Palestine Action is one of the only Western organizations utilizing direct action to impede the machinery of genocide fueling Israel’s apartheid project—triggering a full frontal attack from the West.

Chris Hedges

The world watches in horror as the United States and Israel brazenly commit war crimes and genocide, defying international law and then sanctioning those institutions, such as the International Criminal Court, that endeavor to hold them accountable. Despite daily images of destruction, starvation and death in Palestine, now extending from Gaza to the occupied West Bank and farther to Lebanon and beyond, only Iran and Ansar Allah have taken effective action to stop the atrocities. Western nations, meanwhile, keep the gears of Israel’s war machine turning. Also, ordinary people have organized and are taking action in what Chris Hedges describes as “the final line of defense between a world that respects the rule of law and a world of unmitigated barbarism.”

One group that has made significant gains is Palestine Action, which has specifically targeted the Israeli weapons producer, Elbit Systems, in the United Kingdom. Palestinian activist and co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori, joins this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the draconian steps taken by the UK government to criminalize and dismantle Palestine Action. Much to the chagrin of the Zionist elements of the Western establishment, every attack by the UK and its allies has resulted in greater public support for Palestine Action.

Ammori’s family has a long history of fighting Zionism in Palestine. She reflects on the brutal subjugation they endured and her lifetime of activism, saying, “It’s an obligation for Palestinians to resist their occupiers and for each generation to pick up the mantle.” The limitations of the political system, however, have only impeded activists’ efforts to facilitate the liberation of Palestine from the death grip of Israel and its Western-backers; before starting Palestine Action, she realized that direct action was a necessary next step. When Ammori and her partner, Richard Barnard, launched Palestine Action they achieved significant material gains.

It was this progress that brought the full weight of the state against them, including the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization and the banning of all forms of solidarity and support for them. Law enforcement have raided their homes and arrested thousands of activists. The state has also held activists for prolonged periods in jail, which they protested with hunger strikes, and blocked their efforts to raise funds. Ammori is challenging the legality of the proscription, now headed to the UK Supreme Court, in what is considered “an extremely important case, not just for Palestine Action as a group, but for our Free-Speech rights in Britain in general.”

NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author & activist

You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.

Please share this story and help us grow our network!

• Facebook
• X
• LinkedIn
• Mail
• Mastodon
• WhatsApp
• Reddit

Transcript

Chris Hedges:

Palestine Action, founded by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard in 2020, along with others in Britain, has carried out direct action campaigns to disrupt the shipment of weapons used to carry out the genocide in Gaza. The group has singled out Elbit Systems, an Israeli military technology company with subsidiaries around the globe. Elbit Systems is the primary provider of the Israeli military’s land-based equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles.

In 2025, following an action that damaged two RAF aircraft, the British Home Secretary announced she would declare Palestine Action a proscribed terrorist organization, claiming the protests at military sites threatened national security. Huda, who is of Palestinian descent, challenged the branding of Palestine Action as a proscribed terrorist group in court, arguing that property damage does not constitute terrorism. The British government’s targeting of Palestine Action triggered numerous protests in Britain and the mass arrests of over 2,100 people. Eight imprisoned Palestine Action activists went on a prolonged hunger strike in 2025. In February 2026, the British High Court ruled that the proscription was unlawful, a ruling that was overturned in June 2026 by the Court of Appeal.

In 2026, the Trump administration also designated Palestine Action as a terrorist group, part of its campaign against what it calls, “Far Left Extremists”. The U.S. sanctions have blocked an online crowdfunder to raise money to fight the ban on Palestine Action in the British courts. The Trump administration has at the same time imposed sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court, or ICC, as part of its attempt to dismantle what it calls a ‘rogue institution’. The U.S. had previously sanctioned 17 of the ICC’s judges and officials, but this latest move sanctions the court itself as an institution and is intended to destroy its ability to operate financially. It, like Palestine action, is slated by the Trump administration for destruction.

