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Today, on the 106th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, activists from Palestine Action targeted Britain’s foreign office and are currently occupying the weapons firm Leonardo at their London HQ. Leonardo’s London offices have been covered in red paint, to symbolise the Palestinian bloodshed by their weaponry, whilst one activist remains on top of the company’s front overhang. Elsewhere, the Foreign Office in London was sprayed in messages including ‘Britain Guilty’ and ‘Fuck Balfour.
Written in 1917 by then UK foreign secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, the Declaration signed away the land of Palestine to the Zionist colonial project – a land Britain never had the right to give away [1]. After the declaration, until 1948, the British burnt down indigenous villages to prepare the way for the Nakba; with this came arbitrary killings, arrests, torture, sexual violence including rape against women and men, the use of human shields and the introduction of home demolitions as collective punishment to repress Palestinian resistance [2] [3].
The Nakba (‘Great Catastrophe’) saw British armed and trained Zionist militia forcibly displace over 750,000 Palestinians, destroy over 500 Palestinian villages, and massacre many families. The genocide underway right now in Gaza, which has already claimed the lives of over 8,500 Palestinians, injured tens of thousands more, while the 2.1m in Gaza are starved, thirsted, and displaced, would not be happening if not for Balfour and Britain’s ongoing political and military support for the Zionist project.
Israel’s F-35 fighter jets, are being used in its ongoing bombardment and massacre of Palestinians in Gaza [4], using ‘high-energy military laser’ targeting systems produced by Leonardo UK [5]. Leonardo furthermore supplies Israel with Aermacchi M-346 aircraft and components for its Apache attack helicopters [6], which have also been deployed in the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza [7].
The deep military-industrial ties between Britain and Israel show that the Balfour Declaration is not a historic document: instead, the Declaration is the first proof of Britain’s commitment to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. This is a commitment they continue to act on, arming the Israeli regime with the means to commit its genocide via Leonardo not least of all.
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
If you would like any further information on Palestine action, please contactinfo@palestineaction.org
Palestine Action is a direct-action network of groups and individuals formed with the mandate of taking action against the sites of Elbit Systems and other companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, calling for all such sites to be shut down.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/11/2/more-than-a-century-on-the-balfour-declaration-explained
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/britain-palestine-balfour-colonial-crimes-reparations
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-63145992
[4] https://inews.co.uk/news/weaponry-uk-sold-israel-f35-jets-bomb-gaza-2724324
[5] https://www.leonardo.com/en/press-release-detail/-/detail/finmeccanica-selex-es-receives-advanced-targeting-lasers-order-for-f-35
[6] https://www.thenational.scot/news/19322575.anger-arms-firms-get-grants-worth-nearly-10m-scottish-enterprise/
[7] https://www.newsweek.com/israel-apache-helicopter-hamas-hellfire-missiles-gaza-1833372