Over 400 disrupt operations at BAE Systems site and call for ceasefire ahead of national march for Palestine 10 Nov 2023
HUNDREDS of trade unionists disrupted operations at an arms factory in Kent today, blockading entrances and preventing workers and deliveries from entering the site.
More than 400 activists targeted a factory belonging to BAE Systems, a key weapons supplier to Israel, in protest over the country’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza.
United under the banner “Workers for a Free Palestine,” members of Unite, Unison, GMB, NEU, BMA, UCU, Bectu, and BFAWU, halted operations and called for an immediate ceasefire.
BAE Systems, the largest weapons firm in Britain, manufactures components for Israel’s F-35 stealth combat aircraft.
The fighter jets are currently being used in ongoing attacks against innocent civilians in Gaza, where the death toll has risen to more than 10,000.
Notably, the “active interceptor system,” which is used by pilots to direct and manoeuvre the aircraft, is also produced at the site in Kent.
Alexandra, a teacher and NEU member taking part in the blockade, said: “Seeing 185 schools and other educational institutions in Gaza bombed is utterly heartbreaking.
“If our government and the Labour opposition won’t support a ceasefire, as workers we will continue to take action to stop the slaughter of civilians in our name, funded by our taxes.
“The British arms industry, which is subsidised by public money, is involved in the mass killing of Palestinians.
“We’re here today to disrupt the Israeli war machine and take a stand against our government’s complicity and we urge workers across the UK to take similar action.”
Carla Denyer, Cost of Living Crisis protest, Bristol, 2 April 2022
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer urged a massive turnout on tomorrow’s pro-ceasefire march, as “the strongest way to send a clear message that people want a ceasefire and have no time for Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s toxic rhetoric.”
She said
“This is a march to call for a ceasefire – an Armistice – that is urgently needed. The Green Party wants to see the unconditional release of hostages and the opening up of humanitarian aid to allow a dialogue about a long-term solution that ends the occupation and offers peace and security to Palestinians and Israelis alike.
“The Home Secretary’s comments are dangerous, inciting division at a time when we need to bring people together.
“Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday are national moments of reflection and must be respected. The organisers of the pro-ceasefire march have been really clear that they have no intention of disrupting Armistice Day events. Indeed, I would say that Armistice Day is a very appropriate moment for people to be calling for a ceasefire – an armistice – so that civilians in Israel and Gaza can be protected.
“The Gaza ceasefire call has the backing of the United Nations, humanitarian aid agencies, three quarters of the British public, and growing numbers of countries, including Ireland and France. Hundreds of thousands have been out on the streets peacefully calling for an end to violence.
“The Labour leadership needs to do more than stand on the sidelines. I invite them to throw their full support behind the growing call for a ceasefire.”
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Reacting to news that 2023 is set to become the warmest year on record following unprecedented October temperatures, co-leader of the Green Party, Carla Denyer, said:
“Another week, another indicator that our climate is in meltdown. News that 2023 will almost certainly be confirmed as the hottest year on record, comes just a day after the government made the totally reckless decision to push for new oil and gas licences. This represents a massive two fingers up at communities at home and abroad who are on the front line of floods, droughts and fires, and to future generations who face an uninhabitable planet if we continue with business as usual. It’s also another alarming example of the Conservatives’ allergy to evidence-based policymaking.
“This is another wake-up call – as if any more were needed – on the urgent need to transform our economy and society – ramping up cheaper and abundant renewable resources such as solar and wind power, insulating millions of homes, investing in the infrastructure for active travel, boosting public transport and changing land management practices so that nature can thrive and help to soak up the emissions we’ve released.
“Only Greens give the climate crisis the focus it needs, which is why, whoever forms the next government, we need more Green Party MPs in parliament pushing for climate action.”
Four Greenpeace activists are pictured on a Shell vessel in the Atlantic Ocean on January 31, 2023.
“I will stand up in court and fight this; and if Shell refuses to stop drilling, I refuse to stop fighting for climate justice,” one activist named in the suit said.
Oil giant Shell is menacing Greenpeace International and Greenpeace U.K. with a lawsuit that represents “one of the biggest legal threats against the Greenpeace network’s ability to campaign in its more than 50-year history,” the environmental group revealed Thursday.