The rule of law, which is categorical about the responsibility of states to intervene to hold genocide, is being upheld by these sanctioned international jurists and persecuted activists who have climbed atop factory roofs, damaged military machinery and used their bodies to block shipping gates. They are the final line of defense between a world that respects the rule of law and a world of unmitigated barbarism, where the strong crush the vulnerable and the weak, where genocide is an acceptable tool in the arsenal of Western nations and its allies. Let us be clear. The terrorists are not those jurists who issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or those activists who damage drone components. The terrorists are those who provide billions of dollars to fund the genocide and manufacture the weapons used to carry out mass slaughter in Gaza.

Joining me to discuss Palestine action, our moral responsibility to halt genocide, and the effort by the British and American governments to crush resistance and dismantle the rule of law is Huda Ammori. Huda, your own family illustrates what Rashid Khalidi pointed out in his book, “The Hundred-Year War on Palestine”, in that there has been generational resistance to the settler-colonial project begun in the1920s, by primarily European Jews. And I just wondered before we begin, if you could tell us a little bit about that resistance within your own family.

Huda Ammori:

Yes, so my father’s side are Palestinian and my great-grandfather was active in the popular uprising in Palestine against the British colonizers at the time and he was actually assassinated and they had a bounty on his head for $500, I believe, at the time and he was assassinated and our ancestral home was destroyed. And the Palestinians actually rebuilt his home, our home, in Palestine after the British had bombed the home and they actually took his body, the British, and kept it in a military camp and the Palestinians broke in to return his body to the Palestinian people. Even in death we see how the colonizers or Zionists try and keep hold of our lives and our bodies, but the Palestinians returned his body. And he is to me, to all Palestinians, a martyr and a symbol of how Palestinians have, as you said, been resisting colonization and Zionism for over a hundred years now. And it’s very prevalent that Palestine Action started in Britain, which is the country which issued the Balfour Declaration which declared the Jewish homeland in Palestine where the majority of the population were not Jewish, which would require the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people, which led to the Nakba and to the genocide that we are seeing today. It did start by the British and ever since that, Palestinians have been resisting on the ground. Some would say that it’s an obligation for Palestinians to resist their occupiers and for each generation to pick up the mantle.

Chris Hedges:

I want to talk about your own activism. You were involved with Palestinian resistance or solidarity groups before founding Palestine Action and I believe there was some kind of frustration over the tactics that were employed, which often involved appealing to or lobbying politicians who were fairly tone deaf, well, completely tone deaf to the injustice being meted out towards Palestinians. But before we get into Palestine Action, lead us up to that point before you founded it.

Huda Ammori:

Yes, so I was involved, probably my whole life, in some way or another with campaigning for Palestine. That’s going as a young child to the protests throughout the years, going down to London with my family. Later on, after university started, I was already doing national boycott campaigns, and I took that up in a permanent position at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign up until 2020. And all of the tactics that we were using involved protests, campaign tactics. It all involved appealing to an institution or to politicians in order to convince them to create the necessary changes. And you get to a point when you realize the vast limitation in these tactics, especially knowing what you’re up against and the frustrating results that come from it. And don’t get me wrong, there have been some victories through those tactics but they were not in any way matching the severity of the Israeli apartheid regime and Britain’s involvement with it.

When I was working at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, we would have these lobby days where you get 70 or so politicians in the room and they were always looking for the easiest thing to do, and this is vast minority of politicians, to show some nod to the Palestinian struggle without having any material impact whatsoever. And when it comes to those who actually hold the power, it’s no longer about the facts and the logic whilst it’s important that we have an accurate record to be able to present the truth and to use the truth as a tool to defeat the oppressors. The truth alone was not capable of making them change their positions because they had vested interests in the Zionist regime, had vested interests in the military industrial complex, which is involved in the ongoing destruction of Palestine. Whereas with direct action, there’s a quote by the late David Graeber and it’s: “Protest is like begging the powers that be to dig a well. Direct action is digging the well yourself and daring them to stop you.”

