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Is Palestine Action a specific movement/group or is palestine Action literally just supporting Palestine? Asking from a non UK perspective.
It's a specific group that recently broke into an RAF base and started mucking about with the aircraft, hence why the government aren't their biggest fans.
Shortly after they did this they were designated as a terrorist group by the home office which is why public support is an offence.
Their latest action was against the planes, but they have actually been extraordinarily successful at damaging the economic machine behind the genocide through targeted and sustained sabotage campaigns against Elbit Systems weapons manufacturer and their supporters, like Barclays Bank. They have already forced the closure of two weapons factories and forced Barclays to divest. It is most likely this sustained campaign that is the real reason for the terrorist designation, though the action at Brize Norton was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Can you recommend some reading on this?
I learned about this through an interview with a PA member on Rev Left Radio: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/palestine-action-direct-action-against-the-death-machine
https://www.thecanary.co/page/1/?s=Palestine+action
The Canary has covered a lot of their actions against Elbit and others. I've linked the search page above... They've honestly done so much stuff that this'll probably be easier and you can just scroll through the articles.
Thank you. I see lots of vandalism, breaking and entering, blocking business entrances, and such. They are well organized and committed. They seem to have some success with that as in companies divesting or stopping to supply. Pretty impressive.
Going after the RAF for a tenuous connection to Israel was a bit too daring and turned out to be a mistake.
Agreed. I think they probably could've kept at it for a while if they hadn't fucked with the RAF, but it's at least put a huge spotlight on them I guess. Hopefully, other Brits will take up the banner under different names/orgs.
It certainly made proscribing them an easy sell; you won't find many people who think it's unreasonable of the government to take a dim view of sabotage.
Hopefully it won't distract too much from the bigger story of almost everyone apart from the government taking a dim view of genocide.
Sabotaging the tools of genocide should be supported by everyone who isn’t a monster.
/ air tankers, unrelated to any genocide
100 years from now, who would possibly doubt that PAC are the heroes here and labor are the villains? Genociders are never on the right side of history. These people are heroes.
It's not even really a Labour issue, support for Israel has been a long standing policy (partly because the UK was largely responsible for the creation of Israel back in the 1920s) and the motion to proscribe Palestine Action was broadly supported by every party. Regardless of the morality it was completely obvious and expected that breaking into a military base and damaging expensive aircraft was going to have consequences.
Doesn't mean it's not the morally right thing to do. Aircraft that are being used to bomb innocent civilians should be vandalized. Hell that's the minimum. The morally right thing to do is to set them on fire. Legality and morality are only weakly correlated. Obviously the law says what the powerful want it to say, but that doesn't mean it's right or just. Setting fire to a UK plane that is being used to genocide people is no different than setting fire to an empty train in 1944 that's about to be sent out on a run to gather up people to take them to a concentration camp. Sorry, but that's just the simple truth of it. You can cite evil laws you want, but you might as well be citing the laws of Nazi Germany. Everything they did was legal as well.
Some things are just wrong. And enabling them is wrong. And we shouldn't be afraid to say that. The people who vandalized those planes did nothing wrong. They're victorious heroes. We should be memorializing them in song and story. The laws of evil men are not even worthy of consideration, beyond the practical choices of those choosing to engage in such acts of bravery and heroism.
I haven't cited any laws or said what they did was wrong, just that the government doesn't like having its toys broken. Absolutely setting fire to a nazi train may be the morally correct thing to do, but you can still understand the nazis not being happy about it: these aren't mutually exclusive propositions.
These planes are not bombers, and carry no weapons.
These planes are not being used for that in any capacity.
I look forward to your moving the goalposts.
Well don't leave us in the dark. Why didn't you bother explaining what the planes were actually used for? You're clearly trying to portray the Palestine activists as cliche violent anarchists who destroyed government property for no rational reason. That is really the only reason you wouldn't explain why you think they did what they did. Likely it's something that's still clearly genocidal, but you didn't want to mention that so you could get that "moving the goalpost" zinger in.
So let's actually look into this, as you failed to do so in order to muddy the waters.
Oh hey, they're mid-air refuelers.
So we're not talking bombers carrying out bombing runs, we're talking about flying gas stations that top off the tanks of the fighters and bombers carrying out bombing runs. These war planes directly used to enable genocide.
Any sane person would call this "a distinction without a difference." You didn't bother explaining what they actually vandalized (really just painted) because you wanted to make it seem like they torched a random civilian airliner or something equally irrational.
