On 15 May 2022, a group of Palestine Action protesters, two of them dissident Israeli citizens, smashed their way into the Bristol headquarters of Elbit Systems UK, a subsidiary of Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.
The date of the action is significant – it marked the anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for ‘catastrophe’, when the mass displacement of Palestinians began in 1948.
The seven Palestine Action activists used sledgehammers to break into the Elbit Systems building, before barricading themselves inside, where they caused damage to the facility to the tune of thousands of pounds.
Elbit has nine sites in the UK, with Bristol its main operational facility. The activists say that shutting down the site – which is owned by a local council – is key to ending Britain’s “complicity” in what they and international human rights groups describe as Israel’s “apartheid regime”.
The group were arrested, charged with criminal damage and burglary, and stood trial at Bristol Crown Court a few weeks ago. We covered the trial, which you can hear about in more detail on our previous podcast – Inside Bristol’s ‘murder factory’.
Since then, the ‘Elbit seven’ have been found guilty and will be sentenced on 22 March. The maximum sentence for burglary and criminal damage is 10 years in prison.
In this podcast – a new format for the Cable, the Debrief – reporter Priyanka Raval and Sean Morrison discuss the verdict and the trial as a whole, in the context of the state’s clampdown on protesters since the Colston statue topplers were cleared.
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