Will “terrorist” ban stop Palestine Action?

UK government seeks parliamentary approval to ban direct action protest group.

“We Are All Palestine Action” demonstration in London on Monday. (Novapix)

Britain’s home secretary Yvette Cooper wrote to Parliament on Monday saying she planned to ban direct action protesters Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group next week.

Israel and its influential representatives in the UK have for years lobbied the British government to outlaw the group. Palestine Action campaigns mainly against Elbit Systems, a major Israeli arms manufacturer.

The plan to proscribe the group under the Terrorism Action of 2000 has been met by a storm of protest from civil liberties groups, lawmakers and campaigners.

Yet Cooper seems determined to press ahead with the draconian move, which would put Palestine Action on the same list as violent extremist groups such ISIS, al-Qaida and National Action (a neo-Nazi group).

Cooper, as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer, foreign minister David Lammy and finance minister Rachel Reeves were all included on Labour Friends of Israel’s last publicly accessible list of “supporters.”

The increasingly secretive group removed the list from its website ahead of last year’s general election.

In total, 13 out of 25 UK cabinet ministers have accepted money from Israel lobby bankroller Trevor Chinn or from pro-Israel groups, according to investigative journalist John McEvoy.

The ban could lead to the imprisonment of up to 14 years of anyone “inviting support” to Palestine Action.

The British state has for many years been broadening its definition of “terrorism,” adding even the political wings of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance groups such as Hamas and Hizballah to the proscribed list in recent years.

Cooper’s move comes after Palestine Action last week broke into RAF Brize Norton, a British air base, and spray painted a military aircraft. The British military has sent hundreds of spy flights over Gaza, aiding the Israeli genocide there since it began in October 2023.

Four arrests were made on Friday in connection with the action.

“Despite us not being proscribed, the state are treating red paint on war planes as an act of terrorism,” Palestine Action said. The four accused will be held for several days in solitary confinement without charge, they said.

Three of the arrests were made on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism – even though Palestine Action are still not a proscribed group.

Palestine Action said in a statement that “the real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes, but the war crimes that have been enabled with those planes.”

Attendees of an emergency “We Are All Palestine Action” demonstration in London that I spoke to on Monday were also defiant, despite extreme police violence.

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Activist Max Geller said that the RAF Brize Norton action had embarrassed the British government into a panicked response.

“Despite this story being splashed on the pages of the New York Times, not a single British newspaper had bothered to cover British complicity in the war on Gaza until Palestine Action took action last Friday,” he said. “Our scooter and spray paint stunt forced the entire nation to wake up to a very ugly truth that our nation’s military forces have been, since October of 2023, participating in this genocidal war against Palestinians.”

He said that such work would continue: “The government can try and silence Palestine Action, but the direct action bell cannot be un-rung. Nobody is going back to ineffective tactics during a time of genocide. We are going to continue to see people take whatever means available to them to stop this genocide.”

lisa minerva luxx, a writer and political activist, said that “Palestine Action has become a state of mind for the British public … you can’t ban a state of mind. You can’t ban a popular movement that is a response to the failing of a government.”

Yvette Cooper’s ministry briefed The Times of London this week that she planned to present the legislation to Parliament as early as Monday, with a vote in the House of Commons currently planned for Wednesday.

Legal challenge

“If passed, the House of Lords will be given the final say the next day before the proscription order comes into force on [Friday] July 4,” the paper reported. The House of Lords is Britain’s unelected upper chamber.

The legislation seems likely to pass any vote, with the opposition Conservative leader expressing support. Short of an unexpected and massive rebellion by Labour lawmakers, the only hope of stopping the ban would be some sort of legal intervention.

A spokesperson for Palestine Action on Wednesday declined to detail their plans. But this week the group launched a legal fundraising campaign to fight the proscription.

The crowdfunding campaign smashed past its $137,000 fundraising goal within less than 24 hours. As of this writing it stands at more than $243,000.

The Labour government has come under fire from human rights groups, who say that the “terrorist” ban is a massive overreach.

“Amnesty International is seriously concerned by the Home Secretary’s announcement that she intends to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization,” the group said in a statement.

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“The UK has an overly broad definition of terrorism and proscribing a direct action protest group like Palestine Action risks an unlawful interference with the fundamental rights of freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.”

Meanwhile Liberty, a leading civil rights group,said that that Cooper’s proposed banwas “a concerning escalation of how the government treats protest groups” and that they were “worried about the chilling effect this would have on the thousands of people who campaign for Palestine, and their ability to express themselves and take part in protests.”

Environmental campaigners Greenpeace UK told The Guardian that a ban would “mark a dark turn for our democracy and a new low for a government already intent on stamping out the right to protest.”

The Quakers said in a statement that “proscription interferes with our freedom of religion, as well as the freedom of conscience and the right to assembly that all people have, regardless of their motivation for acting.”

Lawmakers who’ve come out against the ban include independent (and former Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn, Green MP Sian Berry and Labour MPs Richard Burgon and Diane Abbott.

Zarah Sultana, an independent former Labour MP actually posted: “We are all Palestine Action” – something that would likely be illegal if repeated after any successful ban.

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Meanwhile, the Israel lobby is happy.

“We welcome the decision to proscribe Palestine Action,” said Phil Rosenberg, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The Board admits in internal documents to having a “close working relationship with the Embassy of Israel” and the Israeli military.

“This is the right decision and we strongly welcome it,” Labour Friends of Israel said. LFI is a front group for the Israeli embassy in London.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism, another group with deep ties to Israel, admitted to lobbying Cooper for the ban. “We are pleased that the Home Secretary has listened to our representations over the last week,” they posted.

Failed repression

The government has been abusing anti-terror laws against Palestine Action almost from when it was first founded in 2020.

