Palestine Action: What has the group done, as it faces a ban? | Censorship News

EXPLAINER

MPs within the UK have voted to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation, however what has it really carried out?

Members of Parliament in the UK voted overwhelmingly this week to proscribe the marketing campaign group, Palestine Motion, as a terrorist organisation underneath anti-terrorism legal guidelines, placing the group on a par with armed teams equivalent to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

A draft order to amend the Terrorism Act 2000 to do that, introduced by Dwelling Secretary Yvette Cooper, handed by means of the Home of Commons on Wednesday by 385 votes to 26.

Cooper tabled the order in parliament simply days after Palestine Motion activists broke into RAF Brize Norton, the most important station of the Royal Air Drive in Oxfordshire, and sprayed two navy planes with purple paint, leading to thousands and thousands of kilos of prison harm, in keeping with police.

On Friday, the Excessive Court docket in London is listening to a problem to the order. Palestine Motion co-founder Huda Ammori has requested for a brief block on the laws.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the Airbus Voyager incident in an X post, saying: “The act of vandalism dedicated at RAF Brize Norton is disgraceful.”

Palestine Motion describes itself as “a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms trade in the UK with direct motion”. It says it’s “dedicated to ending international participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.

The federal government claims it’s a “terrorist” outfit.

However what has the group really carried out?

What occurred at Brize Norton?

Within the highest-profile transfer made by the group up to now, activists sprayed purple paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyager plane, used for air-to-air refuelling.

According to Manaal Siddiqui, a spokesperson for Palestine Motion, “These [Royal Air Force] plane can be utilized to refuel and have been used to refuel Israeli fighter jets.” He added that planes from Brize Norton fly to the British air power base in Cyprus, from the place they’re “dispatched on spy missions and that intelligence is shared with the Israeli authorities and the Israeli air forces”.

What else has the group carried out?

Since its founding in July 2020, Palestine Motion (PA) has carried out lots of of protests throughout the UK geared toward disrupting the operations of corporations they accuse of making the most of Israeli navy operations, with a specific concentrate on the Israeli arms producer, Elbit Programs.

Palestine Motion members’ techniques sometimes contain breaking into services, chaining themselves to equipment, daubing buildings with purple paint and destroying tools.

They embrace the next incidents:

• The group launched a sequence of break-ins at Elbit’s Ferranti web site in Oldham, close to Manchester in northern England. Between 2020 and early 2022, the location was repeatedly occupied and vandalised, culminating in Elbit closing the power in January 2022 – an final result Palestine Motion declared as a significant victory.
• In 2021, the group occupied the Leicester drone manufacturing unit operated by UAV Tactical Programs, a subsidiary of Elbit. Activists chained themselves to the roof for almost per week. Ten folks have been arrested, however later acquitted.
• All through 2022, PA’s actions turned extra frequent. In April, they blockaded one other Elbit web site in Braunstone, Leicestershire. In June, they broke into the Thales UK manufacturing unit in Glasgow and brought on greater than 1 million kilos ($1.37m) of injury with smoke bombs and property destruction. 5 activists have been jailed.
• Following the launch of Israel’s warfare on Gaza in October 2023, Palestine Motion intensified its efforts. They focused the BBC’s headquarters in London with purple paint to protest in opposition to the broadcaster’s perceived pro-Israel bias, and blockaded services of arms producers together with Lockheed Martin, the US aerospace and defence group which has a base in London, and Leonardo, the defence and safety group.
• Palestine Motion has additionally expanded internationally. In November 2023, its newly launched US department occupied the roof of an Elbit facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, with three activists arrested and later launched with misdemeanour fees.
• In August 2024, activists drove a van into Elbit’s headquarters in Bristol, stormed the constructing and brought on intensive harm. At about the identical time, they spray-painted the Ministry of Defence, in central London, purple and defaced a statue of Arthur Balfour with tomato ketchup contained in the Home of Commons. Balfour was a former Conservative prime minister who, as serving international secretary in 1917, authored the Balfour Declaration which supported the institution of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
• In June 2025, the group carried out one in every of its most provocative actions so far: infiltrating RAF Brize Norton, the UK’s largest airbase. Activists used electrical scooters to breach safety and vandalised navy plane with purple paint.

What does Palestine Motion say about being banned?

In an announcement posted on its X profile, Palestine Motion mentioned: “The actual crime right here isn’t purple paint being sprayed on these warplanes, however the warfare crimes which have been enabled with these planes due to the UK authorities’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.”

The group added that the federal government’s transfer might threat criminalising official protest.

The assertion additionally accused Starmer of “hypocrisy” because the prime minister, again in 2003, supported protesters who broke into an RAF base to cease US bombers heading to Iraq. On the time, Starmer was a lawyer.

“I feel it’s a really knee-jerk response from an embarrassed authorities, and it’s an overblown response,” Siddiqui mentioned.

Siddiqui mentioned it was unprecedented for Palestine Motion to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation. “Nearly all of the proscribed teams are worldwide. Nearly all of them take actions in very, very alternative ways. Palestine Motion could be a whole outlier. It’s a draconian strategy for the federal government to stifle protests that they only don’t like. It’s genuinely terrifying for anybody who cares about civil liberties within the UK.”

In all, 81 teams are proscribed within the UK underneath the Terrorism Act 2000. They embrace political actions with armed wings equivalent to Hamas and Hezbollah, in addition to armed teams like ISIS (ISIL), al-Qaeda and Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan.