Right, so Israel meddling in the goings on of the British judiciary, interfering in British court cases, can you imagine such a thing happening under the pro Zionist governments of both Tories and Labour alike? Well if you watch this channel regularly I would imagine that yes you can, so as much as it might shock you, it might come as no surprise that evidence of just such collusion has come to light and that the Israeli influence on our legal system is rather specific to the tune of pro Palestine activists very much being the target of such interference, notably insofar as details have been uncovered, in relation to the Filton 18, Palestine Action activists, 10 of whom have now been held in detention awaiting trial for 8 months so far, for an attack on Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems in Filton, and the Instro 10, again Palestine Action activists, who did likewise at Instro Precision, a subsidiary of Elbit. Palestine activists who certainly did cause damage, instead of being prosecuted, for criminal damage, have instead been held under terror charges and with signs of collusion between the office of the Attorney General and the Israeli Embassy in London, and more communiques going back several years that have been uncovered besides, a direct link between the UK and Israel to interfere in the prosecution of pro Palestine and anti Israel protesters very much appears to exist. Just who’s side is the law on anymore in which case? Britain or Israel?
Right, so the UK establishment in apparent collaboration with the State of Israel, is targeting British citizens protesting Israeli war crimes and the arms companies enabling them to see them prosecuted not for the criminal damage they might cause – regardless of how you might feel about direct action – but as terrorists. These protesters, far from engaging in terrorism, chose to express their disdain and disgust not through peaceful protest, but by breaking stuff. We’ve a long history of direct action here in the UK, its not the focus of this story, it is how this group of activists chose to exercise their deeply held moral and political opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Instead of being treated as activists, instead of being prosecuted for the damage they caused, they are being prosecuted under the UK’s counterterrorism laws and we should all have a problem with that. Let the punishment fit the crime, the CPS sets sentences for criminal acts, but all of a sudden, an attack on an Israeli arms manufacturer is no longer vandalism, but terrorism. On what planet is that right? How jeopardised is our right to protest as a result? This Orwellian inversion of justice raises serious questions about the independence of the British legal system itself and the extent of foreign interference in its institutions and its Israel again.
Central to all of this of course, is the treatment of Palestine Action activists, particularly those involved in actions targeting Elbit Systems, the aforementioned abhorrent Israeli arms manufacturer with operations in the UK. The case in question here involves 18 activists, now known as the Filton 18, who were arrested after disrupting operations at Elbit’s site in Filton. Three months prior to the arrest of 10 of these individuals, officials from the UK Attorney General’s Office had shared the contact details of investigating officers with the Israeli embassy. Why? For what purpose? According to documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests, this move was followed by a second wave of arrests—eight more activists were detained and all are currently held under counter-terrorism powers.
The activists were accused of criminal damage and certainly they did that, but that’s not litigated under terrorism offences. It was a strike on a factory. So what if the company is Israeli, the motivations of those involved are irrelevant when it comes to the crime, but Israel get special treatment it seems. Their factories, get greater protection than British ones clearly. The confinement of these 18 individuals under the UK’s counter-terrorism regime has set a new, dangerous precedent. Even more revealing is that UN special rapporteurs have condemned their detention, highlighting the grossly disproportionate response by British authorities. And to see how we got here, we have to go back a bit, because it’s the culmination of years of increasingly cozy cooperation between UK authorities and the Israeli government, which I’ll come onto in a moment.
Evidence of systematic collusion between the UK’s top legal officials and Israeli diplomats is impossible to ignore. An especially damning document obtained by The Grayzone reveals that the Attorney General’s Office provided guidance to Israeli officials on avoiding arrest warrants for war crimes while reassuring them that the Crown Prosecution Service had strengthened procedural safeguards to prevent such warrants. In effect, the British legal apparatus appears to be actively shielding Israeli war criminals from accountability, while simultaneously persecuting those protesting against their crimes. As an example you can take the treatment of the Filton 18 on one hand and then look at how the likes of Israeli Foreign minister Gideon Saar could visit and meet with David Lammy a few weeks ago without fear of arrest as an attempt to do so was actually blocked. Saar was all ready to jump back on a plane and excape, but Lammy got him those reassurances. Makes you wonder if even an ICC arrest warrant would have any value should Netanyahu himself come here doesn’t it?
The Attorney General Office’s communication with the Israeli embassy went further, sharing contact information for counter-terrorism police and CPS officials involved in ongoing investigations into Palestine Action activists. Does this not amount to operational collaboration? Legal experts and human rights organisations have described this as a breach of legal norms and a clear instance of foreign interference in domestic judicial processes and that just feels like an understatement to me.