Within its first year, co-founders Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard were stopped and questioned under Schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act while crossing the UK border. Then in the spring of 2021, police arresting Palestine Action activists threatened that they may be charged with “terrorist” offenses in future.

None of this was successful in intimidating the group into stopping. The first Palestine Action case to come to court ended in December 2021 with total defeat for Elbit. The “criminal damage” case was effectively turned into a trial about Israeli war crimes. Three activists who had defaced the UAV Engines factory, an Elbit subsidiary in Shenstone near Birmingham in the English Midlands, were acquitted.

Their lawyers successfully argued that while the three had indeed damaged the factory, it was not criminal damage, but rather proportionate action to prevent crimes in Palestine.

Other cases went in broadly the same direction and many other criminal damage charges were dropped before reaching court. Police and prosecutors saw little hope of juries and magistrates siding with an Israeli arms firm.

Sustained victories

In January 2022, after a sustained campaign of window-smashing and other damage by Palestine Action, Elbit sold off its Ferranti components factory in Oldham, near Manchester in the north of England.

Elbit claimed at the time that the sale was merely a “reorganization” which would help in “consolidating its market position.” But only a few months later a government prosecutor admitted that Palestine Action had “forced the closure” of the factory.

Since then, Palestine Action campaigns have led to the successful closure of two further Elbit sites in the UK. Britain has also scrapped its fleet of “Watchkeeper” drones (which were jointly developed by Elbit and a French company), leaving the future of Elbit’s Leicester site in doubt.

Elbit has eight remaining sites in the UK. It looked to be only a matter of time before they were forced out too.

So the government cracked down.

Proportionality defenses began to be disallowed by judges, with defendants often prevented from explaining to juries why they had taken the action they did.

Then, in August last year, the state began to use anti-terror laws in earnest, withthe arrest and detention of the Filton 18.

Six activists smashed a modified prison van into Elbit’s manufacturing hub in Filton, Bristol. They dismantled Israeli weapons, including quadcopter drones, which the group says are the same model used by the Israeli military to target and kill Palestinian civilians in the Gaza genocide.

The action allegedly inflicted over $1.3 million worth of damage on Elbit.

In the days, weeks and months after the successful action, a total of 18 activists were rounded up by armed counter-terrorism police in different parts of the country and held without charge in jail. They were interrogated repeatedly under the Terrorism Act, and held for longer periods than normally allowed without the magic word “terrorist” being invoked.

Yet all were eventually charged with non-terror offenses – making it a clear abuse of police powers that they were initially detained using the extra powers allowed by the Terrorism Act.

Human rights law

A legal challenge to the ban seems certain, especially since Palestine Action has raised so much money for it. In the text accompanying the legal crowdfunding campaign, Palestine Action says it has instructed Gareth Peirce from Birnberg Peirce Solicitors to fight the proscription process.

Peirce is a legendary name in British human rights law, having represented such clients as the Birmingham Six, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes and Julian Assange.

According to a report this week in the Jewish News, an anti-Palestinian news site, “government reticence to move forward with proscription” until now “was reportedly due to concerns that a judicial review could overturn” a ban.

But if the ban goes ahead next week, overturning it through such a legal challenge could take a long time, with the case likely to reach the Supreme Court.

What happens in the meantime?

International and criminal law expert Tayab Ali of the Bindmans law firm told The Electronic Intifada that “on the day an organization is proscribed, the organization is deemed not to exist anymore.”

But after a proscription, the Bindmans partner said, “all membership is deemed to lapse” and “nobody is a member of Palestine Action, unless they either carry out an activity of Palestine Action or profess to be a member of Palestine Action after that point.”

In the five years it’s been operating, Palestine Action has never had a formal membership, and is instead composed of what it terms “autonomous cells” to keep it secure.

But Ali says that under the law, “it’s membership in the sense of you’re carrying out their activities.”

Ali also said that it’s highly likely that a ban would lead to mass arrests of prominent Palestine Action activists as well as increased Schedule 7 stops at airports.

Proscription is a way for the government to “short circuit” any need to actually prove “terrorism” in evidence.

“We’ve been calling this, since the year 2000, short circuiting evidence … They’ll automatically be considered to be terrorists after that. This is really chilling.”

But it remains to be seen if any ban succeeds in actually stopping Palestine Action and its supporters.

Renowned novelist and screenwriter Sally Rooney wrote in The Guardian last weekend that “I can only say that I admire and support Palestine Action wholeheartedly – and I will continue to, whether that becomes a terrorist offense or not.”

Rooney is Irish and lives in Ireland. But would the British government decide to make an example of her if she visits the UK?

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Andrea Needham, a veteran anti-war activist, told LBC radio that the ban would be “unenforceable because of the thousands of people – including herself – who will continue to stand with Palestine Action,” the stationreported.

Needham and three other women – known as the Ploughshares Four – broke into a military facility in 1996 and damaged a BAE Hawk Warplane with hammers to stop it being exported to the Indonesian military, which was carrying out a genocide against occupied East Timor.

Needham was defended by Keir Starmer – now prime minister – when he was working as a lawyer.

The group was found not guilty of criminal damage by a jury after they successfully argued they were trying to prevent genocidal acts.

She told LBC that Starmer “has no moral compass” and should not label Palestine Action a terrorist group. “I think any considerations of human rights have gone out the window in his journey,” she said.

“We were looking at possibly a few years in prison for criminal damage … It’s going to have this awful, chilling effect on free speech because potentially you can go to prison for 14 years for just expressing support for a proscribed organization.”

Will Palestine Action be banned? And if they are, will they go quietly or will they carry on taking direct action against extensions of the Israeli war machine in the UK?

Time will tell.

Originally published by The Electronic Intifada.