We are all Palestine Action

rs21’s statement on the proposed proscription of Palestine Action.

Palestine Action started in 2020 to take direct action against the companies building weapons for the Israeli military, especially against Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest weapons maker.

While the British and Scottish governments have continued to support the supply of weapons from Britain to the genocidal Israeli regime, the ordinary people of Palestine Action have not rested. Through hundreds of actions, they have succeeded in getting suppliers, landlords, lobby firms and transport companies to cut ties with Elbit, as well as forcing the permanent closure of three Elbit sites in England.

Statement

This week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that the government would be moving to proscribe the activist group Palestine Action, classifying them as a ‘terrorist’ organisation for the purposes of UK law.

The proscription order is currently due to be laid in Parliament on 30 June, and could be law by 4 July. 

Right now it is completely legal to voice support for Palestine Action and you cannot be prosecuted for what you say before the ban takes effect. But if the government succeeds in proscribing the group, then support for them or their actions will become a criminal offence with severe penalties.

Proscription is not a common practice and it is even rarer for the British government to ban organisations in Britain. One of the very few groups which is proscribed and has been recently active in Britain is National Action, an explicitly Nazi group whose members celebrated the murder of MP Jo Cox and planned the murder of MP Rosie Cooper as a ‘white jihad’.

By comparison, Palestine Action’s campaign continues the long tradition of civil disobedience, carrying out low-level criminalised acts to prevent much greater crimes. Palestine Actionists have tended to be convicted for criminal damage of sites that are known to be part of the supply chain of weapons and finance from Britain to Israel. Their trademark tactic has been to spray buildings or equipment with red paint, representing the blood of Palestinians murdered by the Israeli state using weapons made in the factories they target. Many Palestine Action trials have ended in acquittal, as juries refuse on their conscience to send opponents of war crimes and genocide to prison.

Despite this, the government wants to make it a terrorism offence to be a member of – or even express support for – Palestine Action. This is aimed at having a chilling effect on direct action protest and dividing the movement.

Though it is a drastic escalation, this proposal isn’t happening in a vacuum. The last five years have seen a ramping up of repressive legislation to curb and criminalise protest, as well as increased sentencing powers leading to unprecedented sentences for offences like ‘conspiracy to commit public nuisance’. Labour is also currently proposing the Crime and Policing Bill, which would criminalise wearing a mask at protests.

But now is not the time to panic or back down. If we accept this historic assault on our freedom to protest, worse is to come – not just from this government, but from future further right governments too. This is massive overreach, but it can be stopped. 

We say it again: it is not terrorism to oppose the murder of children, the siege of a population, the ethnic cleansing of a region. 

We say it again: it is not terrorism to stand in solidarity with people whose very existence is under threat by a coloniser and its imperialist allies.

We say it again: Palestine Action are not terrorists. The terrorists are the Israeli state who are carrying out a genocide, the capitalists who profit from the war machine, and our own politicians who vote to arm them and then change the law to crush dissent.

Over the next days and weeks, we call on everyone who cares about Palestine, democracy, freedom of speech and expression and the right to protest to oppose this ban. We can challenge this proscription and defend the right to use a diversity of tactics against oppression and violence.

Join demonstrations, sign the petitions by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Palestine Action, contribute to the Crowdfunder for Palestine Action’s legal costs in challenging their proscription. Email your elected politicians, bring a motion to your union branches or your student union, attend Palestine movement events to understand what’s happening. Talk to your colleagues, your friends, your family. 

The government wants to shut down opposition to the genocide in Palestine, and it’s our job to refuse to be silenced.

We say it again: we are all Palestine Action.