Palestine Action Activists Face Online Censorship, Racial Profiling And Intimidation By Police

Palestine Action, a UK based activist group which leads a growing campaign to shut down Israeli-based weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, has experienced a staunch crackdown on its work. Activists have been detained, interrogated, spied upon and allegedly racially profiled by British police forces.

The group ‘Palestine Action’ was set up last year, in 2020, breaking onto the activist scene by its targeting of Elbit Systems factories around Britain. The group has been described as using similar creative tactics, to disrupt Elbit facilities, as well known Climate Change activist group ‘Extinction Rebellion’.

This Tuesday, Facebook had unpublished the official ‘Palestine Action’ page, this came following joint action having been taken by activists from both Palestine Action and Extinction Rebellion against the Elbit Ferranti Factory in Oldham.

Following the success of the Elbit factory shut-down, Facebook has "unpublished" Palestine Action's account | join us at https://t.co/ZD80Xg7cU0 pic.twitter.com/s5rZVGYCGw

— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) February 2, 2021

This joint action has further expanded the campaign against Elbit Systems, coming just weeks after the UK Ministry of Defence secured a 102 million pound deal with Elbit. The UK’s Defence Procurement Minister Jeremy Quin said of the deal that “This contract with Elbit Systems UK not only delivers the very latest in battlefield technology to our frontline soldiers, but also invests in the British defence industry, sustaining more than 500 jobs across the UK.”.

With actions like the obstructing of entrances to Elbit’s factories, the activists hope to raise awareness and create a debate around the alignment of the British Defence Ministry with an arms company which they argue are complicit in war crimes.

Elbit Systems, in November of 2018, announced their purchase of Israeli Military Industries (IMI), Israel’s long time state owned weapons manufacturer. IMI Systems is the sole manufacturer of small arms munitions for the Israeli military and supplied the bullets which ultimately killed over 300 unarmed demonstrators as part of Gaza’s Great Return March. According to a UNHRC report, adopted by the UN body, Israeli forces have deliberately targeted children, women, medics, the elderly and those with disabilities who posed no threat to soldiers.

The awareness raising campaigns by Palestine Action have not gone unnoticed by the Israeli regime. Huda Ammori, a founding member of Palestine Action, says that “three weeks after our launch, the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs met with Benny Gantz [Israeli Minister of War] and Dominic Raab [UK Secretary of State], where they specifically asked them to crackdown on Palestine Action because they wanted to do business in London”.

Since the launch of Palestine Action, activists have been targeted, spied on and arrested/detained. According to Richard Barnard, also a founding member of Palestine Action, the police crackdowns were more intense than what he had seen during his time as a climate activist, “The nature of the arrests, the violent way the police react, especially during one of the first arrests the way they threw Huda to the ground, it’s just completely different to the way they treat white middle class protesters” he said. Richard also said that an officer interrogating him had said that “it’s nice to interview someone who’s British, normally we interview people of other backgrounds and religions”, adding that the way it was approached was “clearly racist and bizarre”.

Huda stated that she had been told, upon detainment by the Police, that she would be granted to no access to a lawyer and could be possibly charged under terrorism legislation. She stated that, being from an Iraqi-Palestinian background, that Arabs and People of Colour are used to security stops, but that this was different. “[The police] asked me personal questions about my family…and ridiculous questions about the Middle East” Huda added.

According to the activists, the Police actions have been “extreme”, with officers having knocked on people’s doors in the middle of the night, confiscating laptops and even installing a camera in a school opposite an activist’s home. The measures taken were also described as being part of the “institutional racist nature of the British State”.

Huda Ammori said the following, in closing, on the crackdown: “In essence what we realised from that [the Police crackdown], is that we are making an impact. What they did and detaining us afterwards was a message to try and scare us off and intimidate us, from what we are doing in Palestine Action, and to send a message to others not to join us, but actually what we see is that the more oppression we face from the State, the more support the people want to give.”