If this column were to be published a few days later, I could face a prison sentence of up to 14 years. That’s because Palestine Action - a non-violent direct action group - is being proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the British government. That places them in the same legal bracket as ISIS, and indeed violent neo-Nazis: as Palestine Action note, two of the latter lumped in the coming legislation to help ensure it passes.
But Palestine Action don’t behead people or seek to exterminate them based on their ethnicity. They are the opposite: driven by a desire to prevent what a consensus of genocide scholars has concluded is indeed a genocide.
The catalyst for the proscription was throwing red paint at a couple of military planes. In Britain, in 2025, this is considered a much graver crime than British politicians arming and facilitating the mass extermination of predominantly women and children in Gaza.
Palestine Action are a courageous direct action movement who stand in a long tradition which helped secure many of the rights and freedoms we take for granted today. Here is a statement which, if declared after the legislation passes, will be punishable by a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
Nobody really believes that Palestine Action is actually a terrorist organisation. The term ‘terrorism’ has been stripped of all meaning, used to describe activities deemed hostile by Western states, that actually perpetrate lethal violence on a mass scale. When anti-terrorism legislation was passed, opponents warned it would be abused to damage the civil liberties of people who clearly are not terrorists, and such laws have already been deployed against entirely peaceful protesters.
Yes, Palestine Action activists break the law. When they do so, they expect to be prosecuted. Personally, if I served on a jury, I would acquit them on the grounds that they were seeking to prevent a much greater crime - that is, genocide.
Two protesters who broke into RAF Fairford in 2003 to inflict actual damage on military equipment - as opposed to throwing red paint - in protest at the Iraq war were rightly later acquitted by the jury on the grounds they sought to prevent war crimes. Who was the lawyer who represented one of them? Keir Starmer.
It is reasonable to expect a peace activist to be prosecuted for, say, criminal damage, even if a wise jury would acquit. That is rather different than pretending Palestine Action are terrorists, literally legally equivalent to ISIS, with anyone deemed supportive risking spending nearly a decade and a half behind jars.
Here is an example of how those who have facilitated Israel’s genocide have turned the world on its head. According to The Economist, a publication which supported this onslaught, up to 109,000 Palestinians in Gaza have suffered violent deaths. This estimate is 2 months out of date, and excludes those killed by non-violent means. In Yemen - which suffered a hideous war, but not with the total apocalyptic ruin of Gaza - the majority of deaths were due to indirect causes. This means a large proportion of Gaza’s pre-genocide population has been exterminated, and that is without us discussing those who have been maimed, repeatedly violently displaced, bereaved and traumatised.
Countless babies have been burned alive, suffocated under rubble, beheaded by Israeli weapons. An entire people has been deliberately starved and deprived of the essentials of life. Agriculture, livestock and food production have been obliterated.
Civilian infrastructure - from homes to schools to mosques to universities - has been systematically destroyed. According to the United Nations, “Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza”, deliberately destroying hospitals and murdering over 1,400 medics.
Torture is used on an industrial scale, with overwhelming evidence of the mass rape of Palestinian detainees.
We could go on. These are the gravest of crimes, all pillars of genocide, and they have been directly facilitated by the British government. Britain continues to supply crucial components to the F-35 jets which rain death and destruction on the people of Gaza. Yet rather than British politicians being subjected to police investigations for facilitating the crime of the century, it is non-violent activists throwing paint at military airplanes who face being incarcerated for years.
It gets even worse. There are British citizens freely serving in the IDF in Gaza, who then return home after participating in this genocidal rampage without facing any criminal investigations.
Let’s spell this out: the murderous actions of the IDF led to the International Criminal Court - an institution the British state is a founding member of - to issue arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity. If you are a British citizen who throws red paint at military airplane in protest at your government’s criminal complicity in genocide, you face being sent to prison for 14 years. If you are a British citizen who participates in a genocidal rampage of a foreign nation which has left its leader a wanted man, then you are simply a respectable member of society.
All of this is absurd, of course. The British government has a legal obligation to prevent genocide, as a signatory of the 1948 Genocide Convention. It has decided to violate its solemn obligations, leaving its citizens with a moral responsibility to fill the vacuum.
Where this leads should terrify you. A battery of anti-protest laws introduced by New Labour and the Tories has left a sacred, hard-won democratic right under threat. The Policing Act, for example, allows for protests to be banned if they are deemed “too noisy”: protests are supposed to be inherently noisy.
Earlier this year, dozens of entirely peaceful protesters at a demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign were arrested: its leader, Ben Jamal, and the chief steward, Chris Nineham, face being hauled before the courts.
In the US, the foundations of Trump’s current authoritarian spiral were paved by Democrats and so-called “centrists” demonising pro-Palestinian activism. In Britain, Nigel Farage tweeted demanding the proscription of Palestine Action in the morning, a wish granted by the government that afternoon. If he becomes prime minister, he will inherit an already deeply authoritarian arsenal he can easily expand.
Our freedoms are hard-won, but easily stolen, and then much more difficult to retrieve. It is a deeply painful lesson our country may have to learn in the worst possible way.
Owen Jones is a British journalist, columnist, and political activist. He is the author of Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class and The Establishment – And How They Get Away With It.
Follow him on X: @OwenJones84
Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@alaraby.co.uk.
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.