The lawsuit comes in response to a protest in January in which activists boarded one of the Shell’s oil platforms while it was en rote to a North Sea oil field. Shell has given Greenpeace a choice between facing a full $8.6 million in damages or settling for a reduced charge of $1.4 million and a promise never to protest on Shell infrastructure again.
“Shell is trying to silence my legitimate demands: that it must stop its senseless and greedy pursuit of fossil fuels and take accountability for the destruction it is wreaking upon the world,” Yeb Saño, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said in a statement.
Shell claim our peaceful protest earlier this year caused $8m in damages.
Saño, who is one of the activists named in the suit, attempted to board the platform and then met it in port in Norway to protest its arrival.
“I will stand up in court and fight this; and if Shell refuses to stop drilling, I refuse to stop fighting for climate justice,” Saño continued.
The protest that triggered the suit lasted from January 31 to February 12. Four Greenpeace activists used ropes to haul themselves onto the vessel while it was moving at full speed off the Canary Islands, Reuters reported. They stayed occupying the platform until it reached Norway. The platform was set to be used in the Penguins oil and gas field in the North Sea, which has not yet started production.
“He’s trying to crush Greenpeace’s ability to campaign, and in doing so, seeking to silence legitimate demands for climate justice and payment for loss and damage.”
The platform, the Penguins floating production storage and offloading unit, was the first new vessel that Shell had sent to the northern part of the North Sea in 30 years, Greenpeace said. While the protest was ongoing, Shell announced record 2022 profits of almost $40 billion. Greenpeace wanted Shell to stop extracting new oil and gas and to pay into a loss and damage fund to help vulnerable countries respond to the climate crisis. The activists carried signs reading, “Stop drilling—start paying,” The Guardian reported.
Saño said he had a personal reason to object to Shell’s business model.
“I have lived through the devastation caused by Shell and companies like them,” he said in a statement. “Ten years ago I spoke at COP global climate talks while my brother was still missing in the fallout from Super Typhoon Haiyan. Incredibly, he survived, but he helped carry the bodies of 78 innocent people who tragically did not.”
During the occupation itself, Shell and platform builder Fluor promised to seek more than $120,000 in damages. However, in a document seen by Reuters, Shell is now demanding $2.1 million in damages related to shipping delays, security, and legal costs, and Fluor is seeking $6.5 million. The suit was filed in London’s High Court.
SHOCKING FACT: Shell made the amount it’s threatening to sue us for in 2 hours last year.
THIS is corporate greed.
Shell CAN afford to pay for climate loss and damage it causes.
“The right to protest is fundamental, and we respect it absolutely. But it must be done safely and lawfully,” a Shell spokesperson said in a statement reported by The Guardian. “Shell and its contractors are entitled to recover the significant costs of responding to Greenpeace’s dangerous actions.”
While Shell has offered to reduce the damages if Greenpeace stops protesting its infrastructure, Greenpeace answered that it would only agree if Shell promised to obey a Dutch court order to cut its emissions by 45% of 2019 levels by 2030.
Greenpeace said that negotiations between it and Shell had wrapped up and the organization had been waiting for details, or “particulars,” from Shell since November 1.
Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace U.K., said the lawsuit reflected the climate-polluting direction of Shell under new CEO Wael Sawan, who took the reins in early 2023. Under his leadership, Hamid said, “Shell’s abandoned any pretence of good intentions, and is brazenly embracing a sinister strategy that’s not just risky for shareholders, but completely devastating for people on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Sawan’s ditching green policies, sacking former colleagues from his renewables division, and he’s gaslit the world by claiming a retreat from fossil fuels would be ‘dangerous.’”
“Now he’s trying to crush Greenpeace’s ability to campaign, and in doing so, seeking to silence legitimate demands for climate justice and payment for loss and damage,” Hamid continued. “We need this case to be thrown out and for Shell to be regulated by the government because it’s clear Sawan is hell-bent on profit, regardless of human cost.”
A pro-Palestinian protester holds a placard accusing Biden, Sunak and Netanyahu of war crimes at a demonstration against Israeli attacks on Gaza in central London, UK. (Photo by: Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come.
On October 20, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stood on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, between Egypt and besieged Gaza.
