Direct Action and the Global Fight Against Israel’s Arms Industry
On November 18th 2023, the UN-affiliated Al-Fakhoura school in the Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza, was bombed by the Israeli military. Thousands of hungry, thirsty and injured Gazans had been sheltering inside, having been displaced from their recently levelled homes. Fifty Palestinians were killed, and it was impossible to retrieve many bodies from the rubble. Bombing attacks like this have characterised the genocide underway against Palestinians in Gaza, which by the time of the Al-Fakhoura massacre had already claimed the lives of 12,000 Palestinians.
A month prior to the bombing, the Workers in Palestine coalition of over thirty trade unions issued an urgent call to stop arming Israel, to refuse the manufacture and transport of weapons for Israel, and to take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege. This letter has set out clearly that there are important, material actions that can be taken by people of conscience to address this ‘urgent, genocidal situation’, a situation in which the arms trade plays a central role.
In response to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and brutal massacres, protests have erupted across the globe with levels of participation and a diversity of locations rarely seen before. Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the West Bank have drawn people in their millions to stand against the genocide, and as a result there are more people ready to take action in support of Palestinian liberation. Still, the industries and institutions enabling these atrocities are able to continue operating, isolated from the democratic demands for their cessation. The question for the international solidarity effort, then, is how do we mobilise people towards practical resistance? Activism ought to focus on moving the conversation from one of humanitarian sympathy for Palestinians to one of accountability, critically examining our countries’ roles in these atrocities and acting accordingly.
It is beyond doubt that we in the West are culpable for what is taking place in Gaza. Almost all of the tens of thousands of bombs dropped so far have been US-made Mk80 types, delivered using F-16 fighter-bombers. These are US-made with many British components – supported by drones, helmets, and communications technologies and more – that are manufactured across Britain, the US, and EU. Israel’s bombing attacks rely extensively on Western-made weapons and weapons components.
Importantly, these arms sales and transfers are happening in real time. In addition to offering support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, our governments are continuing to arm this campaign with new Western-produced military equipment and weaponry. The US is sending security assistance on a near-daily basis to Israel. The Netherlands has made a new shipment of F-35 fighter jet components, despite the certainty of their use against Gaza’s besieged population. Germany has announced record arms exports to Israel, with hundreds of new permits granted for weapons shipments this year – the majority of them since October 7th 2023. Britain, meanwhile, is facilitating the shipment of arms to Israel through its RAF bases, as well as continuing to approve weapons exports to the occupation.
Despite spending decades accumulating these weapons, Israel needs more. With 25,000 tonnes of bombs dropped in a month, the campaign has been hugely costly for the occupation. Israel had already seen the depletion of the US weapons stockpiles that it hosts, much of which was diverted to Ukraine throughout 2022. Stockpiles of precision munitions are low, and Israel is desperate to procure artillery shells, small diameter bombs, joint direct attack munitions and Hellfire missiles from its US and European allies. This gives activists in the West an opportunity: to disrupt the flow of these weapons, and to curtail Israel’s ability to commit these atrocities.
If the question, then, is one of strategy, in considering how best we can pursue meaningful disruption, then the answer most surely is direct action. We have few other options: the legal system and accountability mechanisms are incredibly weak. In Britain, these arms sales appear to already be in violation of the country’s obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and its own strategic export licensing criteria and the government is happy to ignore unfavourable rulings in export-related court cases brought against it. In addition to reducing the stringency of its weapons licensing overall, Britain has in the past even loosened its licensing specifically to expediate transfers of components to the US for Israel’s US made weaponry. In the US, which supplies the vast majority of military equipment, vehicles, and munitions to Israel, the details of these transfers – such as quantity and type – are largely kept secret. Opaque licensing arrangements in most of Europe mean that the exact nature of transfers is hard to determine. The British, US, and NATO supplies are largely being flown from the RAF’s base in Cyprus, but MPs have been blocked from raising questions about this. What this means is that arms sales and transfers are largely insulated from democratic oversight, and that the millions protesting throughout these countries are not afforded the opportunity to challenge these licences and shipments in court.
There is clearly no appetite among the political class for critical assessment of the human rights concerns of these weapons sales and transfers. Given that no major political party in Britain or the US is willing to criticise Israel’s actions, let alone express concerns about the human rights implications of Israel’s use of British and US weaponry, activist groups and networks are increasingly taking the matter into their own hands the use of direct action strategies has, since October, accelerated under groups and coalitions led by members of trade unions, activists, or both. These campaigns are approaching Palestinian solidarity through a critical understanding of the West’s role as a sponsor of the Israeli occupation. Targeting factories, offices, logistics and shipping, direct action solidarity in the West means recognising and opposing the part that our industries are playing in enabling this genocide.
