Palestine Action, a United Kingdom-based anti-Israel group, has ramped up its violent activity, from 17 attacks in 2020 to 170 in 2024.
“Palestine Action has caused millions of pounds of damage to factories making equipment for the army and Royal Navy,” Britain’s The Sunday Times reported in a detailed analysis on March 8.
Reviewing open-source material such as social media, The Sunday Times found that since the group’s founding in July 2020, it has claimed responsibility for 356 “direct actions” against British-based firms and institutions its claims have links to Israeli defense firms.
The attacks targeted defense and engineering firms, banks, property companies, accountancy firms, universities and other institutions. Seventy-six companies have been impacted.
Among the companies and institutions targeted have been Elbit Systems, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Barclays, BNY Mellon, property firms Bell Group and Fisher German, and the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Birmingham.
“Direct actions” have included ramming vehicles into factories, cutting internet cables, smashing up offices and workshops, splashing buildings with red paint, and in one case, destroying the bust of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, at the University of Manchester, on the 107th anniversary of the Nov. 2, 1917, Balfour Declaration.
A Palestine Action spokesman told The Sunday Times: “The primary goal of our direct action campaign is to rid Britain of Israeli weapons factories.”
It has promised to escalate its campaign over the next 12 months.
Palestine Action’s first attack was on July 30, 2020, when it targeted Elbit Systems UK’s headquarters in London. Elbit Systems UK is owned by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest privately owned weapons firm.
The vandals covered the building in green paint and graffiti that read: “Shut Elbit down” and “F*** Elbit.” The next morning, four members occupied the offices, The Sunday Times reported.
Palestine Action claims Elbit supplies drones to the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. Elbit said the assertion was false, and its U.K. subsidiary can’t sell drones to the IDF.
(Grid, a company that makes portable computers for harsh environments, also told The Sunday Times that Palestine Action had it wrong when it vandalized its building. It does not supply computers to the Israeli military, but rather to the British military.)
In 2024, as the current Gaza war progressed, Palestine Action protested almost daily at Elbit sites, of which there are 16 in the U.K.
Its activists harassed British engineers working at the sites. “We have been called baby killers and spat at arriving for work,” one told The Sunday Times, speaking anonymously out of fear. “They take our photo and bang on our cars.”
On Aug. 6, the group caused £1 million ($1.2 million) in damage at an Elbit site in Bristol, driving through fencing and vandalizing the building with sledgehammers. Two police officers and a security guard were wounded, the paper said.
In February, Palestine Action vandals, wearing masks, broke into British engineering firm Martin-Baker’s Buckinghamshire headquarters.
They took crowbars and hammers to wreck the interior and sprayed the exterior with orange paint. They said the company produced ejection seats used in Israeli F-35 fighter jets.
Activists are typically charged with “criminal damage, violent disorder, grievous bodily harm and aggravated burglary,” reported The Sunday Times.
“There have been 118 court convictions of Palestine Action activists, with 33 others found not guilty, and 24 more court hearings listed this year,” the paper said.
In a report last year, Lord Walney, a former government adviser on political violence, recommended a new legal framework to more easily imprison Palestine Action law-breakers.
He also recommended a fundraising and communication ban for groups engaged in criminal activities. “That’s all the more important where law-breaking is targeted at key national assets like Britain’s defense industry,” he said.
Palestine Action is heavily influenced by Extinction Rebellion, a climate activist group, copying its tactics, which include disrupting businesses.
A prominent member of Palestine Action is Mike Lynch-White, who was sentenced in an Extinction Rebellion plot to disrupt Heathrow Airport. He had also been involved in Palestine Action attacks on a defense aviation firm, The Sunday Times reported.