The actions taken against the Filton 18 and the Instro 10—another group of Palestine Action activists arrested after a protest at Instro Precision, another Elbit supplier—cannot be seen as isolated incidents, Israel is very much the common denominator. These prosecutions are the culmination of years of political collusion. I said I’d come back to this. In 2022, the then-Home Secretary Priti Patel, she who was forced to resign previously as International Development Minister for meeting with Israeli officals behind her government’s back, there are few as hardened in their pro Israel leanings as she is going by her record. Anyway, she met with Elbit UK CEO Martin Fausset at that time and the explicit purpose of the meeting was to reassure Elbit that the UK government took the actions of Palestine Action seriously. It has to be noted that before this meeting, not one Palestine Action member had ever been convicted for their protests. Within months, the British state then appealed the acquittal of the four activists who toppled the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol in 2020, signalling a new willingness to reframe protest as criminality, a dangerous precedent since the right to protest is of course enshrined in our human rights, but it now looks like Israel doesn’t like that and what Israel wants, well we know how that goes here in the UK don’t we?
This trend has accelerated under, for example the National Security Act of 2023. Brought into effect in December of that year, the Act includes numerous clauses that appear tailor-made to suppress Palestine Action’s campaigns. Activists involved in non-violent direct actions—smashing windows, chaining themselves to factory gates, or occupying buildings—are now being prosecuted with tools previously reserved for terrorism suspects and so we find ourselves where we do with this expose in the here and now in relation to Elbit and Instro.
The pervasive influence of the Israeli government now appears to extend deeply into the UK’s prosecutorial and judicial systems having moved on from just the dimplomatic. The result has been the erosion of foundational legal standards and the upholding of our rights in favour of foreign policy objectives aligned with Tel Aviv.
Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Amori has vocally decried the Israeli influence over British prosecutions and her concerns are clearly not without merit are they? The targeting of anti-genocide activists under terrorism laws – that is bluntly the killer sentence isn’t it? If you’re anti-genocide, you could be labelled a terrorist in the UK of you choose to match words with deeds. And then there is the communication of counter-terror contacts to a foreign embassy, and the zeal with which these activists are pursued, all suggest a judiciary co-opted by the political interests of others. The fact that none of the charges—criminal damage, aggravated burglary, or violent disorder—fall within the legal parameters of terrorism in any way, shape or form, makes the invocation of counter-terror laws in these cases egregious and particularly sinister.
Why would the British government go to such lengths? One obvious answer is the multi-billion-pound arms trade between the UK and Israel. Elbit Systems plays a central role in this relationship. Its drones, weapons systems, and surveillance technologies are not only used in Gaza but also field-tested there—making Gaza a live laboratory for deadly weapons. By targeting Elbit Systems, Palestine Action is not just protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza; it is directly challenging the financial interests that tie the UK to Israeli militarism.
The UK government’s complicity is further underscored by its silence in the face of these legal abuses. Neither the Conservative-led government nor the Labour opposition under Keir Starmer have raised serious concerns and why would they when they’ve proven so convenient for them in clamping down on protest on so many other occasions.
The implications of this collusion go far beyond the Palestine Action movement though, because with all of this having come out, though notably mostly in foreign and independent media, at stake is the very integrity of Britain’s legal system. The weaponisation of counter-terror laws to silence protest is a horrifying precedent, the outsourcing of judicial decisions to foreign governments should obviously never happen under any circumstances, and the abandonment of free speech and civil liberties in the name of diplomacy and commerce, all point to a state in democratic, not to mention ethical and moral decline.
It is imperative that British citizens, civil society organizations, and legal professionals are made more aware of this more widely and demand accountability. The independence of the judiciary must be preserved, not only as a safeguard for protesters but as a cornerstone of democratic governance. Parliament must launch a full public inquiry into the UK-Israel collusion that has been exposed here, and those responsible for breaching prosecutorial codes must be held to account for it.
Furthermore, international watchdogs, including the UN, should continue to scrutinize the UK’s treatment of Palestine solidarity activists. The charges against the Filton 18 and the Instro 10 must be re-evaluated, and their detainment under counter-terror provisions should be rescinded, it is a barbaric abuse of the legal system that they be prosecuted as terrorists. Protest, particularly when aimed at preventing war crimes, is not terrorism—it is the total antithesis of that.
The collusion between UK prosecutors and the Israeli government is not merely a legal scandal—it is a moral failure. In a time when Gaza is being decimated by a brutal and ongoing genocide, it is not those who speak out against the bloodshed who should be in the dock, but those who enable and profit from it. The British state, in aligning itself with an occupying power and criminalising its own citizens for resisting that power, is now miles away from the path of justice.
It is the duty of all those who believe in democracy, human rights, and the rule of law to speak out, to protest, and to demand that Britain stop enabling war crimes. The story of the Filton 18, the Instro 10, and all Palestine Action activists is not just about repression; it is about resistance. It is about the power of ordinary people to challenge injustice, and the lengths to which states, including this one, will clearly go to silence them.
Sometimes it is the Israeli in the UK that gets silenced though. Despite evidence emerging of collusion between the UK and the Israeli embassy, the Ambassador resident in that embassy, a woman who should have been expelled years ago in my view, Tzipi Hotovely, got given the interview beasting she’s had a long time coming at the hands of, of all people Piers Morgan this week and as much as it grates to admit it, Morgan hit her with all the right questions that she had no answer to. Catch a clip and get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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