The UK’s home secretary, Yvette Cooper, plans to proscribe the protest group Palestine Action under anti-terror law. This move, if approved by parliament, would criminalise the group’s existence, making it a crime to be a member of the group or to support it in any way.
Palestine Action emerged in 2020, first drawing attention when its members broke into and spray painted red the UK headquarters of Elbit Systems, an Israeli defence contractor. In the years since, the group has sprayed paint, blockaded or otherwise vandalised a number of institutions it sees as complicit in Israeli military actions, such as a Lockheed Martin facility and two Barclays branches.
The group’s website describes it as a “direct action movement committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.
