Cops continue to hold six Palestine Action activists under counter-terrorism laws after they entered Elbit System’s Bristol factory – a company complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The group, other organisations, and its supporters have hit back – with protests happening outside two police stations. The Canary’s view? We’re witnessing the state setting a precedent against direct actionists.
Palestine Action: more action against Elbit
As the Canary previously reported, Palestine Action activists targeted Elbit’s Bristol site on Tuesday 6 August. They used a repurposed prison van to smash the gates at the site. When inside, they destroyed equipment and machinery that Israel would have used to kill Palestinian people with.
As of Monday 12 August, Israel had killed at least 39,897 people in Gaza, including over 15,000 children. The toll includes 107 deaths in the previous 48 hours. Israel has also wounded around 92,152 people since 7 October.
However, also on 12 August, cops had detained six Palestine Action activists for several days under counter-terrorism laws – completely disproportionate when contrasted with Israel’s war crimes and attempted genocide in Gaza.
‘We refuse to be intimidated’
Palestine Action said in a statement:
Actionists are being detained under the Terrorism Act, allowing the police to hold them for up to 7 days, with possible extension to 14 days, without charge. This comes after six were arrested on Tuesday 6th August for entering Elbit Systems’ Filton, Bristol site, to prevent its manufacture of weapons for genocide.
The Filton premises are the brand new £35m R&D hub of Israel’s biggest weapons firm. Its June 2023 opening was attended by the UK-Israeli Ambassador Hotevely, and Elbit’s CEO Bezhalel Machlis – who has frequently boasted of the company’s central role in Israel’s military, during the ongoing Gaza genocide.
Direct action against Elbit aims to disrupt this: targeting the source of colonial violence and genocide against the Palestinian people, undermining Elbit’s profiteering from Israel’s daily massacres.
As well as detaining them under unprecedented powers, police have launched a smear campaign against the detained actionists, alleging violence against police and security guards. The activists are unable to respond to these claims, and unable to describe for public record the force used against them by police and private security. Palestine Action contends that these statements are designed to prejudice opinion and legal proceedings against activists, and to lay the groundwork for the police’s unjust use of authoritarian powers.
Now, more than ever, Palestine Action and the #Filton6 need the support of the public, to push back against these authoritarian attempts to protect Israel’s weapons industry. Show the British state and Israeli arms companies that we refuse to be intimidated into allowing a genocide to happen.
Other organisations have hit back at the cops and the government for allowing their actions.
‘Release them immediately’
These courageous actionists were acting to prevent the further arming of a regime currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial authority in the world. Their actions were rooted in a commitment to save innocent lives by disrupting the supply chain of weapons used to perpetuate ongoing genocidal violence.
In a disturbing display of state repression, the actionists have been held since Tuesday 6 August, under the Terrorism Act 2000 on a seven-day warrant without charge. They are currently detained at Hammersmith and Newbury police stations. This abuse of counter-terrorism legislation is clearly designed to intimidate and silence those who dare to challenge the complicity of states and corporations in war crimes and human rights abuses. Direct action has proven so effective in challenging state-sanctioned atrocities that authorities are resorting to intimidation tactics and harsh legal measures to silence and undermine those who dare to take a stand.
CAGE International calls for the immediate release of these actionists.
The actions of these six individuals should be recognised for what they are: a principled and necessary intervention to halt the killing of innocent civilians.
Hammersmith comes out
Indeed – many people do recognised them as such. On Sunday 11 August people protested outside Hammersmith and Newbury police stations. Canary writer Samantha Asumadu was at Hammersmith. A significant number of people turned out:
Cops were protecting the police station:
Asumadu said:
“I could hear it before I saw it. Shouts, chants and noise. I hurriedly lit my cigarette and walked toward the music. I got out my mask too; something I haven’t warn since the year after lockdown ended.
“I doubt it would do any of the people there any good to hide our faces by now.
“We would have been mapped and tagged years ago if we’d attended a protest – certainly since 2019 when the Public Order Act started making its way through parliament. But probably even before then if we had attended any anti-war, pro-justice protest. And I have attended many since the million-strong one in 2006 at what turned out to be the start of the second invasion of Iraq.
“On the mic/blow horn as I twisted and turned into the crowd, sliding sideways in order to get a view, was someone I recognised but wasn’t sure who it was. She gave me a wry smile and carried on speaking through the blow horn. She had half cut dreads that she’d tied up on the top of her head. Kafiri slung round her neck, she urged us to join in with her chant “no justice”.
Righteous indignation
Asumadu continued:
“She soon introduced someone called MC Righteous. I’d heard his name plenty of times back in the early 2010s when people like Lowkey and Akala had made their names. MC Righteous had never hit the big time, but as far as I know he hasn’t also been boycotted or targeted by the state such as Lowkey has, or denounced by historians like Akala has. So maybe there’s something in being NOT too famous.
“He got the crowd hyped, even the older types hanging back a bit, and the small woman a in hijab who had brought her chair with her, determined to support the Filton 6 even from the back, even sitting down. “Bun the occupation”. Damn right.