Guterres was not the only international figure to travel to the Gaza border, hoping to mobilize the international community in the face of an ongoing genocide, in an already impoverished and besieged Strip.
“Behind these walls, we have two million people that is suffering (sic) enormously,” Guterres said.
These efforts, however, paid little dividends.
The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a statement on October 24, that the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is “too slow (for it to) change the reality” on the ground.
Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge, or even the self-serving humanitarian.
This means that the seemingly endless UN Security Council debates, General Assembly resolutions and calls for action did little to alter the tragic situation in Gaza in any meaningful way.
This begs the question, what is the use of the elaborate international political, humanitarian and legal systems, if they are unable to stop, or even slow down a genocide that is being aired live on TV screens all across the world?
In previous genocides, whether those accompanying the Great Wars or that of Rwanda in 1994, various justifications were offered to explain the lack of immediate actions. In some cases, no Geneva Conventions existed and, as in Rwanda, many pleaded ignorance.
But, in Gaza, no excuse is acceptable. Every international news company has correspondents or some presence in the Strip. Hundreds of journalists, reporters, bloggers, photographers and cameramen are documenting and counting every event, every massacre and every bomb dropped on civilian homes. It is important here to note that scores of journalists have already been killed in Israeli attacks.
Scientific approximations are telling us, for example, that nearly 25,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel in the first 27 days of war. It is equivalent to two atomic bombs, like those dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
When US President Joe Biden callously tried to question the numbers of the Palestinian dead, the Gaza medical staff, who are forced to perform life-saving surgeries on the dirty grounds of hospitals, took the time to prove him wrong. On October 26, they produced a list containing the names of 6,747 Palestinian casualties who were killed in the first 19 days of war.
Thousands have been killed and wounded since then, yet Washington and its Western allies insist that “Israel has the right to defend itself” even if this comes at the expense of a whole nation.
The Israelis are not masking their language in any way. The New York Times reported on October 30 that “in private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II … to try to defeat those countries.” A few days later, Israeli Minister Amichai … has openly declared that nuking Gaza is an option in his country’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people.
On the day the NYT report appeared, Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrived at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border.
He still used the same guarded language, as if not to offend the sensibilities of Israel and its Western allies. “Crimes allegedly committed in both places have to be looked into,” he said, referring to both Israel and Gaza.
One could excuse Khan by arguing that legal jargon must be restrained until a thorough investigation is conducted. But thorough investigations are rarely conducted when it comes to Israeli crimes in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine.
When an investigation is carried out, international judges frequently find themselves accused by the US and Israel of bias or worse, anti-Semitism. In the case of the investigation spearheaded by a respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone in 2009, the man was forced to retract part of his report.
Khan knows this too well because he is currently sitting on a large and growing file of Israeli war crimes in Palestine, insisting on delaying the procedure under various excuses. Obviously, the US does not favorably view ICC judges who advance war crime cases against Israel. The anti-ICC sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration in 2020 are an example.
Many officials in Western institutions are becoming aware of this hypocrisy. On October 28, Craig Mokhiber resigned from his position as the Director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights in protest of the UN’s failure to stop “a genocide unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”
On October 20, around 850 members of the EU staff signed a letter to EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, criticizing her “unconditional support” for Israel.
The letter was polite and diplomatic, considering the horrendous moral failure of Von der Leyen, especially when her gung-ho approach to the Russian war in Ukraine is compared to her blind support of Israeli crimes in Gaza. “Only if we acknowledge Israel’s pain, and its right to defend itself, will we have the credibility to say that Israel should react … in line with international humanitarian law,” she said.
The International Olympic Committee, which insists on separating between politics and sports, has no problem meddling in politics when the enemy is a Palestinian.
The IOC issued a statement on November 1, warning any participant in the Paris Olympics, scheduled for 2024, from engaging in any “discriminatory behavior” against Israeli athletes, because “athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments.”
The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come. Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge, or even the self-serving humanitarian.
This is not a difficult conclusion to reach. Gaza has been turned into a Hiroshima as a result of Western bombs and the blank political check handed to Israel by Western governments and leaders from the onset of the war, in fact, 75 years prior.
Nothing will ever alter this fact, and no ‘strongly worded’ future statements will ever help the West redeem its collective moral failure.
