by Jules Gomes
Red-Green Alliance United by Hatred of Israel, Contempt for U.K.
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Anti-Israel leftists protest against Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems in Manchester, England in November 2023, weeks after Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis, many of them peace activists, during the October 7 massacre. Islamist organizations in the United Kingdom have come to the defense of Palestine Action, a group which has targeted Elbit with protests and vandalized U.K. military equipment. Shutterstock |
British Islamist organizations linked to jihad, terrorism, antisemitism, and Iran’s geopolitical ambitions have joined forces to oppose the U.K. government’s proposal to ban the militant activist outfit Palestine Action (PA).
A coalition of Islamist outfits, including the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), The Muslim Vote (TMV), and Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), has warned the government that the ban would constitute an abuse of terrorism legislation.
U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament on June 23 that she had decided to proscribe PA as a terrorist group under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000 after its activists vandalized military aircraft at RAF Brize Norton airbase in Oxfordshire on June 20. The group has perpetrated numerous attacks in recent years, Cooper told Parliament.
“During Palestine Action’s attack against the Thales defense factory in Glasgow in 2022, the group caused over a million pounds-worth of damage, including to parts essential to submarines,” she reported. “The sheriff, in passing custodial sentences for the attackers’ violent crimes, spoke of the panic among staff, who feared for their safety as pyrotechnics and smoke bombs were thrown in the area where they were evacuating.”
Cooper also reported that the group had recently “claimed responsibility for an attack against a Jewish-owned business in north London, where the glass front of the building was smashed and the building and floor defaced with red-paint, including the slogan “drop Elbit.” Such incidents do not represent legitimate or peaceful protest. Elbit, an Israeli company, is a prominent defense contractor that has drawn the ire of leftist protesters in the United States and Europe.
Islamist-Leftist Alliance Confirms Walney Report
The Islamist outfits’ support for PA confirms a May 2024 report by Lord Walney, the government’s Independent Adviser on Political Violence and Disruption, warning of “alliances between the British Far Left and Islamist organizations on anti-Israel and antisemitic activism.”
Walney’s 294-page report identifies PA as “a Far Left, anarchist, anti-Israel activist group.” It highlights co-founder Richard Barnard’s admiration for Islamic Jihad prisoners in Israel, whom he refers to as “heroes.”
Barnard, a former Roman Catholic who was a member of the London Catholic Worker and Christian Climate Action, is a convert to Islam. “When we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood, we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world,” he told a Manchester rally in 2023, echoing Islamist rhetoric used by Hamas.
PA’s alliance with Islamists included campaigning with radical Islamist group CAGE which employed Doone Zoe Stormonth-Darling as its caseworker, Walney’s report found. Stormonth-Darling, a prominent anti-Israel protester, was recently acquitted of conspiracy to damage property after spraying Elbit UK’s London headquarters with paint.
A recent report published by We Believe in Israel, Stop the Hate UK, and The Shield of David stressed that the PA’s “explicitly militant” messaging glorifies Islamist “groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad through coded language and praise for ‘resistance fighters.’”
Islamists Condemn Government’s Ban on PA
The Islamist outfits’ solidarity with PA comes in the wake of CAGE invoking European human rights legislation to contest the U.K. government’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization, Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) reported.
Riverway Law, a legal firm with a history of defending jihadis linked to Islamist terror militias, including Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and the Taliban, also appealed to the Home Office on April 9, demanding Hamas’ deproscription from the government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups.
On June 21, CAGE condemned the government’s plans to ban PA, noting that “terrorism and proscription laws are now brazenly enabling the continuation of a live-streamed genocide.” CAGE earlier expressed solidarity with PA, claiming that “the authoritarian infrastructure of counter terrorism powers” was “exploiting fears and prejudices against mainly Muslims.”
MEND released a statement on June 23 warning that proscribing PA “would be a huge mistake and a blatant abuse of terrorism legislation.” It added: “Proscribing them will simply further expose the government’s desperation in covering up their shameful role in this genocide.”
MAB called for “solidarity” with PA the same day. “Protest is not the problem. It’s the necessary response to the biggest crime of our lifetime,” it tweeted. “The government is criminalizing protest not to protect the public, but to protect itself and its complicity in the genocide.”
