UK Proscribes Palestine Activists, Not Arms Dealers Fueling War
Four Palestine Action activists in the UK are on hunger strike, labeled a 'proscribed group' by the government. ('Proscribed,' a term usually reserved for terror organizations, for people smashing windows at arms factories.) These individuals are quite literally starving themselves as a plea to halt arms sales to a regime currently facing ICJ genocide allegations. While their bodies waste away in
prison cells, Elbit Systems, whose UK factories they disrupt, continues to arm Netanyahu's government. This arrangement, where dissent is criminalized while the instruments of mass destruction operate legally, raises questions about whose 'peace' and 'security' states truly prioritize. The British government, ever keen on 'law and order,' seems less concerned with the public record of arms used in
an alleged genocide (see UN reports on Gaza ordnance) and more focused on the inconvenience of activists disrupting profit. One might wonder if the government's concern for 'proscription' extends to the corporations directly profiting from the slaughter, or if that's a different category of 'order' altogether. The hunger strikers highlight a brutal irony: their suffering is illegal, but the
suffering their actions protest is merely a trade agreement.