“MC Righteous handed the mic to a woman who introduced herself as the mother of the youngest Palestine Actioner, at 20 years old, who had been unceremoniously locked up, supposedly on ‘terrorism’ charges. She said:
I have never heard of Elbit Systems before my daughter got involved and now I know so much more, I support her actions 100%. But she has an illness, they are not giving her proper medication.
“As she spoke I began to feel movement at the edges of the crowd of around 150 people.
The cops shut it down
Asumadu noted:
“When I had entered their space I had noticed the numerous police who stood across the road, down the road, and on the road. They hadn’t been too close, but now I felt them over. I happened to be filming when they made their move:
Police suddenly surrounded the people outside Hammersmith police station once mother of 20 year old Palestine Actioner began to speak. I happened to be filming and decided to get past potential kettle @Pal_action pic.twitter.com/3IBGLZ1ZTW
— Samantha Asumadu (@SamanthaAsumadu) August 11, 2024
“What looked like them trying to encircle us, I slipped through with a second to spare and brushed past a policeman which allowed me to make my escape.
“I crossed to the other side if the road, dodging traffic, and heading towards a sea of blue:
“I took the above video from across the road, listened for a bit, then decided to walk to a pub not far away in Kensington Olympia. I was disconcerted to see the number of police vans they’d brought and parked on the other side of the road:
“I took one last look back at the grandmothers, men, women, teenagers, students who had come out to make some noise for the Filton 6 and I felt blessed.
Standing strong against repression
As Asumadu summed up:
“I remembered two years ago the last time I went to A Palestine Action. I was the only journalist there. Whilst only this year I got round to writing about it I had forgotten the photos and video I had taken so did another thread on X:
'In July 2022 @Pal_Action activists again protested outside Elbit System’s UK headquarters in Holborn. Elbit Systems Ltd is an Israel-based international military technology company and defense contractor.' https://t.co/BtkOrJ8f4d pic.twitter.com/OSGa21zE8t
— Samantha Asumadu (@SamanthaAsumadu) August 11, 2024
“Because one thing I know is Palestine Action are not new to this, they’re true to this. Leaving the pub a couple of hours later having posting some of the photos on Instagram and X/Twitter I went back the way I had come.
“Expecting to hear them again before I saw them. They had gone. So had all the police vans, and the police. I traced back the exact steps I had taken earlier in reverse but this time I noticed what was to the left of me . Directly opposite the Hammersmith police station is Hammersmith library. Enlightenment, and knowledge standing strong across from repression and hopelessness”.
Palestine Action: don’t believe the cops
People also went to Newbury:
Supporters speaking out in support of the #Filton6 who remain detained without charge after dismantling an Israeli weapons producer pic.twitter.com/cE2fwvX11L
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) August 11, 2024
On 12 August, people also went back there:
Newbury police station 12 August✊🏻🇵🇸 Protesters say release the #Filton6 it is @ElbitSystemsLtd who is breaking the law by arming a #Genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention not those who try to stop them. pic.twitter.com/hKvnCxeUQ6
— East Berkshire PSC🇵🇸 (@sloughpsc) August 12, 2024
Meanwhile, Netpol said:
Police appear to want to claim Palestine Action is some kind of ‘urban guerilla group’ because it engages in direct action against property. To make this stick, it now needs to portray it as ‘violent’. Anyone who knows the people involved in it recognises this as a fabrication.
It has been frustrating that some media coverage has failed to challenge claims about alleged injuries to officers during a recent protest. The police have a long track record of lying about protests – look back to the claims made about Kingsnorth in 2008
Everyone should exercise the greatest level of scepticism about any claims made by Avon and Somerset Police, who invented ‘broken bones’ during the Kill the Bill protests in 2021.
It is obvious what cops are doing.
The state is setting a precedent
For four years, authorities have been unable to stop Palestine Action with standard legislation. Now, under exceptionally dubious justification, they are using terrorism laws to try and convict them. Authorities are also sending out a message to other groups like Just Stop Oil that their direct action will not be tolerated, either. Moreover, the state is once again protecting corporate capital – in this case, Elbit, to which Palestine Action has caused serious disruption and damage.
However, cops holding Palestine Action activists under counter-terrorism laws also sends a clear signal to the public. In the same few days that far-right racist agitator Tommy Robinson was also detained under counter-terror laws, the state is saying that anyone who does not follow the Western liberal playbook will be face the consequences – regardless of whether they’re on the left or right.
The fact that many of the far-right ‘thugs’ during the recent race riots got more lenient sentences than the Just Stop Oil ‘Whole Truth Five’ speaks volumes about how the state views the far right compared to what it would label the ‘far left’. Regardless of that, though, and the response to the race riots by the criminal justice system should also ring alarms bells for the rest of us.
However, the biggest warning comes from cops treatment of Palestine Action. A precedent is being set – and it is not a good one.
Featured image and additional images and video via Samantha Asumadu