Meanwhile, in a post on its website disclosing correspondence with The Times, the IHRC revealed that it supports PA’s goals but had not “provided them with any financial or material support.” In an email to The Telegraph, IHRC maintained that “PA is not a terrorist organization.”
“In social media posts and at events over the past 10 months, the IHRC in north London has campaigned in support of 10 PA activists charged with criminal damage, violent disorder and aggravated burglary” after a protest at the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, it noted.
“We stand in solidarity with our comrades #PalestineAction!” IHRC reiterated, posting an article by Massoud Shadjareh titled “It Started with the Muslim: Learning the Lesson of the Attacks on Palestine Action.”
As per the NGO Monitor, “PA does not publish financial information, reflecting a lack of transparency and accountability.”
TMV is the latest outfit to join the chorus of Islamist groups backing PA. “This isn’t just about one organization—it’s a full-scale attack on OUR civil liberties,” it tweeted on June 30. “This isn’t just about PA. It’s about the precedent it sets for how dissent is treated in the UK.”
“Palestine Action have cost the ZIONIST WAR MACHINE more than £30 MILLION. They are the most effective movement. We must stand by them,” TMV posted earlier on Instagram.
Islamists’ Links to Iran, Terrorism, Religious Supremacism
The IHRC, MEND, TMV, CAGE, and MAB have been linked to jihadi violence, Islamist supremacism, and antisemitism.
The Walney report labels MAB “an Islamist activist group established in 1997 by Kemal El-Helbawy, a leading Muslim Brotherhood figure.” CAGE director Adnan Siddique told the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2015 that suicide bombings are “a price worth paying.” It has been accused of backing convicted Islamist terrorists, and senior staff have supported violent jihad.
A report published by the Henry Jackson Society titled Islamic Human Rights Commission: Advocating for the Ayatollahs, notes that the IHRC was established by Khomeinist activists and “echoes Iranian-state foreign policy objectives.” Its chairman, Massoud Shadjareh, has backed jihad. Its director and co-founder, Arzu Merali, received an Iranian government award in 2016.
The Daily Telegraph reported on June 25 that a government review had described IHRC as an “Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime” that has a history of “extremist links and terrorist sympathies.” IHRC denied claims of its links to Iran as “baseless and disinformation.”
A Henry Jackson Society report warned that MEND officials “have expressed highly concerning views on terrorism” and “regularly hosted illiberal, intolerant and extremist Islamist speakers at public events.” MEND “has consistently opposed the government’s counter-terrorism and counter-extremism legislation, usually without proposing credible alternatives,” it added.
According to The Telegraph, MEND, an official partner of TMV, “is the most disturbing expression of the sectarianism that is disfiguring the face of our politics.” A Christian Concern report warned of “its intent to influence politics towards Islamic supremacism.”
Experts Warn of Islamo-Leftist Collusion
Speaking to FWI, Carys Moseley, Public Policy Researcher at Christian Concern and author of “Are there Islamic influences behind Palestine Action?” noted how “PA’s public image as secular and not religiously aligned is deceptive.”
Moseley elaborated:
In her latest Substack article addressing PA’s proscription, human rights activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali warns that the pro-Palestinian coalition was composed of “black-bloc Antifa communists, expediently allied Islamists, and Malthusian climate cultists.”
“The plight of Palestinians is window-dressing for revolutionary racial communism and the imperial designs that Islam has on the West,” Ali writes. “Devious Islamist groups use both as useful idiots, and, thanks to mass migration, have a standing army of millions of Muslims in Europe for whom solidarity with the Ummah takes precedence over loyalty to their host nation.”
On June 30, an urgent high court hearing granted PA’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, the opportunity to apply for “interim relief” to try and prevent the ban from coming into effect.
However, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced on July 1 that parliament will vote during the week on proscribing PA. If approved, the ban order will come into effect over the weekend.
PA did not respond to a request for comment.
Jules Gomes
Source: https://www.meforum.org/fwi/fwi-news/u-k-islamists-come-to-defense-of-leftist-vandals
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