[News] Being branded as ‘extremist’ won’t deter Palestine Action

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Being branded as ‘extremist’ won’t deter Palestine Action

*Palestinian solidarity remains steadfast despite growing authoritarianism
in the United Kingdom.*

   - lisa minerva luxx <https://www.aljazeera.com/author/lisa-minerva-luxx>
   Writer and social activist

Published On 28 Mar 2024 -
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/28/being-branded-as-extremist-wont-deter-palestine-action
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Activists from Palestine Action spray paint over the London offices of the
Arms Company Leonardo which supplies fighter jets to the Israeli military
on November 2, 2023 in London, England [Guy Smallman/Getty Images]

The United Kingdom is plummeting into a paranoid deluge of authoritarianism.

Since October, our government’s steadfast support for Israel has ushered in
a new age of state coercion, exposing in its wake the artifice of democracy
in Britain.

In response to weekly pro-Palestine protests calling for an end to Israel’s
onslaught on Gaza attended by hundreds of thousands in London and other
major British cities, the Conservative Party government expanded police
powers and moved to weaponise concerns over so-called “extremism”. Its
leading figures referred to peaceful protesters exercising their democratic
rights as “mobs” and “hate marchers”, classifying any and all opposition to
Israel’s war and occupation as hate and racism.

On March 1, in an impromptu address to the nation responding to the
by-election victory of an independent candidate who campaigned on a
pro-Palestine platform, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemned what he deemed
a “shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality” in the
country, and committed to implementing a robust new framework that would
allow his government to tackle “extremism” at its roots – a framework many
feared would be another attempt by the unelected Sunak government to
curtail political freedoms and make a mockery of the UK’s democracy.

Two weeks later, these fears were realised when Communities Secretary
Michael Gove unveiled a new “extremism” definition under which certain
groups will be blocked from government funding and meeting officials.

According to the new definition: “Extremism is the promotion or advancement
of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to
negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others” or
“undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary
democracy and democratic rights”. The definition further includes anything
that would “intentionally create a permissive environment for others to
achieve” the above aims.

This is an intentionally vague, purposefully subjective definition that
would serve to do nothing but silence, marginalise, and eventually
criminalise many Muslim communities, civil liberties organisations, and
others campaigning to uphold human rights and international law in
Palestine. Essentially, it has the potential to brand as an “extremist” any
individual or collective who does not align with the government’s
unconditionally pro-Israel stance.

Our group, Palestine Action, is also facing the threat of being labelled as
“extremist” due to the principled actions our front-line members have taken
to put an end to Britain’s complicity in Israel’s occupation and ethnic
cleansing of Palestinian territories.

The main target of Palestine Action’s campaign has been the UK subsidiary
factories and offices of Elbit Systems – Israel’s largest arms manufacturer
that supply some 85 percent of the land and air munitions used by its
military.

Since its formation in 2020, Palestine Action has forced the permanent
closure of Elbit’s Oldham factory and pushed the company to abandon its
London headquarters. In 2022, the group’s protest action led to the
dissolution of contracts worth 280 million pounds ($353.6m) between the UK
Ministry of Defence and Elbit Systems. Our campaign has also successfully
impelled several leading British and European companies to cut ties with
Elbit permanently.

We have long known that the success of our campaign against Elbit Systems,
and Israeli interests in general, has upset the government. This is why it
came as no surprise that in the draft plan of Gove’s new definition,
Palestine Action was named as a group that could be captured in the new,
extended “extremism” bracket.

However, we will never be deterred by such intimidation attempts.

As a network, we have already faced arrests, house raids, police brutality
and imprisonment. In 2023, it was exposed
<https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/20/israeli-embassy-officials-attempted-to-influence-uk-court-cases-documents-suggest>
in the British press how Israeli embassy officials have been pressing the
Attorney General’s Office (AGO) to intervene in the prosecution of
Palestine Action protesters on their behalf.

We have not given into such undemocratic efforts to silence us in the past,
and we will not do so in the future, whether our group ends up being
classified as an “extremist” entity under Gove’s new definition or not.

The persecution we face in the UK is nothing compared with the horrors
communities in occupied Palestine are being subjected to by Israel, with
the backing of our government. With that in mind, we see no way forward
other than continuing with our campaign, with integrity and determination.

The state’s renewed attempts to monitor and bully our movement into silence
since the beginning of this latest war on Gaza did not break our resolve or
weaken the growing public support for our cause.

In fact, Palestine Action has received thousands of fresh sign-ups since
October. We have new recruits from across the social spectrum: A young
mother of toddlers, a TV producer, many doctors, delivery drivers, primary
school teachers, and disability support workers … People of all ages,
classes, religions and experience approached us and said they want to do
their part. These new members took on many different roles, including
arrestee and justice-system support.

The overwhelming majority – if not all – of these new recruits said that
since the beginning of this latest onslaught on Gaza, they have become
disillusioned with the façade of democracy in the UK. They told us they
have lost faith in marching, signing petitions and writing to their
legislators as they helplessly watched on their screens weapon
technologies, that continue to be supplied by Britain, shred Palestinian
bodies into pieces.

They explained that they chose to join Palestine Action because they
measured their Western comfort against their conscience, and felt obligated
to do more. That they are ready to dedicate themselves to a practice of
justice which leads to material change.

Most of all, they said they now refuse to feel powerless – no more feeling
useless at the sight of a mass grave, babies shivering in terror, young
boys turned skeletal by famine, body parts hanging from walls, or a father
listening for the screams of his daughter under the rubble.

Each allegation against Palestine Action unwittingly sheds light on the
crimes our campaigners are using their bodies to stop – the most barbaric
crimes against humanity.

If a house is on fire with a child inside and a passer-by must kick down
the door to stop the child from being burned alive, then the door becomes
immaterial. British government’s new definition of “extremism”, however,
appear more concerned with the fate of the door than that of the child –
and even less concerned with asking who started the fire, and who supplied
the matches. But one cannot speak of the passer-by and the door without
speaking of the child and the fire.

As tensions continue to rise in the UK, supporters of Palestine must not
lose sight of their uprightness. Alongside other principled groups,
including CAGE, Black Lives Matter and Sisters Uncut, Palestine Action will
continue to model steadfastness and focus. It is not a time to be subsumed
by rhetoric when actions are urgently needed.

We are being asked by numerous media outlets how – if brandished – this new
“extremist” label would affect our movement. Our response is clear: it
won’t. If a just democracy was functioning healthily, Palestine Action
would not need to exist. Palestine Action’s commitment is to Palestinians
and the struggle against a genocidal occupation; we will not stop until
British complicity stops and Israel’s largest arms manufacturer no longer
operates out of the UK.
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