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From 12.30PM on Christmas day, Palestine Action begun breaking through the walls of Elbit’s UAV Engines’ (UEL) Shenstone drone factory. Palestine Action have repeatedly targeted the Lynn Lane production site, and today, from within two buckets attached to two cherry pickers, a dedicated team of activists are using demolition tools to target the factory walls. The drivers have secured themselves inside the two vehicles, using lock-ons to remain in position, allowing more time to put the Israeli weapons maker out of commission.
Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, use the Staffordshire site to design and manufacture Wankel-type rotary engines, which have been used to power Israel’s Hermes killer drone fleet, bringing misery and death to the children of Gaza, to whom the ‘Season of Goodwill’ does not extend. In addition to producing engines for Elbit’s 450 drone, the UEL AR731 rotary engines produced at Shenstone, are also used in the Israeli Aerospace Industries (IMI) Harop Kamikase drone, which is currently being upgraded to kill autonomously.
Whilst UAV Engines routinely obfuscate their involvement in supplying arms to Israel, in line with their non-disclosure agreement with the Israeli military, export licenses show the company send drone parts to Israel with the ‘end-user’ listed as the ‘State of Israel’.
Today’s action takes place, not only in the context of the Gaza Genocide, and with the birthplace of Christmas under occupation, but with a climate of state terror in Britain, being used to try and intimidate protestors. These tactics include dawn raids, detention under supposed anti-terror laws, and days of questioning. On Christmas Eve, Palestine Action already had 22 political prisoners behind bars, almost all of whom are still unconvicted, and none of whom are charged with terrorist offences.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
“Despite state tactics to deter Palestine Action, we remain more determined than ever to bring an end to the British presence of Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems. By breaking the walls of an Israeli weapons factory today, we are standing with the Palestinian people who remain occupied and under Israeli bombardment on Christmas day. Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel’s weapons trade will fall.”
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
If you would like any further information on Palestine action, please contact media@palestineaction.org
Palestine Action is a direct-action network of groups and individuals formed with the mandate of taking direct action against Elbit Systems’ UK locations at grassroots level, calling for them all to be shut down and for the British government to end its complicity in Israeli apartheid.