This principle is what has always underpinned the work of Palestine Action, a direct-action network whose activists have spent three years occupying and blockading the premises of Israel-supplying weapons firms. For the most part, the group has worked to undermine Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, which has been met with innumerable actions at its factories, offices, and also at the premises of its suppliers and partners and during their appearances at conferences and other events.
The basic principle is that, by allowing Elbit to manufacture drones in Leicester and Staffordshire, weapon sights in Kent, and parts for tanks in Tamworth, we ought to hold ourselves accountable for the fact that Israel deploys these weapons for genocidal purposes. Hundreds of actions have taken place, including dozens of multiple-days-long factory occupations, and thousands have been mobilised in actions or in support of actions. This consistent campaign of intensive action, and the risks taken and sacrifices made by committed activists, has already cost Elbit dearly. When Palestine Action launched, Elbit had ten sites in Britain. Two have now been closed permanently, and those still remaining have faced three years of constant disruption. Importantly, Britain’s procurement relationship with Elbit has been damaged. The company has been deemed an inappropriate partner for British Ministry of Defence projects, and has been ejected from hundred-million-pound contracts as a result of Palestine Action sabotage. The long-term, cumulative effect of disruption to Elbit’s operations in Britain, therefore, is the jeopardising of its ability to embed itself in the country’s military.
Activists have taken action against a growing list of weapons companies, including the likes of Leonardo, Thales and Rafael, as we seek to shut down all those complicit in Israel’s arms trade. In recent weeks, our direct action has expanded dramatically to meet the urgency of the situation, though for over three years the primary purpose of the mobilisation has been to undermine Elbit Systems. This co-ordinated and deliberate strategy of direct action, with a clear and consistent target, has now commenced in the United States. Palestine Action US launched in October 2023 and is already undertaking mass action blockades and occupations to challenge Elbit’s operations across its various sites. In Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire, and elsewhere, Elbit are now waking up to the reality that opposition to its activities is widespread, that its low profile is in jeopardy, and that it will be facing growing resistance in all of its host countries.
The reason Elbit is based in Britain, the US, the EU, and Australia is because there is clearly an appetite for its weaponry among these imperial Western powers. We can see how this works in Elbit’s UAV Tactical Systems factory in Leicester, a site that has been breached, occupied, and blockaded by Palestine Action dozens of times. The factory, when it is operational, is used to ship military drones to Israel, to the value of £5m yearly, as well as to repackage and sell on these Israeli drone technologies back to the British military. U-TacS’ Hermes drones, notorious for the targeted killings and precision bombings that they enable against Gazans, have been turned into the ‘Watchkeeper’, designed for the Ministry of Defence, which has deployed it in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has also used it to prevent refugee crossings in the English Channel. Israel is not a customer of the Watchkeeper drone, and nor is Britain one of Hermes, yet parts are transferred between the countries. This is because it is essentially the same drone, and by repackaging the technology in this way Elbit can use its Leicester site to doubly profit by selling its custom drones to the MoD and its source material to Israel.
As a comrade has pointed out in Ebb Magazine previously, the same intrusive and oppressive technologies of control, which secure the perimeter of the Gaza and render it an ‘open-air prison’, are deployed in the US, fortifying the illegal border wall with Mexico and facilitating the monitoring and surveillance of indigenous populations. In the months and years to come, the new weapons that Elbit and the Israeli military have been ‘testing out’ in this current onslaught will likely be entering European and US markets.
Western powers therefore stand to benefit from this genocide, as their militaries are bolstered by Israel’s murderous technologies, and their weapons manufacturing is stimulated by the increased demand from Israel. It is this abhorrent partnership, and Western profiteering from Palestinian deaths, that Palestine Action seeks to disrupt. Our governments are not passive supporters but are in fact active participants in Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing. They have armed Israel for decades at an increasing rate, and have provided logistics support and equipment and personnel transfers throughout October and November 2023. Sunak’s and Biden’s failure to call for a ceasefire or to offer even the mildest criticism of Netanyahu’s policies is not merely a matter of politics and personality. There are strategic and economic reasons for why our governments continue to offer their support to the occupation. The maintenance of imperial power in the region, and the reciprocal benefits for the military-technological industries of the West and Israel mean that we are in bed with the regime.