So, in 2020, we got to the point, myself and Richard and others, that we were going to use direct action as a tool, as a tactic, in order to target the Israeli weapons industry in Britain, which means you’re going straight to the source and rather than asking somebody else to shut down Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons producer, which at the time had 10 sites in Britain, we would go and shut them down ourselves using our own bodies, and putting ourselves on the line in one way or another by taking repeated direct action, which often would lead to arrest.

Chris Hedges:

How much were the actions of Extinction Rebellion important in terms of informing the way you structured Palestine action?

Huda Ammori:

Extinction Rebellion was very popular in 2018. This was about two years before Palestine Action launched and they changed the atmosphere around how we create change and they normalized the idea of putting yourself on the line in order to demand the necessary changes. So, whilst Extinction Rebellion does employ more civil disobedience tactics where it involves blocking roads, public disruption in order to put pressure on the government, and Palestine Action is more focused on direct action, which is more about going straight to the source and shutting down the perpetrators, so to speak. They’ve shut down the weapons factories directly in order to create change. In both movements, there is an understanding of an element of sacrifice and not simply being obedient to the way that the system is and realizing the limitations of the standard campaign tactics. And they normalized this idea of pushing the way that we call for change much further than before. And I remember thinking at the time there were thousands of people getting arrested for Extinction Rebellion and thinking if we just had a quarter of those people taking direct action, shutting down the Israeli weapons industry, we would shut down these factories permanently potentially and of course that is what indeed did happen.

Chris Hedges:

So, 2020, you begin Palestine action, which very swiftly has widespread popular support, but talk about your first actions, the kinds of things that you did. I think, wasn’t it some Palestine Action went up to Trump’s golf course in Scotland or something? But talk a little bit about the kinds of things that you did.

Huda Ammori:

Yes, so we started in the end of July 2020, and our first actions were against the then London headquarters of Elbit Systems and it was relatively small scale. We would spray paint the outside of the building and then we would find ways to get inside of the building and spray paint the inside and cause damage to their offices. And we did that a few times repeatedly over the course of about a week or two weeks. And then, at that point we had someone, a journalist who was following what we were doing, posting it online, showing these videos online of us taking these actions and the launch of Palestine Action. And we were getting a lot of support right off the bat from the moment we had started taking action.

And then, we had continued to also target the landlords of the factories in the first month or so, the property managers of the London headquarters with different actions as well. And then we decided in September that we needed to go to the actual factories where they were producing the parts which were used in the Israeli drones and that’s when we had occupied the roof of Elbit Systems’ factory in Shenstone. It’s called UAV Engines, and we were up there for about three or four days in total. And I’m not a fan of either climbing or camping, but there is something quite extraordinary when you’re on the top of an Israeli weapons factory. And we had hammers available to us and we were just slowly dismantling and destroying this factory and there was nothing anyone could do to stop us. And to know that in that moment, you regained the power over that site and even after, they had to bring in this special climbing team to eventually get us down. And we, until the last moment, had resisted going down from that factory roof and they would say things like, “You know you made your point now, just leave,” but for us every moment was important that we could shut down that building knowing that the engines that they make in those factories, they power the Hermes 450 drones, the Israeli aerospace industries’ Harpy drones. These drones that they make are all tested on Palestinians, battle tested. That’s how they market them because all of Elbit’s weaponry is first used by the Israeli military in order for it to be tested on the Palestinian people before they try and sell it on an international scale. And we knew that that factory was directly exporting to Israel itself and you can’t fly these drones without the engines.

Even after we were arrested, that factory was shut down for another three or four weeks and people just started joining Palestine Action and it became that were actions constantly against Elbit Systems of new people picking up the mantle, taking direct action against these weapons factories often in smaller groups so that we can better use the capacity of people taking action in order to cause maximum disruption against these weapons factories.

Chris Hedges:

And what was the response of Elbit Systems? What was the response of the British government?

