My previous sympathy for Palestinians cooled significantly after October 7, 2023. When I saw some of them celebrating joyfully in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, it became clear to me that for many, this would be the last joy they’d experience in life. From the very first moment, I knew Gaza would become hell on Earth, so I wasn’t at all surprised by the brutality with which Israel responded. Two years have passed. Gaza lies in ruins. More than 60,000 people have been killed. Those who once danced over the beaten and bloodied bodies of kidnapped Israelis no longer dance. They are either dead or burying their relatives. Hamas is significantly weakened, but it still rules Gaza and continues to hold dozens of hostages.
I am certainly not a supporter of Netanyahu’s government, and I consider members of his cabinet such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich to be just as criminal as Hamas. At the same time, I understand Israel’s need to defend itself and its efforts to prevent similar massacres in the future.
Let us now turn to Britain, where demonstrations are shaking the streets in support of the group Palestine Action, which the government recently added to its list of terrorist organizations. Membership in this group now carries a penalty of up to 14 years in prison, and supporting it is also a criminal offense. The reason was a series of direct actions carried out by Palestine Action members in recent months. It began with attacks on British companies linked to the Israeli defense industry, particularly Elbit Systems. The final straw was an incident in which activists broke into the RAF Brize Norton military base and sprayed red paint into the engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft, causing damage reportedly worth millions of pounds.
Most of the people protesting in support of Palestine Action are not extremists. They simply cannot bear to watch the suffering of Palestinian civilians. That is an entirely understandable position. On the other hand, these people fail to realize that the United Kingdom has been engaged in a hybrid war with Russia for several years. We’ve had the Litvinenko case. Then the Novichok incident in Salisbury. Warehouses and buildings belonging to companies helping Ukraine have gone up in flames. There are constant cyberattacks targeting the computer networks of healthcare facilities and government offices. At the same time, a military audit revealed how underfunded and neglected the British armed forces are. Fascist Russia, by contrast, invests 40% of its national budget into armaments. And when one listens to the threats regularly hurled at Britain by Russian propagandists on state television, it becomes entirely understandable why sabotage of military equipment by Palestine Action ultimately led to its designation as a terrorist organization.
People have the right to demonstrate in support of Israel’s right to defend itself. They also have the right to protest against the scale and impact of Israel’s operation in Gaza. But supporting a group that attacks the military aircrafts of its own country at a time when hybrid war could at any moment escalate into conventional war is just as unacceptable as supporting someone in 1939 who carried out sabotage against Spitfires.