holiday reading, a memoir of Graydon Carter the one-time editor of Vanity Fair magazine aptly titled When The Going Was Good, and the other was the death earlier this week of the great foreign correspondent, author and ITN news presenter Sandy Gall, with whom a certain generation of readers will no doubt be familiar. READ MORE: The 26 MPs who voted against proscribing Palestine Action It was Gall himself who in great part inspired my own initial reporting sorties in Afghanistan back in the early 80s when I first met him and before the country and its travails became a near obsession for the both of us. Both Carter and Gall were journalists of what some might call the 'golden age' of reporting in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It was a time when budgets were high, as were the expectations of readers and viewers of the journalists they depended on to cover and explain the great stories of the time. Journalism back then seemed to have a clear sense of purpose in holding power to account with a laser-like probing power. No story was too far away. No person was exempt from scrutiny should they cross the line of acceptable political behaviour. Be it Watergate or war reporting, the journalists' beat knew few limits. It was a time too before 'fake news', a time also before journalists became targets – literally – for doing their job, or so it seems when looking back. The reality of course is slightly different, for such threats have in fact always posed a challenge to the media going about their work, just perhaps not to the extent they do now. Which brings me to the dire state of so much of today's journalism, for what a contrast there is between those times when Carter and Gall were in their heyday compared to the media landscape of today. For barring a few brave and notable exceptions, so much of our media landscape now seems inhabited by quislings and cowards. With hand on heart, I can say I've never at one and the same time been so ashamed and also so proud of some of my media colleagues. No story epitomises this right now more than events in Gaza and the Middle East. On the one side we have journalists seemingly paralysed by fear of asking the questions that need to be asked of our politicians and on the other, the resounding bravery of our Palestinian colleagues who pursue their reporting with a courage the like of which has rarely been matched by the global media in modern times. In such a climate, the likes of the BBC hides behind words like 'the perception of partiality,' in justifying its decision not to air the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, leaving it to Channel 4 to pick up. But leaving Gaza aside, there is a much deeper malaise in journalism right now. Some of it is a result of the media's own making. Lack of investment, a dearth of imagination whereby the easy option rather than the 'difficult-to-tell-story' is the order of the day. Then there are the shortcomings too when it comes to maximising the potential use of new formats and platforms. Producing quality and in some cases great journalism, as the days of Carter, Gall and their generation showed, was never cheap, and the age-old maxim that you pay for what you get is something the industry singularly fails to recognise today. But putting these internal inadequacies aside for a moment, there is another far more potent force undermining today's journalism. I'm speaking of course about the way prominent politicians the world over are directly attacking 'troublesome' journalists with threats, lawsuits, or worse. As Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, pointed out last year, many of these politicians are pressuring media companies to remove their work. 'They belittle and vilify individual reporters when it suits them, often singling out women and minorities. They encourage their supporters to distrust the news and sometimes incite them to attack journalists,' Nielsen rightly observed. Across the world – everywhere you look right now – a growing number of governments and political authorities are not fulfilling their role as guarantors of the best possible environment for journalism. Intimidation and censorship are today almost at unprecedented levels. Any thinking person too will recognise that at their worst, political threats to journalism are often part of wider, systematic, sustained efforts to weaken, undermine, or even dismantle the formal and informal institutions of democracy. As outright political hostility to journalism grows, so the media needs allies and support from other quarters. As Professor Nielsen says, this effectively means the public that the media aim and claim to serve. 'At its best journalism has much to offer the public,' Nielen attests, and he's right. That much was evident back 'when the going was good', in those days that Graydon Carter refers to and when journalism served the public. For that to happen again today two things especially are needed amongst others. The first is that public support must again be won over to deter political attacks and at least help build resilience to resist attempts to undermine independent news media. The second is that journalism today has to find and show some spine again. In a dangerous era for the media, it must stop playing the role of political quisling. Instead, it should again aspire to be brave, dogged, resolute, and not shirk from calling out those deserving of it.