Huda Ammori:

So instantly, a month after Palestine Action launched, we saw that there was some Zionist media reporting that there had been a meeting between the then British Foreign Minister and an Israeli government minister where they had said, “Look, there’s this new group taking direct action, you need to do something about it, you need to stop them.” And instantly for us that was very reassuring actually because it showed that just one month into this new group launching, taking direct action, we were rattling the Israeli government to the point where they felt they had to intervene and that they were terrified of what would happen when ordinary people realized that they could just go to the Israeli weapon sites and shut them down themselves. So, that was instant validation that what we were doing was right.

But over the first year and throughout Palestine Action, these meetings continued to intensify. Myself and Richard and one other were charged with blackmail. We were facing years in prison, experienced very intense raids. They seized my passport. They had put cameras up to surveil us. Almost within the first two months, all of this had happened.

Chris Hedges:

You mean this where you live? They put these cameras up where you lived?

Huda Ammori:

Yeah.

Chris Hedges:

What was the blackmail attempt?

Huda Ammori:

Because we were requesting, demanding as activists do, that the landlords of Elbit Systems evict Elbit Systems and that we had taken action against the landlords, which involved property damage, red paint mainly. They said that that was a form of blackmail and blackmail is a very serious charge. It’s normally for gang type crimes and it was a massive escalation instantly. We defeated that charge. We were found not guilty of that in court. So, they weren’t successful in prosecuting us. But it felt like that beginning phase, they wanted to try and put a lot of pressure down to see if they could stop this from becoming something bigger, if they could scare us off from the beginning. That didn’t happen. Palestine Action just continued to grow but then so did the attacks against Palestine Action and the people involved.

Chris Hedges:

Talk a little bit about the other tactics they used to put pressure on you, to intimidate activists. They had an array of tools they used to go after you.

Huda Ammori:

Yes, exactly. So, we would experience very intense dawn raids and often these were for criminal damage actions. It was way over the top. They would put strict bail conditions on people, which involved tagging in some cases, curfews in some cases. So, you’re banned from leaving your home at a certain time, tactics like that which, I think when the repression increases so much, that feels actually extremely minor right now. But at the time it was quite intense in comparison to how other activist groups were being treated. And there was small involvement with counter-terrorism. Myself and Richard had been stopped under Schedule Seven, interrogated for hours by the counter-terrorism police.

Chris Hedges:

I just want to interrupt for people that don’t know, Schedule Seven is the British terrorism law, which allows them to essentially detain you without charge, is that correct?

Huda Ammori:

Yes, exactly. And so, what they do is you have to give over your passwords and you have to answer every question. And if you fail to do so, they will tell you, “We will charge you under the terrorism acts and you will face a minimum of so long in prison.” And a lot of it is just an intelligence gathering exercise. And I think at the time it was mainly about intimidation. Again, trying to quash something before it gets bigger.

But then, since after the genocide began, we were already taking very sustained actions against Elbit Systems and those who worked with them. When the genocide began, the popularity and people wanting to take direct action in Palestine Action grew overnight, instantly. And at the same time, with more people getting involved, were many more actions taking place. We would have in one night 20 actions taking place against Barclays, the British bank that was funding Elbit Systems and costing them potentially millions of pounds. And they did actually withdraw those shares specifically in Elbit systems and the actions were constantly leading to victories. When companies would be targeted, a lot of the times they would withdraw and write to Palestine Action with confirmation that they are pulling out of Elbit systems.

And for Elbit and the Israeli government, they of course needed to increase their lobbying pressure and repression of Palestine Action. So there had been repeated meetings between them and British government ministers. They had meetings as well with the Crown Prosecution Service, those are the people that prosecute us in court, senior police officers, and all of them were just meeting together, which completely takes away from the idea of a separation of powers where these bodies are not supposed to clue together, to work out how they can crack down on a direct action group. But that is what they did.

And then there was an action in August of 2024, where people had managed to break inside of an Elbit factory in Bristol. And this was a new research and development facility for Elbit systems and when they broke inside the factory, they managed to destroy 40 Israeli weapons, most of which were quadcopter drones. Each one of those drones, as you know, could have been used to kill hundreds of Palestinians. And when they were arrested, for the first time, they were re-arrested once in the police station under the Terrorism Act. And so, they were accusing them of doing an act of terrorism.

