At 7PM on Friday 9th July, Instagram disabled our account Palestine Action with over 40K followers – an act which will play right into the vested interests of Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems. The inability to document Elbit Systems crimes and our collective resistance against it, works to protect the reputation and survival of a company which tests their weapons on Palestinians and one we and many others have been fighting to close time and time again. The tactics of anti-militarism and direct-action we use are nothing new, but now redirected towards an imperial target whose sole source of income is the bloodshed of Palestinians and others across the world.
Direct-action groups such as Extinction Rebellion who use similar tactics and openly document their actions and encourage civil disobedience to achieve their righteous aims, have however not been removed from countless platforms.
But when we take direct action against an Israeli arms company and focus on the rights of Palestinians and oppressed people everywhere, we are repeatedly taken down. Since our launch in July 2020, we have been removed from 8 different platforms, which include: Gofundme, Paypal, Donorbox, Chuffed, Mailchimp and Patreon. We have also been informed on numerous occasions that our removal from many of these platforms has directly involved Elbit Systems lawyers, targeting our pages and harrassing those who host us with lawfare.
This is not the first time we have been censored, but it is definitely not right and we have had enough! For there is one simple reason why this keeps happening: we are effective, we are winning and the profiteers of blood and violence the world over fear our collective power, so are trying to silence us so as to be able to commit their crimes in the dark. Our actions & grassroots community support demonstrates the power and ability people have in shutting down war machines. And no matter the amount of censorship we most definitely aren’t stopping.
So why do we get targeted and removed from platforms time and time again when groups such as Extinction rebellion are not? It is a question of class, a question of racism and a question of target. Because our actions target the crimes of Britain and Israel’s Imperial war machine, Elbit Systems, and its crimes against the Palestinian people, the racist disregard for Palestinian life, rights and dignity is exposed when these platforms remove us. Our strategy and actions are effective and massively supported by a large following of people of colour in Britain, with mass grassroots community support from Kashmiri, Palestinian and Muslim communities around Britain, supporting our struggle and resisting Elbits crimes in their own communities. With many of these supporters being racially profiled by the police, with one Muslim supporter being arrested for shouting “Free Palestine”. All of this has been cencorsed by Instagram and thus demonstrates their complicity both in covering up Elbits crimes but also the silencing of these communities voices.
The reason we are being removed by these platforms, the reason Elbit Systems and the government are repeatedly trying to silence us, is because we are winning. With every action against Israel’s war machine & the British governments complicity our support grows as does our mission. We will continue to struggle and resist, despite censorship until we Shut Elbit Down and end all UK complicity in Israel’s Apartheid regime.
Notes:
Palestine Actions instagram launched in July 2020 when we officially launched. The account was open and running, documenting our actions and Elbit Systens crimes for over 10 months, with a huge spike in activity when our activists recebtly occupied an Elbit Systems factor in Leicester factory, bringing out hundreds of people from the local community in solidarity in response to the bombing of Gaza by Israel. As more and more people followed us and came to join or support the resistance to these arns companies, Instagrams response has been to in classic racist fashion, to attempt to censor and silence our actions in support of the Palestinian peope and the voices of these communities.