In trying to proscribe Palestine Action, the British government has in one move united the movement for Palestinian liberation in Britain, rendering the refrain ‘we are all Palestinians’ truer than ever. The government has decided that anyone expressing support for Palestinians should be treated as Palestinians are treated by their coloniser: that they should only have as many human, legal or political rights as the state deigns to give them, and that those rights can be stripped away arbitrarily at a moment’s notice. 

We reject the home secretary’s inflammatory and false rhetoric on this issue, and recognise that while this repressive wave might start with Palestine Action, it will not end here. As Palestinians and Arabs in the diaspora, we are well-acquainted with the ways in which repression and surveillance are mobilised against us.

Rather than being the fringe organisation the government is trying to turn it into, Palestine Action in fact embodies the democratic will of the British people, a majority of whom share the goal of suspending British arms sales to Israel. While most Britons see Israel (and as of late, the US) as a threat to world peace, Keir Starmer’s tendency has been to increase defence spending in deference to a US-led push to expand NATO’s military capabilities (and dependence on US technology). The British government is prioritising parts for F-35s over the NHS, and nuclear weapons over the cost of living. Palestine Action have exposed this anti-democratic and anti-British contradiction at the heart of government policy and are being penalised as a result. 

In drawing attention to the depth of British involvement in the ongoing genocide — going beyond complicity into outright partnership — Palestine Action have not only acted squarely in the public interest, but are in fact acting to close the gap in Britain’s contravention of international law where the state itself has failed. Under the United Nations’ Responsibility to Protect, Britain is obliged to do what it can through ‘appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means’ to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity, and to seek further action through the Security Council ‘should peaceful means be inadequate’. 

Keir Starmer and David Lammy, both lawyers by training, might have conveniently forgotten the core principles of international law, but Palestine Action have not. They have followed the letter of international law exactly, while the British government continues to arm and support the genocide through all available means. 

In fact, Palestine Action is not the first group to take direct action for the purpose of mitigating harm and drawing attention to Britain’s involvement in war crimes. In 2003, an individual by the name of Josh Richards targeted the RAF Fairford base in Gloucestershire with the aim of setting fire to a B-52 USAF bomber that was set to fly to Baghdad, in an attempt to draw attention to Britain’s involvement in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. While Richards was caught, a few days earlier Margaret Jones and Paul Milling had damaged a number of fuel tankers in the same airbase; two other men, Philip Pritchard and Toby Olditch did this as well. Coincidently, it was Keir Starmer who represented Josh Richards back then in his previous guise as a human rights lawyer who ; and it is Starmer who is now seeking to label the people of conscience in Palestine Action as terrorists. 

It is no secret that Israel has been lobbying Britain to move against Palestine Action for some time now. The Israeli embassy has colluded with police and prosecutors to go after the Filton 18, a group of activists who were charged under counter-terror powers — and who are now political prisoners — for allegedly targeting an Elbit Systems research and development site. The Israeli weapons manufacturer has sites all over Britain that produce the munitions we see used every day in the extermination campaign against our people in Gaza. There is strong evidence that Elbit has likewise colluded with the government to crack down on Palestine Action. Civil servants are sounding the alarm, recognising the ‘dangerous precedent’ of this ‘blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes’. To reiterate the point: the government is having to choose between Zionism and a liberal-democratic society. So far, they are choosing Zionism. 

In coming to this decision, the government has decided that an Israeli arms manufacturer has more rights than a British citizen who cannot abide killing and maiming. Ordinarily such a disconnect between nominal democratic rights and civil liberties would only be found in the autocratic regimes Britain helps prop up across the Arab world and beyond — but repression has a tendency to come home after it’s been shown to be effective abroad. Just as Britain has often provided aid and training to anti-democratic tendencies throughout the Arab world, so too are the same tactics being used to silence dissent at home. We Arabs, albeit in exile, are familiar with this disconnect: the vast majority of the population believe one thing, while the government does another.

A person of conscience in Britain is far closer to becoming a member of Palestine Action than they are to becoming an Israeli soldier. The imminent proscription of the organisation is an attack on this truth itself: it is an attempt to stifle the truth and promote false narratives in its place. The government would like us to think that Palestine has nothing to do with Britain, that a free Palestine would be a savage place and a strong Israel is needed to prevent it, and that the average Briton can condone genocide under the right circumstances. None of this could be further from the truth.

As Palestinians and Arabs in Britain, we recognise that we are at a crucial political juncture. The situation in Palestine is worsening far beyond what words can describe, and the scope of countries destabilised by this genocide is broadening in scope with every passing month. Everyone is sick of being made a partner in this genocide against their will, from the people of Britain to those throughout Europe, and from Morocco to Iran. Autocratic regimes propped up by the US and Britain restrict and repress us in our homelands, and that repression is now reaching the West in ways we previously thought unimaginable. 

From this position, we urge the British people not to tolerate this repression. Do not allow your hard-fought civil and democratic rights to slip away so easily, especially to such a weak, feckless government. Our movement is united against regressive forces everywhere, in Britain as in Palestine, and there is no way out but through.