The Nakba is a crime and Elbit are the criminals

At 4pm GMT on May 15th 2022 in Bristol, Palestine Action began its occupation of the epicentre of Israel’s arms trade in the UK, commemorating Nakba Day. The plan, as always, was to shut the site down. One group of activists smashed the site’s windows, gained entry into the building before dismantling the office – from top to bottom. Others prevented entry by locking-on at the gates. This action was taken to both disable and expose Elbit’s business of bloodshed. The premises were sprayed in symbolic blood-red paint, whilst slogans of ‘Free Palestine’ & ‘Shut Elbit Down’ were scrawled on the walls. Footage from the action can be seen on our Twitter account.

The Bristol premises, on the Aztec West business complex, are leased from Sedgemore District Council, and have been targeted numerous times by activists seeking to end the war-crimes and the supply-chain of British-made arms and drones used to facilitate Israel’s atrocities. The activists, two of whom are Israeli dissidents, shut down the site and completely disabled the company’s ability to continue making its lethal weaponry.

The Nakba, meaning ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, has two meanings. The first refers to the period during 1948 where over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced and dispossessed, having to flee violence and ethnic cleansing from Zionist militia forces. As well, several hundred villages were destroyed an attempt to wipe the land clean of any evidence of Palestinian presence to make way of the settler colonial state of Israel. But the throughout the past 74 years, Israel has not halted in its continued displacement, segregation and murder of Palestinians. This fact forms the second meaning of the word: the Nakba is a process, not an event. As Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said, ‘We are not looking back to dig up the evidence of a past crime, for the Nakba is an extended present that promises to continue in the future.’ 

By making weapons and selling them to Israel, Elbit forms a crucial part of the ongoing Nakba being visited upon the people of Palestine. To put it simply, the Nakba is a crime, and Elbit are the criminals. And they have partnered & worked with many subsidiaries & companies to supply the Israeli military with more weapons than any other business alone. It has 9 sites in the UK.  It used to be 10, until Palestine Action shut it down.

But despite Israel’s well-documented war crimes, including its recent assassination of the beloved Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, the apartheid state has consistently received unwaivering support from Western governments. British complicity dates back to the British Mandate of Palestine and the subsequent signing of the Balfour Agreement in 1917, which gave the land of Palestine away to Zionists. Britain continues to support the apartheid regime today through the export of weapons made by Elbit Systems on British soil. Today, we say: this complicity ends now.  

“We aim to permanently disrupt the British-Israeli weapons trade by halting Elbit’s production of weapons on British shores,” we say. “Our mission to #ShutElbitDown will continue. We intend to target every Elbit location and every complicit company across Britain. As the ongoing Nakba continues, so do our efforts to dismantle Britain’s role in supporting Israeli apartheid.” 

Eventually, after occupying the headquarters, barricading the room and destroying it, all 9 actionists were arrested. We’ll keep you updated on their status on our Twitter account. For now, we’ll state that if the fact of life for Palestinians under Israeli apartheid is that of ongoing dispossession and death, then our resistance too must be ongoing. We won’t stop till the Nakba does. 

Dante
Dante is the pseudonym for an Anglo-Irish writer, poet and activist involved in Palestine Action. Their work focuses on cultural resistance, revolutionary politics and links between Irish republicanism and other international struggles.