Those looking to resist Israel’s violent settler-colonial project and Western complicity in it should consider this question first and foremost: how, with what, and from where are weapons being made for or transported to Israel from my country, and what can I do about it? Disrupting the arms industry in general, and Elbit Systems in particular, along with the shipment of its military products, should be the focus of an international effort by activists and trade unionists. Actions should follow on from words here, particularly when disruption to this industry has been requested by Palestinian trade unions themselves. In some parts of Europe, we have seen unions, specifically those of transport and freight workers, identifying the role that their industries play in arming Israel and acting accordingly to curtail this. At the end of October 2023, Belgian transport unions announced their refusal to load weapons shipments for Israel. The following week, port workers unions in Türkiye, Italy, and Greece jointly announced the same action, as did dock workers in Barcelona.
Others are lagging behind. In Britain, Canada, the US and Australia, opposition to Israel and its ongoing presence in those countries is being left to autonomous membership organisers while major unions neglect practical action. Union leaders have not necessarily considered how members may be inadvertently contributing through their work to Israeli settler-colonialism in Palestine. Unions including Unite, GMB, and Prospect hold recognition agreements with the defence and aerospace companies manufacturing weaponry for Israel, including the likes of Leonardo, Babcock, and BAE Systems. The RMT, rightly praised for adopting a strong verbal stance against Israel’s actions, has vowed to ‘oppose’ arms transfers to Israel, but without details of what this will entail, materially, in terms of whether there will be refusals to load Israel-bound weapons cargo. In addition, it has not recalled those members that are currently working on Royal Fleet Auxiliary Ships stationed to support the onslaught on Gaza. Statements and appearances at rallies do not undo the fact that there is complicity by association through involvement in militaries and military industries.
This means that labour movement activity in Britain to address the complicity of businesses and industries in the Israeli occupation has largely been consolidated among self-organising union members – including, recently, instances of mass action factory blockades under the banner Workers for a Free Palestine. This self-organising, particularly when it critically engages with the relevant industries and challenges business activity, is a noteworthy development, and labour movement bureaucracies should take heed of their members’ will for action. The same is true elsewhere. In Australia, the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ calls for a ceasefire are dampened by its lack of action in relation to weapons shipments; instead, direct action under the ‘Unionists for Palestine’ banner has stopped, or attempted to stop, Israeli cargo ships from docking. This is the case, too, in the US, where the Palestinians’ calls for the cessation of arms to Israel has been answered by direct action groups convening to blockade ports, notably on the West Coast, while others organise to disrupt factory operations – with actions not only by Palestine Action US, but also by activist coalitions such as that which blockaded Boeing in Missouri.
There ought to be co-ordinated, global efforts to undermine Israel’s arms imports and exports, using direct action by means of sabotage, blockade, occupation, or whatever other action might be necessary. We also need to keep building international networks and gathering intelligence on companies arming Israel, including details of their products and their sites. The company that provides 85% of Israel’s drones, all of its small calibre-munitions, vast ranges of bombs, sights, surveillance gear, communications (and innumerable other things), and which is already subject to intensive anti-occupation mobilisation across different continents, seems like the best place to start. Elbit Systems ought to be held responsible for its products’ integral role in genocide and occupation, and we ought to hold ourselves accountable for its continuing presence in our countries.
In the process of disrupting this industry in Britain, hundreds have been arrested, some of them then handed draconian charges and sometimes lengthy, tiresome prosecutions. Comrades in the US have already been arrested in considerable numbers, some held without charge or bail, while in Britain a number of activists have spent time in prison and more are threatened with that possibility. It is not just the British and US governments that are interested in locking up those standing against Elbit; Israel has sought to exert its own influence on the prosecution of Palestine Action activists.
Nevertheless, direct action is taken in the knowledge that Elbit is the guilty party. And given the failure of legalistic mechanisms to prevent weapons sales to Israel, direct action is the only way to restrict Elbit’s participation in Israel’s crimes. It is the only way to protect lives and make Elbit bear responsibility for its part in this colonial violence. Activists in Britain have in fact successfully argued this in court, and have been acquitted on the basis that their actions were necessary interventions to preserve life and protect property in Gaza. That people can be arrested, harassed by the state and made to endure massively disproportionate prosecutions is partly to be expected – particularly given that, by exposing and disrupting the West’s criminal weapons industry, these activists are also bringing to light the despicable involvement of our own governments in Israel’s ethnic cleansing. But this state repression is made more endurable when your conscientious, direct action has offered an actual impediment to the operations of weapons companies. Ultimately, working to undermine this imperial machinery offers the best hope for any individual wanting to contribute to Palestinian’s struggle against occupation. As Workers in Palestine made clear, ‘[t]he time for action is now – Palestinian lives hang in the balance’.