And the basis for this was the Serious Property Damage Clause of the Terrorism Act, which associates property damage with terrorism. In this specific case, their argument is that “it’s serious property damage done to influence a government.” Actually, at one point, they were arguing that “it was serious property damage to influence the Israeli government by restricting them of weapons.” And that is why it was terrorism during a genocide, when the Genocide Convention literally calls for people to intervene to punish and prevent the commission of genocide. So, by destroying these weapons, which would have been used in the genocide, which is a duty under international law, they were being accused of terrorism.

Shortly before the action, and we only know this now because of the proscription case and disclosure, there was a meeting between prosecutors and counter-terrorism police where they had discussed banning Palestine Action. And they had discussed this before anyone in Palestine Action had been accused of terrorism for taking direct action. So, they were discussing this knowing that there had been no terrorism accusations for direct action by Palestine Action. And in order to proscribe us, they knew that they had to accuse us of terrorism offences. So, when the action happened in Filton, they jumped on it in order to try and accuse them of terrorism to be able to use that as a basis to justify Palestine Action as a whole. But what they did in that case is extremely sinister. It embodies all of their oppressive tactics in one case. They held them on remand and, up until this point, there was very occasional instances of people being held on remand before trial in Palestine action. They held them on remand for 18 months before trial, four beyond the pre-trial custody time limit of six months. And they charged them of ordinary criminal offences and banned them from telling the jury that if they were convicted of criminal damage, they would be sentenced as terrorists. And, of course, we now know that four of them who were convicted of criminal damage were indeed sentenced as terrorists even though the jury had no idea that that was a possibility and it’s the first time that’s happened in British legal history.

Chris Hedges:

How many people were on trial? How many people went to trial total?

Huda Ammori:

So, there’s 25 people accused in this one case, but because there’s so many of them, they had to split the trials. So, the first trial, it was six people. They were the six that got inside the factory. And they actually were facing a range of charges, including aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder. And in the first trial, none of them were convicted of a single offense and they defeated the most serious charges. There was a hung jury on half of the charges and not guilty on the other half, which was extraordinary given the limitations that they had.

And clearly, it was because the jury understood why they were taking action and agreed to some extent that it was right to take action to destroy these drones during a genocide. But they then retried them and they gagged them even more the second time where they weren’t allowed to talk about their motivations. They weren’t allowed to tell the jury about the terrorism connection. They were completely stitched up in every way in order to get criminal damage convictions so they could sentence them as terrorists. And you know crucially here, they could have just charged them with terrorism and hands down there is no doubt they would have won that in front of a jury, but they didn’t. They did it in this twisted way where they charged them with criminal damage. They denied them their defenses. They stopped them from talking about Palestine and then they let a judge sentence them as terrorists.

Chris Hedges:

Yeah, I used to cover Julian Assange’s trial. They had the same kinds of restrictions. The British Court – I use that word very loosely – British jurisprudence really shamed itself in the Assange persecution, but also in the way they deformed the legal system to go after Palestine Action. And this triggered a hunger strike and maybe you can talk about that. I mean some of these people came very close to death.

Huda Ammori:

Yeah, so in November 2025, this was after the proscription, eight of them started a hunger strike and they were all separated as well. Some of them occasionally got to mix with each other, but overall, they separated them into different prisons and so forth. And they went on hunger strike. The longest was for 73 days. And part of their demands was for simple things like being able to get their mail because they were being treated as terrorists in prison. They were considered terrorists even though they hadn’t even gone to trial yet. They were on remand and that meant that they had a lot more stricter conditions than the other prisoners. So just things like being able to get mail at all, would make a difference to the reality in prison.

