Background On Palestine Action.
On Saturday, Britain’s Zionist police state arrested 500 protestors in London’s Trafalgar Square for simply holding signs that read “I oppose genocide — I support Palestine Action”.
For context, Palestine Action is an anti-war activist group best known for disrupting and causing damage to the UK-based facilities of Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms manufacturing company that played a crucial role in the Gaza Genocide.
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has documented the central role Elbit Systems played in the genocide in Gaza, writing, “Since 2023, Elbit Systems has cooperated closely on Israeli military operations, embedding key staff in the Ministry of Defense, and was awarded the 2024 Israeli Defense Prize. Elbit Systems … provides a critical domestic supply of weaponry, and reinforces Israeli military alliances through arms exports and joint development of military technology.”
She added that, “Drones largely developed and supplied by Elbit Systems … have long flown alongside fighter jets, surveilling Palestinians and delivering target intelligence,” and that “For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems … the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide – generated a sharp surge in their annual profits”.
At the behest of the Israel lobby, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper officially had Palestine Action proscribed as a terrorist organization, making it a criminal offence to voice support for the group.
The British Zionist lobby took credit for the ban , with the UK-based Zionist lobby group “We Believe in Israel” boasting that the ban “is the direct result of months of sustained research, strategic advocacy, and evidence-based reporting led by WBII and our partners. Our publication, ‘Proscribing Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act,’ offered the most comprehensive legal and national security case to date for banning the group”, and the Zionist lobby group Campaign against Antisemitism boasting, “We are pleased that the Home Secretary has listened to our representations over the last week” after the ban.
But a leaked report from the UK’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), a committee made up of members of all of Britian’s security agencies admitted that “In support of its aims, the group (Palestine Action) primarily uses direct action tactics, the majority of which would not constitute an act of terrorism as defined under Section 1 of the Terrorism Act (TACT) 2000, on the basis that any damage to property is typically more minor.”
Despite this, the Zionist police state in the UK arrested over 2,200 peaceful activists on terrorism charges simply for holding signs in support of Palestine Action.
In one case in Parliament Square and Whitehall , the UK Metropolitan Police boasted that “ 466 people had been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action”.
In February of this year, the UK High Court in London ruled that the ban on Palestine Action was “unlawful”.
Despite this, the arrests against peaceful activists continued, with the UK Met Police saying “it would resume arresting protesters for supporting Palestine Action”, because the court ruling is “pending an appeal”, leading to the mass arrests last Saturday.
UK Conducts Rigged Show Trial To Justify Ban.
Much of the justification used for the ban on Palestine Action was the case of the “Filton 6”, six Palestine Action activists who broke into an Elbit Systems factory on August 2024 and were arrested on terrorism charges for causing damage to “Israeli quadcopter drones, which have been used frequently to massacre Palestinians in Gaza”, as journalist Asa Winstanley noted .
In February of this year, the Filton 6 were “acquitted or not convicted of all charges against them” by a UK jury in what was described by Palestine Action as “monumental and total victory”.
Asa Winstanley reported that, “All six were found not guilty of aggravated burglary, the most serious charge which could have led to life sentences” and that “the jury acquitted Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin of violent disorder” and “refused to convict Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner and Leona Kamio of the same charge” and “refused to convict any of the defendants of criminal damage”.
The Filton 24 Defence Committee noted that the “jury agreed with the defense argument, that the defendants’ sole intention was to use the items, including sledgehammers, as tools to disarm Israeli weapons … The jury understood that it is not those who destroy Israeli weapons which are guilty, rather the guilty party is the one that deploys such weapons to commit genocide in Gaza.”
But to reverse this decision, a rigged show retrial is currently underway in the UK, where the jury is being denied the vital context of the fact that the six Palestine Action activists in Filton were destroying military equipment used to commit a genocide, and where a secret terrorism charge is being levied against the activists, without the jury’s knowledge- a story the UK press has been forbidden to report on.
This was exposed by British MP, Zarah Sultana, who stated in British parliament that, “If convicted they (the Filton 6) and 18 others will be sentenced as terrorists, but the jury will not be told that, they could convict them on criminal damage charges with no idea that terrorism sentences will follow” adding that “the defendants themselves have been banned from telling the jury that they acted to stop genocide under threat of contempt charges”.
As Sultana noted, “this is what a stitch-up looks like”.
The independent anti war outlet The Grayzone reported that , “The six Palestine Action defendants in the upcoming trial are not yet being publicly accused of terrorist crimes, and will be tried collectively for criminal damage, with one facing separate charges of causing grievous bodily harm with intent” adding, “if they are found guilty, Judge Jeremy Johnson has been granted the authority to decide unilaterally whether they should be sentenced as terrorists”.
It added that, “court-imposed restrictions will prohibit what the six defendants can say about the crimes of which they are accused. Expressly forbidden from informing jurors about their motivations for crippling a core component of Israel’s international killing machine, defendants will be deprived of a major prong of their legal strategy. In past trials, activists have successfully argued their alleged offences were necessary to prevent far more serious crimes being perpetrated by Israel.”
It added, “While the jurors will be told they are ruling on a criminal case, a judge who has demonstrated every intention of ruining the organisation has been granted to latitude to sentence the defendants as terrorists. And the jurors have been blocked from knowing this.”
Because the jury acquitted the Filton six when understanding their intention to stop genocide, the UK is now conducting a rigged trial where the jury is denied this context, with the intention of getting a secret terrorism conviction against them, without the jury’s knowledge.
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Britain has fallen to the genociders.
what a shameful miscarriage of justice. i hope this rigged case fails as well