But I guess this is just "moving the goalposts" in your warped reality. And in reality, I'm not even moving the goalposts. I said these planes were used to bomb Palestinians. And that's exactly what these mid-air refuelers have been used for, even if they didn't carry any bombs themselves. This is like arguing a loading truck that carries bombs from storage to the tarmac aren't involved in bombing. Sure, it doesn't directly drop a bomb, but it's still used for bombing.
You just have myopia and think that only bombers are involved in bombing.
Verifiably false. The RAF has not been bombing Gaza. And before you bring it up, no, the RAF has not been refuelling Israeli planes either. The British use an entirely incompatible air-to-air refuelling system. And even if they magically didn’t, they wouldn’t be parking the planes in rural Oxfordshire. And it would be bizarre to do so anyway, as Israel has a whole fleet of tankers of its very own, and they can actually connect to their other planes.
When your arguments are predicated on misinformation, maybe it’s time to stop and think. These planes were nothing to do with Gaza.
Again then, please illuminate us. This is a pretty well organized group. They don't just pick targets randomly. If you have all the answers, illuminate us on why these planes were targeted instead of just whining.
Indeed. If they are a well-organised group with rational people, it would seem odd and uncharacteristically incompetent that they managed to pick literally the most inappropriate target in the entire RAF inventory. Assuming their motives are as they say they are.
I ask you again. Why did they choose this plane? If your answer is, "lol, IDK, I guess they're just dumb." Then you're probably missing something very critical. You haven't even bothered to answer why they chose these planes. You just whine about it.
You didn’t disappoint. You shifted the goalposts so far they’ve reached the opposite end of the pitch, and I’m now expected to act as Palestine Action’s PR representative. Bravo.
I have no idea why they chose those planes. Maybe they’re imbeciles who can’t look simple things up on Wikipedia. Maybe they’re hotheads who wanted an adrenaline high. Maybe they have an ulterior agenda. Hopefully more will come out during the trial.
I will say though, if we allow a bit of wild speculation, that their US arm is run by Fergie Chambers, a massive fan of Putin and supporter of the invasion of Ukraine. These tankers are utterly pointless in Gaza, but quite vital in the event of a state actor like Russia putting military pressure on Britain. And such an attack would embarrass the RAF, the MoD, the Government and affect public confidence in national security. Russia has operated many times in Britain in recent years, such as the railway sabotage a while ago that caused travel chaos at an embarrassing moment.
Jet engines may react poorly with paint in the intakes. Those aircraft will need to be inspected and possibly repaired/maintained before they are allowed in the air again. That is sabotage.
They weren’t fighter jets, they used crowbars as well, and even a tiny bit of paint in a jet engine can cause catastrophic damage at the sort of RPM and temperature they operate at.
Are the protestors with signs saying they support palestinian action intending to state that they support the group or that they support action generally?
Either way they've manufactured this issue to protest anti-terrorism laws right?
Not sure if would die on this hill.
'Palestine Action' definitely refers to the group, otherwise you'd just put 'Palestine'. I don't think they did this to protest ant-terrorism laws, they've been very focused on targeting the genocide in Palestine so starting a new off-topic fight wouldn't make sense for them.
Ah, thanks for the info.
Ah, so it's the old "pay our people to do something 'terrible/highly controversial' in the name of our 'enemy/opposing group' so that we can discredit them and their cause and apprehend any of them"-rule
I don't think there's any need for false flag conspiracy theories. Palestine Action took credit for breaking into Brize Norton. I can only assume they thought it would generate enough attention to be worth the risk.
Them taking credit is no proof that they have no goverment agents inflitrated in their lines
They are known to be bankrolled by James "Fergie" Chalmbers, American millionair heir, "communist" who by his own words "chants death to America every day" and is a supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has been on Russia state sponsored visits to the regions annexed by Russia writing glowing praises of them.
It seems likely that at least Palestein action are useful idiots for the Russian state. Which isnt to say that banning them as a terrorsit group isnt massive overreach and completely undemocratic.
I think the better question is 'Does what they did justify them being classed as terrorists' rather than 'Were they entrapped by government agents'.
It uses Direct Action which are methods that governments tend to associate with terrorism
It's a group but of course considering the name they will be easier able to charge anyone supporting Palestine
It's a specific group that was proscribed after breaking into RAF Brize Norton and vandalizing tankers.
AKA, they're a group of heroes and the villainous government wants to keep doing evil.
Yes, because the world is actually a Saturday morning cartoon...
You would have said the exact same thing about the Holocaust.
They threw paint into jet engines, which now have to be stripped down and rebuilt. They also went at the planes with a crowbar, and damaged security barriers at the perimeter. The damage is estimated at £7 million.
The army has nothing to do with any of this.