Reports indicate that over the past year, the UK has become one of the European countries where the fight against Israel and its purported genocides in Gaza has intensified.
Israeli military companies, their subsidiaries, companies and banks associated with Israel, and anyone linked to the Israeli military have been targeted.
An investigation published earlier this week by The Sunday Times revealed details about the scope of the “anti-Israel” campaign, which reported over 170 incidents last year and is linked to a group calling itself Palestine Action.
The investigation uncovered how Palestine Action activists inflicted millions of pounds in damage to factories that supply equipment to the British Army and Royal Navy.
According to the newspaper, a review of open-source materials, including X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, shows that since its establishment in July 2020, Palestine Action has claimed responsibility for 356 direct actions against defense and engineering firms, banks, insurance companies, real estate and property firms, accounting firms, universities, and local government buildings based in Britain.
With Prime Minister Keir Starmer announcing billions of pounds in additional spending for the defense industry, Palestine Action has vowed to intensify its campaign against cuts over the next 12 months.
The direct actions not only include protests but also breaking into factories, cutting internet cables, vandalizing workshops and offices with weapons, defacing historical buildings in Oxford and Cambridge with red paint, tearing down a bust of Israel’s first president at Manchester University, and mistreating and stealing from employees of certain companies.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action told The Sunday Times, “The main goal of our direct action campaign is to cleanse the UK of Israel’s weapon factories.”
Analyses show that the number of attacks has risen from 17 in 2020 to 170 in 2024, and despite a ceasefire in Gaza, attacks have continued this year. It is reported that 76 different companies have been affected.
A former UK government official interviewed by The Sunday Times stated, “The frequency of the attacks reflects the industry’s scale of attempts to sabotage the UK defense sector, terrorize employees, and weaken our country.”
Palestine Action was founded about five years ago by Richard Barnard and Huda Amuri. In an interview, Amuri stated that her father was Palestinian and that her grandfather was killed by the British during the Great Arab Revolt against the Mandate in 1936.
Barnard is a key activist in the “radical” environmental organization Extinction Rebellion. The group initially targeted Elbit’s UK subsidiary but has expanded its focus to many other companies over the years, especially following the Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7. A total of 148 companies, including British BAE Systems and Italian Leonardo, have been targeted by the group.
The group’s first direct action occurred on July 30, targeting the UK headquarters of Elbit Systems UK, the largest private weapons company in Israel. The building was covered in green paint and graffiti reading “Shut Elbit Down.”
The following day, four members returned to one of the 16 Elbit sites in the UK to occupy offices. Palestine Action claims that Elbit modifies its drones for use by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
Elbit UK holds contracts for producing night vision goggles for British special forces and high-tech radar systems for the Royal Navy. The company acknowledged that from November 2023 to January 2024, one of its firms, Instro Precision, shipped four “components” to Israel from its Kent facility.
During these events, the UK Ministry of Defence signed a £102 million contract with Elbit for a new “strike sensor” system that will enable frontline soldiers to identify and engage “enemy” targets within seconds.
The report noted that until 2022, eight members of Palestine Action had been convicted, with this number rising to 48 in 2023. Among these convicts are a professional artist, a caregiver, a consultant previously convicted of knife possession, and a homeless person.
According to the newspaper, as the conflict in Gaza continues into 2024, the group’s attacks have increased. Members of the organization began hiring and creating “cells” of three to five people, guided by an “Underground Manual” available on their site.
Training days for members were held in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow, where individuals were advised to engage in direct actions “with an effective hammer in hand.”
In 2024, Palestine Action organized multiple protests at Elbit facilities nearly every day, including at drone engine plants in Shenstone, drone tactical systems in Leicester, and manufacturing sites in Bristol. “We were called baby killers, and we were spit on when we showed up to work,” said an engineer speaking on the condition of anonymity, adding that “they took pictures of us and struck our cars.”
A direct action on August 6 at the Elbit site in Bristol resulted in “£1 million worth of damage” and led to the arrest of 16 individuals. Some members used a modified prison van to break through barricades before damaging the building with hammers. During the incident, two police officers and a security guard were injured.
Last month, masked Palestine Action activists stormed the headquarters of Martin-Baker in Buckinghamshire, a leading manufacturer of ejection seats for aircraft, including RAF Typhoons, which works with 81 countries.
The group explained that this was due to the ejection seats used in Israel’s F-35 fighter jets.
The Sunday Times reported that a total of 118 legal proceedings have been initiated against Palestine Action activists, with 33 of them found not guilty, and 24 more trials expected this year.
Lord Woolf presented a report last year titled “Defending Our Democracy from Repression,” advising the government to establish a new legal framework to facilitate the imprisonment of Palestine Action activists who break the law and to grant authorities powers to impede their fundraising efforts and meetings.
According to the CrowdJustice page, co-founder Barnard will face charges of terrorism in April after calling for support for Hamas and being accused of criminally damaging Israel’s weapon factories in two speeches last year.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action stated that their campaign targets “the arms companies that manufacture Israeli weapons” and that the use of counterterrorism laws allows the state to strengthen a campaign of intimidation against Palestine Action activists by abusing powers to protect the military supply chain of the foreign genocidal organization.