Israel’s genocide is the crime
THE NEU Left utterly condemns the government’s disgraceful plan to proscribe the non-violent direct action group Palestine Action as terrorists, part of a wider crackdown on those protesting for Palestinian rights.
We also totally condemn the criminal charges against leaders of the Palestine solidarity and anti-war movements Ben Jamal, Chris Nineham, CND’s Sophie Bolt and our own NEU member and Stop the War chair Alex Kenny.
Proscribing Palestine Action is a repressive step and an abuse of state power which will only serve to degrade the meaning of terrorism and further undermine all our civil liberties and democratic freedoms.
The overwhelming majority of people rightly understand terrorism as involving acts of violence directed against civilians to achieve political ends. Palestine Action has never advocated violence against people.
Climbing fences, blocking roads and graffiti on war planes is not terrorism. We utterly reject this attempt to brand those using non-violent direct action to try and stop a genocide as terrorists.
There is a long tradition of protest and non-violent direct action in Britain- which has been part of movements which have won most of the democratic rights and civil liberties we have today.
We also reject the attempt to criminalise those who have led the repeated mass demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine and call for all charges to be dropped and for mass protests outside any court hearings.
We also refuse to join the hypocritical condemnation of the words of bands like Kneecap and Bob Vylan expressing outrage at the real and continuing mass slaughter being carried out by the Israeli Defence Force, armed and financed by the US and British governments.
There is nothing anti-semitic in condemning Israel and its murderous Defence Force. We stand always and everywhere against all forms of racism but we reject the weaponising of anti-semitism to cover for genocide.
Our anger should be directed at the Israeli government, and leaders like Trump and Starmer who back the continued killing. We are proud to stand with all those who have raised their voices in anger and solidarity with the Palestinian people and will continue to do so until Palestine is free.
