Supporters of the banned British “direct action network” Palestine Action held a demonstration in central London’s Trafalgar Square over the weekend. Around 1,000 people participated. Police arrested 490 participants, who carried placards declaring their support for the illegal group. In London for a few days, I went down to take a look at the gathering.
The Palestine Action demonstration took place two days after the terrorist attack at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, on the day of Yom Kippur, in which two people lost their lives. The organizers of the gathering had been asked to consider postponing their event, out of respect for those from the Jewish community grieving their dead. They declined to do so.
The emergence of Palestine Action was an early sign that something was brewing in that space where the Western far Left meets political Islam.
Stewards at Trafalgar Square, however, periodically reminded participants that the day was supposed to include an element of “reflection,” and hence they would prefer that chanting not take place. This did little to discourage participants, and loud chanting of ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ and other slogans advocating the destruction of Israel were a constant accompaniment to the events at the square.
IT IS worth recalling for a moment what Palestine Action is, and why it was proscribed. The organization emerged in mid-2020. Its purpose, in its own words, is to use “disruptive tactics” against “weapons factories that are operating on British soil and are complicit in the current genocide in Gaza, but also in the longer-term kind of oppression of the Palestinian people.”
Its first notable action was a break-in to the headquarters of Elbit Systems in London. The Elbit offices were spray-painted, in a tactic that would become the movement’s trademark.
The emergence of Palestine Action was an early sign that something was brewing in that space where the Western far Left meets political Islam. From within this spectrum, Palestine Action heralded a new pattern, which has now become plainly apparent. In the last surge of Islamist terrorism a quarter century ago, the violence came from the Islamist circles only, with their Western far-left supporters acting only as cheerleaders and occasional facilitators. This time around, it’s different. This time, the white Western far Left is generating violence of its own, to match that of its Islamist allies.
The act that led to the banning of Palestine Action took place on June 23, 2025. On that date, five Palestine Action activists gained entry to RAF Brize Norton, one of the main active bases of Britain’s air force. Planes take off from Brize Norton for RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, from where the UK conducts its various Middle Eastern air operations.
The activists located and sought to destroy a number of combat aircraft. Red paint was sprayed into the turbine of one of the planes, damaging it beyond repair. The attacks were reckoned to have cost the British Defense Ministry around $40 million.
What took place at Brize Norton in June 2025, both in form and in intent, was an act of war, as the statement by its instigators acknowledges.
In a statement issued at the time, Palestine Action said that “Britain continues to send military cargo, and fly spy planes over Gaza and refuel US/Israeli jets. By decommissioning two military planes, we’ve broken the chains of oppression.”
What took place at Brize Norton in June 2025, both in form and in intent, was an act of war, as the statement by its instigators acknowledges. That is, it was an attempt to actively intervene in an ongoing conflict on behalf of one of the sides – in this case, Hamas, currently engaged in war against Israel, whom Palestine Action identify as being aligned with the UK. The subsequent proscription of Palestine Action was hence unsurprising.
What has followed, however, is worthy of note. In the past, far-left political violence in the UK was almost unknown and, in so far as it existed, was confined to a tiny lunatic fringe. The hard core of Palestine Action members, however, is clearly surrounded by a larger hinterland of active and less active supporters. This was in evidence in Trafalgar Square last Saturday.
SO WHO gathered there? Of what does the penumbra of support around the violent core of Palestine Action consist?
The crowd was, in the earlier part of the day, majority white and British. It was identifiably a middle-class, educated group, with a clear preponderance of older people, but with some younger faces around, too. As the afternoon wore on and the crowd thinned out, a larger number of Islamists arrived. These were younger, and seemed less inclined to listen to the organizers’ occasional, mild requests to refrain from speeches and chanting.
It’s notable that the Islamists included representatives of both Shia, pro-Iranian groups and Sunni and Salafi elements. The differences between them were not disguised.
It’s notable that the Islamists included representatives of both Shia, pro-Iranian groups and Sunni and Salafi elements.
The main dynamic of the afternoon consisted of the activists sitting down and bearing placards proclaiming their support for the banned Palestine Action. Police officers would then seek to arrest one or another of the activists. In the majority of cases, the activist in question would go limp and lie on the floor and would then be carried to an enclosure where the arrest procedure would continue. The arrests would be greeted by rounds of applause from the other activists.
Occasionally, the activists deviated from this script. On one occasion a man with a broad Glasgow accent, wearing a shirt depicting the Star of David with a swastika within it, sought to loudly resist arrest and was bundled away by the police.
Overheard at a Palestine Action rally
There were some absurd and incongruous juxtapositions, as befitting the uncomfortable alliance between ultra-secular leftist progressives and ultraconservative Islamic zealots. Here are a few representative snippets, gleaned from wandering among the crowd.
A group of elderly Quaker women sang a long call-and-response routine, while close by a group of bearded Islamists unfurled a banner reading “Stand firm for justice, as witnesses for Allah – Quran 4:35.”
“Just read the Quran, brother, read it – from cover to cover. And then come back and talk” – an Islamist activist to a young leftist.
“And they spout all these lies about beheaded babies. As if anyone believes that” – a young white leftist woman to her friend.
“The resistance axis, from Sanaa to the Dahiya, the resistance axis against racism” – a young man of South Asian appearance, standing next to a banner bearing the visage of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A group of elderly Quaker women sang a long call-and-response routine, while close by a group of bearded Islamists unfurled a banner reading “Stand firm for justice, as witnesses for Allah – Quran 4:35.”
“You’re here, and you’re standing next to that picture” – an older Middle Eastern-looking man, in response, pointing to the picture of Khamenei. “That’s a picture of a murderer.”
A masked young man, white, British, wearing black, to his female friend: “And they bring European trees in, that don’t fit the landscape, that go up like paper. And the Ashkenazis aren’t genetically from there.”
And so, on and on. The weary litany of far-left and Islamist accusations against Israel and the Jews recited anew, many times over, amid the frequent sudden renderings of “From the River to the Sea,” 48 hours after the murder of two Jews by an apparent ideological and religious cohort of the people gathered. No indications of any “reflection.”
And lastly, of course, the small contingent of Jews. A man bearing a sign identifying himself as the son of a Holocaust survivor, telling an interviewer that “Keir Starmer thinks he knows what antisemitism is. But he doesn’t. I’m the son of a Holocaust survivor, and I think I may know a bit about antisemitism.”
I looked from the man across to the group of activists gathered around the picture of Khamenei and the banner of the “Islamic Human Rights Commission,” who had earlier been proclaiming their loyalty to the “resistance axis.” I recalled the late Hassan Nasrallah’s remarks on the Jews: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.” And a Jewish woman close by: “We can be Jews anywhere in the world. We don’t need a Jewish state.” You may find you do, I thought.
The celebratory chanting of the Islamists continued all around.