But I think for a lot of them the main thing was to assert their dignity whilst inside there and to protest the only way that they had left, the use of counter-terrorism powers in their cases against them but also the proscription of Palestine Action and the contract that Elbit Systems was about to gain, which was worth over £2 billion, that was one of their demands. So, they didn’t get this contract and Elbit didn’t end up getting that contract but yeah, I mean it was a very close call that hunger strike and to be honest, they managed to embarrass the British establishment to a significant extent and to expose them because when people are in prison, a huge part of it is to completely silence them, isolate them from society. Their hunger strike inside there was sparking protests across the country. Hundreds of people at the time were taking direct action inspired by them, by their sacrifice, by what they were calling for, because the whole time they were on hunger strike, was saying to the outside world, “continue to take direct action against the Israeli weapons industry.” Half of them are out now. They did get bail at the start of this year. The other half are still in prison.

Chris Hedges:

So, the state, as it becomes more draconian and there are numerous arrests, holding up a sign that says, “I support Palestine Action.” And I want to make it clear, I do support Palestine Action, but it became a criminal offense.

Huda Ammori:

Yes, it did. And I think these types of terrorism laws are not that common across the world but in Britain, if you are a proscribed organization, what it does is it bans not just material support but verbal support. So there was, rightly so, because of the ban on Palestine Action, it was the first time a direct action group had been banned as a terrorist organisation. First time a group had been banned on the basis of serious property damage alone as well. There was a huge amount of outrage and so a group called Defend Our Juries, literally the day we were proscribed, started a civil disobedience campaign where they held signs saying, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine action.” And the state did have a choice. Even though we were proscribed under law, there are many instances where they choose to not make arrests because it’s not in the public interest to do so. But the state chose to arrest these people, most of whom are elderly. They include vicars, priests, people from all across civil society.

Chris Hedges:

Greta Thunberg.

Huda Ammori:

Greta, yeah, actually she was arrested for holding a sign which said, “I support Palestine Action prisoners during the hunger strike.” So, there was a slight thing believing that even saying that you support the prisoners, that was actually what led to her arrest. I mean it’s absolutely insane and those are the examples of the people that engaged in civil disobedience. And, as you said, it’s over 3,000 arrests, nearly 4,000 now.

There were people getting arrested for holding up magazines which made jokes about the proscription. Someone had been stopped because they waved a Palestine flag in a protest, no mention of Palestine actually, and they stopped and searched them and asked them if they were supportive of a proscribed group. I mean, there were just countless examples of people being persecuted by the state for holding pro-Palestine views because they had proscribed Palestine Action, which was extremely popular in Britain especially amongst the pro-Palestine movement. So, it was an excuse to attack the movement as a whole.

Chris Hedges:

And to what extent did the state succeed in shutting down Palestine Action? Where are we now?

Huda Ammori:

So, Palestine Action is proscribed in Britain. However, in response to the ban, what actually ended up happening was it backfired immensely in the sense that it made Palestine Action quite mainstream. We weren’t really that mainstream before. We had a lot of support, but we weren’t really talked about much on the mainstream media. And it led to a huge civil disobedience campaign. But in addition to that, it popularized the idea of direct action.

Since the Palestine Action ban has come in place, there have been new groups popping up taking direct action against Elbit systems. It hasn’t slowed down whatsoever and it’s been incredible to see people continuing to use the tactic of direct action even though Palestine Action as a group is banned. It doesn’t necessarily mean they can make all direct action terrorism and Palestine Action is still active on a global scale. So, the ban in Britain banned Palestine Action in Britain and the north of Ireland. It didn’t ban the global Palestine Action.

We’re active now in over a dozen countries across Europe as well there are actions happening all the time in countries like Italy and Poland, Mexico as well. Malaysia, there is a Palestine Action group active there who were taking direct action against the Israeli war machine. So, it hasn’t stopped, and if anything, I think it’s the Streisand Effect where they have just made Palestine Action much more popular, not just in the way of our name of Palestine Action or understanding, but in the understanding of that Palestine Action was banned because it was effective and we need to be effective against the Israeli war machine.

Chris Hedges:

Can you talk about your current court case because you keep challenging this ban within the British legal system?

Huda Ammori:

Yes, so I have a case against the government’s ban on Palestine action and it’s going to the Supreme Court, which is the highest court in the land, and that will decide whether or not the ban on Palestine action is lawful or not. And, of course, we are arguing that it’s unlawful and the ground that we have to argue that on is that it’s disproportionate to human rights in the sense that it’s disproportionate to our rights to free speech and our rights to protest, which I think is extremely clear for the British public to see that that is the case.

