I’m more shocked it hasn’t already happened to Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain or Just Stop Oil.
But I guess blockading motorways and rocking up to art museums dressed like extras from a Wham music video and defacing paintings makes you less of a threat than wanting Netanyahu to stop his genocide of the Palestinian people.
Still, calling blocking motorways and defacing painting terrorism is a stretch.
And that’s pretty much what Palestine Action did.
And that’s pretty much what Palestine Action did
Not quite.
three protestors from the group “stormed, scaled and occupied” an APPH drone factory in Runcorn.[33] Activists daubed red paint on the exterior, dismantled drone and aircraft machinery and destroyed windows
(…)
In January 2024, Palestine Action vandalised an office of the logistics company Kuehne + Nagel in Milton Keynes by smashing windows and spraying the building with paint
(…)
In May 2024, Edinburgh Palestine Action activists targeted a Leonardo factory in Crewe Toll (…) a spokesperson for the group saying, "In the early hours of Tuesday 28th May [2024], a group opened the box of cables, cut the internet wires, sprayed expanding foam inside the box
(…)
October 2024, Palestine Action targeted a factory in Bromborough, Wirral Peninsula, a producer of F-35 fighter plane (…) The action consisted of breaking through the roof and spraying red paint into cleanrooms, with a manager for Teledyne allegedly claiming "damage to the clean rooms could halt production for up to 12 months
They did proper sabotage as well.
In June 2025, members of Palestine Action gained access to RAF Brize Norton on electric scooters and used “repurposed fire extinguishers” to spray red paint into the engines of two Royal Air Force Airbus A330 MRTT refuelling planes
I think it’s also worth noting that this is the stupidest possible way of protesting against Israel and pro-Palestine. There are SO MANY weapons suppliers all over the place… But more importantly, Israel can do fine with domestic production when fighting Hamas/Hezbollah. They need external supplies for fighting Iran, sure, but this was all before that happened.
Yes alongside damaging historical artifacts
Does free speech or democracy exist if the oligarchs/states that buy your politicians/rulers force you to support those states? What would Idi Amin do (perhaps most self enriching open corrupt ruler, or the narrative that gets pinned on a ruler who shifts away from US empire)? Or as in history, UK first decided it was illegal to oppose Idi Amin (support his rivals) to later being illegal to support Idi Amin?
“To know who rules over you, notice who you are not allowed to criticize”
IIUC, it is only Palestine support that is illegal. You may still advocate for UK/NATO war on Israel or at least elimination of support, and elimination of politicians who support Israel. Limiting speech to support for all wars your rulers prefer is the most oppressive of democratic speech.
It’s a particular group not Palestine in general. The headline is misleading
Can someone explain why so many countries support what’s happening in Palestine? Whats going on behind the scenes here?
I do think the situation is more complicated than Lemmy would have you believe.
Both Iran and Hamas have been geopolitical issues for a long time. And it’s worth remembering that all of this was kicked off by a large scale terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas.
It’s also worth noting that Iran is a Russian puppet, and Europe obviously has some “neighbor problems” with Russia at the moment, so there’s a sort of baked in desire to oppose their vassal states.
And, while I think everyone would agree that the loss of civilian life is terrible, there is a huge amount of misinformation that makes it hard to be sure what’s going on. Hamas does have a long history of screwing over the civilian Palestinian population to further it’s political goals, and so people are willing to give Israel a little more credence than they deserve when they claim things like “Hamas was hiding in that hospital” or “we’re blocking aid because Hamas is hoarding it all to drive up tensions” or “it was Hamas who shot those civilians,” because it actually wouldn’t be the first time any of that had credibly happened. Something of a boy-cried-wolf scenario.
Add into that genuine desire to combat real anti-Semitism that’s been a fallout of this whole situation (a problem that hits pretty close to home in Europe due to events of the past century), and you can see why some people might be a bit over-eager to support Israel in this conflict.
It’s worth noting there are no good guys here. Israel is obviously in the wrong, and are committing horrible atrocities. I think that much is plain on its face. But Hamas and Iran have both had “the destruction of the state of Israel” as stated policy goals for the past 80 years. The reason Israel has the Iron Dome is because they’ve been getting missiles lobbed at them non-stop for decades.
And when there are no good guys, people tend to just align themselves with who they like more, or who they owe more to.
That’s a really balanced comment and I’m sorry you’re getting downvoted for it.
It’s important to remember that the headline refers to the group Palestine action, which has carried out vandalisation of historical pieces, occupations of property, destruction etc (see here). So it’s a group that fits the UK definition of an extremist group.
Some political groups (or even branches of them) can be political cults trapping members with coercive control It’s not always idealistic well meaning people. The court that decreed them an unlawful group will have seen a lot of info we didn’t.
I think we need to look deeper than the headline
By that very definition the US insurrectionists should be reintroduced to jail
I’d personally class that as terrorism. And they absolutely should be in jail.
It’s important to remember that the headline refers to the group Palestine action
Coming into this thread, thinking that you couldn’t legally support Palestine in the UK anymore, I feel like the headline was just a bit misleading.
Yep it’s total clickbait, it’s bordering on misinformation
It’s rather misleading, yeah, but also, “technically correct”?
While we are clearly discussing an actual criminal group and not just people protesting for Palestine, the implications from a decision like that are a bit wider.
Civil disobedience is a crucial tool for democracy, but it’s easy for that to be taken too far.
And at this time that Russia is waging a shadow war in Europe, we probably should be little wary of any even paramilitary-esque groups, despite how important it is to protest the genocide in Gaza.
Surely there’s still plenty of legal ways to do that?
Sorry I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that the criminal group shouldn’t be banned because the genocide is wrong?
No, I’m not saying that.
It’s just sometimes easy to smudge proper protesters with criminal groups, and historically that has happened a fair bit.
Like people can make a new organisation and try to step away from the criminal one, but also what’s to prevent the criminal element from joining them as well, and then the same justification can be used to ban that group and on and on and on.
So honestly defining the point at which it could be argued to be suppression of political ideas is very hard to pinpoint, imo.
I understand your concerns. The courts need a lot of evidence to do that though, and it’s a long process. So realistically it doesn’t happen unless it has to
Yeah, I’m just a tad worried, that’s all. I’m not saying it’s a slippery slide.
Just you know. It’s not been a great direction the world’s been going so…
