Pro-Palestine group threatens UK f irms
A HARDLINE pro-Palestine protest group linked to Extinction Rebellion is urging its supporters to vandalise businesses, UK government buildings and local councils that flew the Israeli flag after the Hamas terror attacks.
An undercover Mail on Sunday reporter attended virtual meetings held by Palestine Action (PA).
The group recently targeted a Leicester drone factory due to its Israeli military contracts and sprayed paint on the BBC’s headquarters to protest against what it views as pro-Israeli coverage.
Some of its leading members have made rabid anti-Semitic comments. They urged members to launch a campaign of violence and intimidation against 50 firms and institutions whose addresses it published on its website. Palestine Action was founded in 2020 by former Extinction Rebellion activist Richard Barnard and Huda Ammori, an ex-campaign officer for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has organised anti-Israel marches.
After Hamas’s attacks on October 7, which it called the al-Aqsa Flood, a senior PA activist appeared to celebrate them, saying: ‘When we hear the resistance of the al-Aqsa Flood, we must turn that flood into a tsunami over the whole world.’
Another of the group’s senior activists previously made antiSemitic comments on X, formerly Twitter: ‘9/11 was a PR stunt by the hardline Zionists to launch the war on Islam on behalf of Israel, says US scholar.’
PA’s leaders want activists to vandalise offices of defence companies such as Elbit, Rafael and Teledyne. It also urged supporters to target the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office in Whitehall.
An MoS reporter attended a closed meeting on Zoom with 39 members earlier this month. In the meeting, an activist suggested occupying Bristol city hall because the council had flown the Israeli flag after the Hamas massacre of more than 1,400 Israeli civilians.
‘Let’s do it, I like it,’ replied one of PA’s leaders. The group claimed responsibility for daubing fake blood on the BBC’s London headquarters earlier this month.
It accused the corporation of being ‘complicit in manufacturing consent for the [Israeli] occupation’s genocide of Palestinians’.
Days later, the group rammed a van through the gates of the offices of U-Tacs, a Leicester-based subsidiary of Elbit Systems, which it accuses of supplying the Israeli government with military hardware and drones.
PA published an ‘Underground Manual’ online, which gives guidance on how to break into businesses. A day after the Zoom meeting, our reporter was called by an activist who wanted to find out what the ‘new recruit’ can do.
He told our reporter not to worry about committing criminal offences as the judicial system was lax. He said: ‘You’ll spend 24 hours in a police cell and be released on bail.’
David Collier, an author who has investigated PA, said: ‘I think this group should be locked up because of the criminal damage they are causing. I also believe that it is an anti-Semitic group.’
Last night, Palestine Action said in a statement: ‘PA takes direct action to halt the production of Israeli weapons, which are either marketed as “battle-tested” on the Palestinian people, and/or used to massacre them, in contravention of international law.’
‘You’ll spend 24 hours in a cell and be released’