Palestine Action target Elbit with coordinated response across UK

  • Post last modified:April 15, 2024
  • Reading time:7 mins read


Palestine Action started the week as it probably means to go on: by blocking a weapons’ factory, taking direct action against arms trade financing and landlordism – and getting nicked in the process. All in a day’s work, though, for the campaign that is actually disrupting the supply of weapons via Elbit Systems to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza – while MPs do fuck all.

Palestine Action: shut it down – again, and again, and again

On Monday 15 April, activists from Palestine Action attached themselves to vehicles, blockading the four entry routes to Discovery Park, the base of Instro Precision in, Sandwich, Kent. Preventing all entry, Direct action has once again halted production at Instro, a subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems:

Prior to the Kent blockade, Palestine Action struck overnight at financial corporations invested in Israel’s war machine, with all of today’s actions marking the A15 Global Day of Action, for a “Coordinated Economic Blockade to Free Palestine”:

The Instro site, on Artillery Way in the Discovery Park estate, is normally used for the manufacture of target acquisition, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment for the Israeli military.

Since 2008, Instro Precision has applied for and been granted over 50 weapons export licenses to Israel, mostly for goods falling under category ‘ML5b’ (target acquisition and related systems), for products including imaging systems for Israel’s Hermes drones.

Instro’s reports note that:

the Directors are of the opinion that the company is ultimately controlled by Elbit Systems Limited, [ultimately] a company incorporated in Israel.

Elbit Systems itself is the largest private contractor to the Israeli Military, providing 85% of the occupying forces drones and land-based military equipment.

Targetting Elbit’s ‘systems’ – wherever they may be

Additionally, activists have struck again at the premises of BNY Mellon in Manchester, the financial services corporation which invests over £10m in Elbit Systems. The bank’s windows were shattered, covered in red paint, and spray painted with messages including ‘Drop Elbit’, ‘Child Killers’ and ‘Free Palestine’:

Predictably, cops swooped in to protect the corporate war machine – not those trying to protect millions of innocent civilians. Police arrested five members of Palestine Action:

Palestine Action ElbitPalestine Action Elbit

 

Elsewhere, as part of the coordinated day of action., Sisters Uncut and other groups took action towards Elbit’s landlords;

A Palestine Action spokesperson has stated:

It has been clear that there is no route through government to ending the supply of British weapons to Israel’s war machine. 40,000 Palestinians have been massacred in Israel’s genocide, yet more now starving, wounded and displaced. Our government is complicit in all of that – coordinated direct action to immobilise sites of Israeli weapons production is the only possible response.

Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action





Source link

Tags: , , , , , , , ,