On Friday, June 20, two members of Palestine Action rode into the UK’s largest military base on e-scooters, carrying a Palestinian flag and fire extinguishers filled with red paint. After spray-painting two military airplanes, effectively (if temporarily) grounding them both, the actionists escaped. This bold direct action forced the media to cover what it had long ignored: the participation of the Royal Air Force in the war on Gaza. On Wednesday, July 2, a humiliated and reactionary British parliament voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organization, threatening members and supporters with up to 14 years of prison.
The same moribund empire that first authorized the Zionist project in 1917 continues to abet mass death and displacement in Palestine. The UK’s F-35 jet fighter program supplies 15% of the components making up Israel’s warplanes — including ejector seats, rear fuselage, active interceptor systems, targeting lasers, and weapon release cables. Its bases in Cyprus are likely waypoints for the transfer of arms to the genocidal state, and the R.A.F. itself flies planes over Gaza to provide the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) with intelligence.
In the five years since its founding, and particularly over the past 20 months, Palestine Action has put the death-dealers on notice like no other political organization in the U.K. or the U.S. By strategically and systematically targeting Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, they have already brought about the closure of several Elbit factories; forced dozens of companies and contractors to cut ties with Elbit; and helped bring about a “debanking crisis” for the entire so-called defense industry.
Proscription would endanger the whole of the Palestine solidarity movement, criminalizing word and deed alike. It would punish not only members but supporters of Palestine Action: To publicly praise their brave acts would be to risk a 14-year prison sentence. We call on our British readers to take this risk. The label of “terrorist” has long been wielded by Western powers to brand their sins onto all those who challenge their impunity. In this way, it is an honor.
But the epithet is also a threat. It is through this designation that the West has justified the imprisonment and slaughter of journalists, activists, poets, musicians and cultural workers throughout the history of our movements. We must remind ourselves and the world that terrorism is the true legacy of Western imperialism and colonization, and resistance is the real counter-terrorism.
Palestine Action has offered us a template for resistance in the imperial core, for an insurgency that strikes unflinchingly at the supply chain of death. Proscription may force the organization to formally disband, but it cannot stop the action happening everywhere, every day, in the name of Palestine.
The entire movement must defy the draconian criminalization of resistance, which haunts us with the specter of incarceration. We cannot allow fear to distance us from our conscience or our will. Thousands of political prisoners — many who are Palestinian, others who have been radicalized by Palestine — have already shown us that while the cost of resistance can be high, it can never outweigh the power of a united front. The effectiveness and popularity of anticolonial resistance is why organizations like Samidoun and Palestine Action have been targeted by fascist governments and other counterinsurgent forces attempting to divide the movement with fearmongering and hysterical finger-pointing. As Samidoun wrote in their July 2, 2025 statement of solidarity with Palestine Action, “The British colonial mandate was the first to introduce ‘administrative detention’ — imprisonment without charge or trial — to occupied Palestine, a policy enthusiastically adopted by their Zionist colonial successors.”
Almost two years into this genocide, the Zionist and Western powers have sent clear signals to the world that their final solution is the extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza and beyond. Day after day, we see images too horrific to comprehend and hear the unforgettable screams of children. But as Israel’s attacks intensify, so does our conviction. Popular support for the Palestinian cause continues to build, both despite and because of escalating fascist repression. Hundreds of people have joined Palestine Action in the past 10 days. “If we defeat the government’s attempts to destroy our organization, victory in our fight against Elbit is near,” the group’s spokesperson, Max Geller, told us this week. “If they do proscribe us, then let a thousand Palestine Actions bloom.”
There have been significant attempts to isolate Palestine Action by liberal forces within the movement. We maintain that — as with resistance in occupied Palestine — there must be a visible, aboveground movement that serves as a popular cradle for underground militancy. WAWOG will always stand with militants in the imperial core. We call on all people of conscience to do the same.
Death, death to the IOF.
Free Palestine.
A version of this statement appears in the eighteenth issue of The New York War Crimes, out July 4, 2025.