After the failure of a last-minute legal challenge to prevent the proscription of the UK Palestinian solidarity group, Palestine Action, under the terrorism laws put forth by the Keir Starmer government, being a member of, or showing support for, Palestine Action will now be a criminal offence.
Palestine Action uses direct action to mainly target Israeli weapons factories in the UK and their supply chain. Elbit Systems which manufactures drones used against Palestinian civilians as part of the genocide taking place in Gaza has a large factory in the UK which has been the target of direct action by Palestine Action.
Raza Husain KC, who represents Palestine Action’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, states the following, as reported by the UK journal, The Guardian:
“The main target has been stopping Elbit Systems … which markets itself as the backbone of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” said Husain. “As my client says: ‘The aim of terrorism is to take lives and hurt people, that’s the opposite of what we do.’”
“He said before making the decision the government had engaged with the Israeli government, Elbit Systems and pro-Israeli lobby groups, while Palestine Action and other pro-Palestine groups were not consulted.” The Guardian also quoted Husain as adding that the proscription decision was “an ill-considered, discriminatory and authoritarian abuse of statutory power”.
This action on the part of the Starmer government mirrors the similar move on the part of Canada’s Trudeau government to place Samidoun – which works on behalf of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails – on Canada’s terrorist list. As per the reference to the UK government’s proscription decision linked to pressure exerted by pro-Israel lobby groups in the UK, it is to be noted that Canada’s proscription of Samidoun followed an intensive lobbying effort on the part of the B’nai Brith of Canada. It is to be noted that the government of Canada continues to supply arms to Israel in support of the genocide in Gaza thereby proving itself to be complicit in the enactment of the genocide. Similarly, the Starmer government has been accused of covertly supporting Israeli military operations.
Flight data analyzed by Drop Site News suggests that the UK’s Labor government has secretly permitted Israeli Air Force (IAF) planes, involved in the bombing of Gaza, to land and potentially refuel at RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase. According to the Drop Site News article, “Britain’s Labour government has secretly allowed at least three Israeli Air Force (IAF) planes involved in the bombing of Gaza to land in the UK since it took office . . .”
The Drop Site article also reveals that “All the planes landed at RAF Brize Norton, the largest airbase in Britain, located in Oxfordshire. One of these Israeli planes was in the sky over Gaza around the time of two apparent war crimes, including in October 2024, when the IAF bombed a residential complex in the northern city of Beit Lahiya, killing 73 people.”
The article goes on to describe the real reason for the Starmer government’s proscription of Palestine Action:
“Brize Norton was recently targeted by the non-violent activist group Palestine Action over UK military participation in Israel’s war on Gaza, which resulted in an order from the British Home Secretary to proscribe them as a terrorist organization. The activists sprayed red paint on two Voyager aircraft.”
It was subsequent to the Palestine Action intervention at Brize Norton, which clearly highlights the Starmer government’s complicity in the Israeli-led genocide in Gaza, that Starmer opted to place Palestine Action on the UK terrorist list. Like the Trudeau-Carney Liberal (Zionist) Party of Canada, Starmer supports Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism, and in a show of support for Israeli war crimes, lends military support to Israel’s war crimes while proscribing pro-Palestinan organizations that defend Palestinian civil and human rights.
It is to be remembered that it was the pro-Zionist Starmer who smeared Jeremy Corbin and forced him out of the British Labour Party by branding him an ‘antisemite’ at the behest of Zionists in the Labour Party and pro-Israel groups in the UK. Starmer has made a career of sucking up to the pro-Israel lobby as has virtually every Liberal and Conservative government in Canada over numerous decades. Let’s face it, they live in the pockets of the pro-Israel lobby in their respective countries.
The Drop Site article states that “Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now independent MP for Islington North, recently proposed a bill in parliament to establish an independent inquiry into the extensive but opaque UK role in Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
What is more, the blowback against Zionist Starmer has only just begun. Only just recently, Zara Sultana, a UK Labour member for the past 14 years, has announced on X that she is quitting the Labour Party to form a new party with Jeremy Corbin. Progressive elements in the British Labour Party may very well follow suit. This is Starmer’s swan song. It’s all downhill from here.
The time has come to state the obvious: the West is a morally bankrupt entity led by the feckless likes of Starmer et al. Starmer is typical of the type of obsequious political Jacks-in-the-Box who currently hold power in the West, imperialists who tacitly if not openly support the principle of The White Man’s Burden which is the justification for the pillaging and rape of indigenous populations, in this case the indigenous Palestinians of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As goes the Israeli hasbara (propaganda): Israel is defending Western civilisation against the Barbarians. That has been the mantra of every genocidal imperialist state since the West rose on the back of the slave trade.
The Palestinians will survive and they will flourish despite the horrible carnage taking place in Gaza and the West Bank, supported openly by the West. It’s the Starmers et al who are on the way out. That is inevitable. They have been found guilty in the Court of the People. Sic Semper Tyrannis!
The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author
