The UK Labels Anti-Genocide Activism Terrorism.
The UK Has Proscribed Palestine Action As A 'Terrorist Organization' In Another Major Free Speech Crackdown.
The UK has officially proscribed the activist group Palestine Action as a “terrorist organization”, meaning it will now be illegal in Britain to voice support for the group.
For context, “Palestine Action” was an activist group in the UK, best known for disrupting Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer with facilities in Britain that manufactures arms used in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
A recent report from Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, wrote that “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” and that “Elbit Systems provides a critical domestic supply of weaponry, and reinforces Israeli military alliances through arms exports and joint development of military technology”.
She noted that “For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 percent 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.”
In reality, all Palestine Action activists had ever done was property damage to military equipment, used in a genocide where children have been intentionally shot in the head and chest, Doctors, Journalists, and Academics have been targeted, hospitals and housing have been indiscriminately bombed, detainees have been raped and tortured and starved civilians have been intentionally massacred at aid sites, among other atrocities.
Despite this, the pro Zionist UK Government has conspired with Elbit Systems and the Israeli Embassy in London to crack down on Palestine Action, with government officials repeatedly meeting with Elbit Systems officials to “reassure” them that “the criminal protest acts against Elbit Systems UK are taken seriously by the Government”.
The Israeli embassy in London has also repeatedly pressured the UK government to crack down on Palestine Action protests.
The crackdown went further after Palestine Action activists broke into the RAF Brize Norton air base in Britain- where the UK allowed Israeli planes to land after bombing Gaza- and spray-painted two planes.
This caused Yvette Cooper, Britain’s Home Secretary, to introduce legislation, proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organization.
Cooper’s money from the Israeli lobby and connections to the Israeli embassy in London certainly played a role in this decision.
The independent news outlet “The Canary” noted, “Yvette Cooper in particular has received tens of thousands of pounds from Labour Together, the shady think tank linked with millionaire pro-Israel lobbyist Trevor Chinn, who has donated around £200,000 to Starmer and his cronies in recent years. Labour Together played a prominent role in undermining the left during and following the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. It aimed ‘to defeat Corbynism’ by using ‘soft branding that made them seem warm and cuddly’. And it once rallied supporters to ‘destroy the Canary or the Canary destroys us’”.
Yvette Cooper also appears to have a close relationship with the far-right Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, whom Cooper has posted multiple pictures smiling beside.
On Piers Morgan’s show. Hotovely implied that Israel would be justified in killing 600,000 civilians in Gaza.
She has also expressed support for the Greater Israel Project, calling for the expansion of Israeli territory into Jordan and Syria.
The Israeli government cut out group “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism,” which has “received hundreds of thousands in donations from the Israeli ‘quasi-governmental’ Jewish National Fund” bragged on social media that “We are pleased that the Home Secretary (Yvette Cooper) has listened to our representatives over the last week” referring to her decision to prosribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization.
In order to make sure that Palestine Action was proscribed, Cooper listed it alongside a neo-Nazi death cult called the “Maniacs Murder Cult” and a far-right Russian organization called the “Russian Imperial Movement” to ensure the prosiption legislation would pass.
A group of UN experts warned that the proscription of Palestine Action “would criminalise legitimate activities by innocent members of the group that do not contribute in any way to property damage by other members, let alone 'terrorism' which, if properly defined, the group has not committed” and warned that “Individuals could be prosecuted for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and opinion, assembly, association and participation in political life” noting that “this would have a chilling effect on political protest and advocacy generally in relation to defending human rights in Palestine.”
Despite this, British members of parliament voted 385 to 26 in favor of proscribing Palestine Action. The motion then also passed 144-16 in favor in the House of Lords.
After attempting to appeal the ban, the British,“Judge Justice Chamberlain did not grant interim relief blocking the proscription order pending judicial review”.
During the hearing, the UK government’s lawyer arguing in favor of the proscription reportedly said, “We accept that it's draconian, it's meant to be”.
And draconian it was, after the ban, the UK Metropolitan Police put out a statement saying “Palestine Action has now been proscribed by the UK Government and expressing support for them is a criminal offence in the UK.”
The release wrote, “Proscription makes it a criminal offence to invite or express support for a proscribed organisation through chanting, wearing clothing or displaying articles such as flags, signs or logos.”
This law has previously been weaponized on a mass scale against pro-Palestine journalists and activists who the UK has accused of supporting Palestinian resistance groups, which are formally proscribed as “terrorist” groups in the UK.
They have used this Orwellian law to arrest and, in cases, charge people like the journalists Asa Winstanley and Richard Medhurst for their reporting on the genocide in Gaza.
Now, expressing support for the non-violent activist group Palestine Action is a criminal offense, which UN experts said could result in “disproportionate penalties of up to 14 years in prison”.
This law was enforced after “More than two dozen people gathered close to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, holding signs” that stated “I support Palestine Action, I oppose Genocide”.
For holding signs in support of an activist group, “twenty-nine people have been arrested on suspicion of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000”.
Those arrested at the protest included “a priest, an emeritus professor, and a number of health professionals”.
Tim Crossland, one of the protest organizers, said, “What we’re doing here as a group of priests, teachers, health workers, human rights lawyers [is] we’re refusing to be silenced. Because it goes to the core of what we believe in: that we oppose genocide – I didn’t think that was that controversial – and we support the people who resist genocide.”
Despite the fact that the protest consisted of peaceful activists holding cardboard signs, 29 of them were arrested, including an 83-year-old priest named Sue Parfitt.
Pictured Above: protester at the protest opposing the proscription of Palestine Action.
It will certainly be hard for the UK police to fully uphold this new Orwellian law banning voicing support for Palestine Action, with high-profile figures such as the journalist George Monbiot and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters expressing support for Palestine Action in defiance of the draconian law.
However, it does show that the UK is in no way a free country whatsoever and that the country’s establishment is willing to throw any semblance of free speech down the drain in order to protect Israel and its genocide in Gaza.
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Not only is what the British Govt doing a huge clampdown on the freedom of speech and what previous protestors have done to achieve civil rights for the people (e.g. Suffragettes); to equate an action group that has only targeted weapons factories and fighter jets with terrorism is to spit on the lives of people who have died after real acts of terrorism.
The British Govt is essentially saying that all those lives lost are equivalent to factories and planes. So f'in heartless
Wow, what a pendulum swing. First not prosecuting Muslim gang rapists so as not to offend the Muslim community to now calling Palestinian support an act of terrorism.