Actually, there are three different stages in Britain. We won at the first stage in the High Court and we went to the Court of Appeal, and they overturned our victory. And so, we are now appealing to the Supreme Court where we hope to lift the ban. And if we win, it would mean that all of those arrests since Palestine Action has been proscribed would be quashed. All of the prosecutions against those people would be quashed because it would mean that the ban was unlawful since its inception and all the subsequent arrests were also unlawful. So, potentially, they’re going to have thousands of claims against the police as a result.

But if we’re not successful then we will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, where I believe we are very likely to win in that court. However, they would potentially continue the prosecutions and start the prosecutions of all of those thousands of people, which to date has been on hold pending the Supreme Court case. So, it’s an extremely important case, not just for Palestine Action as a group, but for our Free Speech rights in Britain in general. And as well I think it’s going to put a lot of pressure on the new government when people see that they are sanctioning and allowing the prosecutions of thousands of people for holding signs as terrorists.

Chris Hedges:

And you currently are facing already obstacles with the Trump administration declaring Palestine Action a terrorist organization. This has crippled your ability to raise funds. Just to close, talk a little bit about the tactics that have been employed against you to bring this case forward.

Huda Ammori:

Yes, so Trump has declared us as a ‘specially designated global terrorist group.’ That happened just a couple of months ago and it’s a very strange development. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting it in a sense that Trump wasn’t really on our radar of what would come down the road, but it’s very much these sanctions, which are out of control, the US sanctions, are mainly targeted at finance and the economics of groups. The material effect that’s had on Palestine Action is that we are not able to crowdfund for our Supreme Court case. And I don’t think people realize just how reliant a lot of the vast majority of the financial institutions or crowdfunding websites in one way or another on a US service and that inclusion of a US service, that US service is not allowed to facilitate any sort of finance for the benefit of a proscribed group. So even though this is a legal challenge against the legality of the ban, that would still, under US law, constitute the service of a person in it for the benefit of a of a sanctioned group, which is Palestine Action.

So, we are unable to crowdfund for the remaining costs whereas, on the other hand, Andy Burnham’s government has unlimited funds to throw at defending the ban. We know they’ve already spent millions on their legal fees. We’ve only spent a fraction of that. Yet, this is the current situation that we are in. And it’s very hard to think of alternatives as well, because as I said, the vast majority, if not all, have some sort of reliance on a US payment service and even if they don’t, ordinary people don’t necessarily know the implications of donating to that crowdfunder even though it’s very vague. But US citizens would be unable to donate to that crowdfunding or if you’ve got assets in the US, et cetera, you would have complications when it comes to, if you in any way defied those sanctions, even if you did that potentially unknowingly.

It’s interesting though, because the Trump ban comes after Palestine Action, you said at the start, we trashed his golf course in Turnberry in Scotland and this was in protest of his plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And people had sprayed on the golf course, “Gaza is not for sale” and posted this online. And it went viral. And weeks after Trump posted on his Truth Social account that Palestine Action are terrorists, and we know that his son had been meeting with the Scottish First Minister and there had been meetings with the Foreign Minister about this action at the golf course, and they are now treating that action as an act of terrorism as well. And the news that they were treating that as an act of terrorism and the sanctions came at a very similar time.

Chris Hedges:

Great Huda. Thank you so much. I have so much respect for you and Richard and all the other activists. As you know, I was close friends with Father Daniel Berrigan, the great activist priest who spent 23 months in a federal prison for burning draft records during the Vietnam War, who carried out exactly the same kind of activity that Palestine Action carries out. Dan baptized my youngest daughter and if I believe in resurrection, it’s because of what you do. Thank you so much. And I want to thank Milena and Max, who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.substack.com.

Chris Hedges

Executive Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Margaret Flowers

Transcript:

Margaret Flowers

Crew:

Milena Soci