Anti-Israel, radical left vandals enjoy impunity in the UK -analysis

Anti-Israel and far-left radical activists who engage in vandalism and destruction of property enjoy a sense of impunity in the United Kingdom, recent attacks indicate.

The Grid Defense Systems office in Buckinghamshire was ransacked on Thursday by Palestine Action, and in Leeds, they smashed and painted windows of Barclays and JP Morgan branches.

On June 19, Just Stop Oil sprayed the historic landmark Stonehenge orange; the next day, two activists cut into a Stansted private airfield and spray-painted private jets.

Videos and images of these events are readily available on the social-media accounts of these activist groups, suggesting a complete lack of fear or concern about consequences.

Just Stop Oil activists didn’t just not wear masks to conceal their identities as they vandalized the aircraft; the group provided their names and ages.

The activists who ravaged Grid Defense Systems didn’t wear masks either. Palestine Action doesn’t just share the results of its crimes on social media; it admits to them and explains its motivation: coercion to do financial damage to companies, such as Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems.

“Investing in Israel’s weapons trade doesn’t make financial sense when you consider the cost of Palestine Action,” the group said after smashing windows and painting ATMs of a Chatham Barclays on Monday.

Palestine Action even openly trains and recruits activists for the explicit purpose of “direct action,” such as the training day it held in Manchester last Saturday.

The activists are regularly arrested. Palestine Action protests outside of court hearings, as it did last Thursday to Friday for four of its activists on trial for blocking the road to a Leicester factory last year.

Photographs of the activists in custody or at the courthouse show them smiling as if they did not take the legal ramifications seriously. There is little reason they should.

Walking away scot-free

The cases of activists like those from Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil are regularly dropped, or they are found not guilty. The radical environmentalist group brags every time a case is dismissed. On Monday, a case was dropped against two people who spray-painted a Harrods storefront in 2022. On Monday, a court said two activists were not guilty for disrupting the Gallagher Premiership Rugby final in 2023.

The UK government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, Lord John Woodcock, issued a report to the House of Commons on May 21 in which he wrote that despite the severity of Palestine Action’s campaign of vandalism, “there were several early instances of activists being acquitted at trial or discharged without trial.” The activists were acquitted because, according to one judge, conviction would have been disproportionate to the defendant’s right to protest, especially considering their actions were rooted in beliefs about important issues, the report said.

When the activists are convicted, the sentence is light. Three activists were found guilty in mid-June of a lockdown protest at a Leicester factory, resulting in a 12-month conditional discharge. A photograph of the three was published by Palestine Action and shows them smiling in front of the court. Woodcock wrote in his report: “Two activists were sentenced to 16 and 27 months for criminal damage in May 2023, and a further four were sentenced to between 23 and 27 months in June 2023 for conspiracy to commit criminal damage.”

“In my view, it is essential for the upholding of the rule of law that trials of this nature are not politicized,” he wrote. “The same is true of climate activism. Those who break the law as part of political protest must be met with the same response, no matter the cause on whose behalf they claim to be acting.”

The trial dates are often a year or more later – distant concerns for young activists. This is an issue when they defy bail conditions to carry out more disruptive protests, which Woodcock said was not uncommon for Just Stop Oil protesters.

For both Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil, Woodcock concluded that the prosecution had failed to deter activists. Just Stop Oil claimed that since the group was launched in February 2022 until June 2023, its supporters had been arrested 2,200 times, resulting in 238 convictions. Many of these were repeat arrests.

“Prosecutions of Palestine Action activists appear to be having little impact on the group’s determination to shut down defense technology company Elbit UK, which the group targets for its links to Israel, Woodcock wrote, adding that the group claimed that as of July 2023, 100 activists were facing a custodial sentence.

In response to having their wrists slapped, activists have continued to attack monuments and businesses, causing millions of pounds in damages.

It is inconceivable that any other causes, especially if they were right-wing or centrist, would enjoy such a privilege. It is unlikely that white supremacists would find themselves in a British courtroom being told that their genuine belief in their cause was a mitigating circumstance.

Indeed, while Woodcock’s report on coercive radicals said there was greater threat of violence from the far right, he wrote: “I find a worrying gap in our understanding of the extreme left, whose activists do not routinely employ violent methods yet systematically seek to undermine faith in our parliamentary democracy and the rule of law.”

Woodcock declined to definitively call for the proscribing of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, although it seemed to meet the criteria. Low-level terrorist activity, and targeting civilian property with violence to force a political goal, is still terrorism. Instead, Woodcock called for a new system of sanctions to prevent Palestine Action from assembling and fundraising.

As the UK faces the likely prospect of a Labor government, it is unclear if it will sanction or condone such organizations. So far, they have had free reign to do as they please, and all evidence indicates that they know it.

Mercy on the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, Adam Smith said in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. By allowing these cruelties to British society to continue for so long, the government has tacitly supported them and the causes that inform them.