The Free

Coordinated blockade hits 3 arms factories to fight Genocide in Gaza

Workers and activists shut down companies playing a role in the current genocidal terrorism being committed by the Israeli military.

from thefreeonline on 26 Oct 23 by Guy Smallman at Freedom News

Ongoing: Today, Freedom is at the blockade Instro Precision in Kent – the factory making arms industry equipment. We spoke to a worker who had helped organise the action with his union:

“This action is an opening of a new front of workplaces for the struggle for Palestinian liberation. We’re shutting down this arms factory today, which manufactures scopes and targeting equipment for the Israeli military.

This equipment is sold to Israeli; it’s sold to Saudi Arabia and 50 other countries. It’s currently being used to blow up Gaza. We call on workers to shut down their workplaces, shut down their factories until the UK government presses for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.”

Both entrances to the factory have been blockaded since 7 a.m., with 150 people between them, despite heavy rain. No delivery vehicles are being let through. The police had a lacklustre response, with two vehicles with a copper in each, arriving an hour after the blockage began and allowing the protest to continue.

The site has faced protests for years and has previously been occupied by Palestine Action.

Instro Precision is owned by Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, and specialises in military-grade electro-optical equipment for target location. Instro has been a long-time supplier of the Israeli military regime, with dozens of active and expired military export licenses representing the depth of their collaboration with the Israeli occupation.

Barcelona Spycop pardoned by corrupt Court – Eng/Cat

As expected he court dismisses the first case against the disgusting cop who infiltrated the Social Movements of Barcelona for 3 years via deceptive sexual relations

from thefreeonline on 26th Oct 2023 by Gemma Garcia translated from La Directa

La Directa uncovered a National Police agent who was infiltrated for three years in social movements in Catalonia, and anarchist spaces in Madrid and the Basque Country. He has now ‘ disappeared’.

On the left, the officer Daniel Hernández Pons. during his passage through the Ávila police school. In the image on the right you can see the tattoos that were done between 2020 and 2021 | La Directa

With an argument very similar to that of the Prosecutor’s Office, the 21st District Court of Barcelona rules out that the infiltration operation over three years involved any crime. The lawyers of the prosecution of Irídia and the CGT (Anaarcho-syndicalist Union) will appeal to the Court of Barcelona

A moment of the demonstration in the streets of the center of Barcelona by social entities against the infiltration of a policeman in the anarchist social movement 4th feb 2023

In agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, the court of inquiry 21 of Barcelona has decreed the free dismissal of the criminal complaint in the case of the Spanish undercover police officer D.H.P, uncovered by Directa.

In the resolution, dated October 19, the judge rejects that the crimes of sexual abuse, against moral integrity, revealing secrets and preventing the exercise of civic rights have been committed.

The lawyers for the prosecution of Irídia and the CGT report that it would be “particularly serious if a complaint for crimes of torture and against moral integrity were left uninvestigated” and, for this reason, they will appeal the decision to the Court of Barcelona. Likewise, the ACCIÓ group of the affected area will launch a call soon.

The Spycop had relationships with several women participating in the city’s social movements, one of them for a year, and which served as a bridge to enter the neighborhood Collectives… Among them, La Cinèteka (occupied anarchist social center CSOA) , the tour of the Zapatista movement in Catalonia, the Antirepression Coordination of Sant Andreu barrio, Kasa de la Muntanya, the CGT anarchist trade unión, La Casika CSOA in Móstoles in Madrid, Errekaleor occupied area in Euskadi, etc

The complainants trust that, as has happened in other cases of complaints for torture and ill-treatment, the Barcelona Court will find them right “with respect to the duty to investigate this type of case in an effective and reinforced manner”.

 Mireia Salazar, Irídia's lawyer, complains that "minimum due diligence has not been carried out", such as making the complainants testify, evaluating the medical and expert reports and questioning the agent

During his time as an infiltrator, Daniel participated in the demonstrations against the imprisonment of Pablo Hasél in February 2021, in several rallies to avoid evictions, in one of which he confronted a Desokupa (anti-squat Company) worker, and was fined 600 euros. —which he did not pay— for another mobilization.He has also visited self-managed spaces in Madrid y País Vasco Madrid and the Basque Country.

The agent of the Spanish National Police (CNP) infiltrated the social movements of Barcelona for three years and maintained sex-affective relationships with several women as an infiltration strategy. Those affected assured Directa that they would never have established them if they had known he was a police agent, as stated in the complaint.

UK: Activists against Genocide crash into Elbit’s Israeli drone factory

Another great Action Against Genocide! Way to Go!

from thefreeonline on Oct 25th by Freedom News

Just 12 hours after the Israeli regime massacred at least 500 wounded, starving, and displaced Palestinians in Gaza’s Al-Ahli Arabi Baptist Hospital in a targeted missile strike, activists breached and shut down the Leicester factory of Israel’s drone supplier Elbit, outfitters of the Israeli military regime.

These bombing attacks are designed to remove as much Palestinian life as possible from Gaza and are made possible with Western-made weapons and technologies.

This includes the military drone technologies Elbit’s UAV Tactical Systems, based in Braunstone Town, Leicester, has regularly exported to the occupation military.

The ML10 category military drones, which comprise the vast majority of the site’s £5m yearly exports to Israel, are a backbone of the Israeli air bombardment operation currently decimating Gaza.

The activists have prevented the site from operating by driving through the barricades of the UAV Tactical Systems factory, which has faced unrelenting direct action campaigning for over two years.

Positioning the modified van so that the gates can’t be closed, the activists have taken to the roof of the vehicle, from which they have lit flares, unfurled banners and Palestinian flags, destroyed the war criminals’ property within their reach, and have covered the opening of the factory in red paint.

Shouting that ‘Sunak is the real criminal’ and reading out the family names that, this week, have been wiped from the registry, activists have ensured that anyone involved with UAV Tactical Systems’ collaboration with Israel is not permitted to forget the blood that they have spilt.

The Al-Ahli massacre, even before Israel had killed 3,000 Gazans with their airstrikes, is the clearest demonstration of the genocidal intent of the Israeli regime, which is backed to the hilt with Western support and arms.

Elbit Systems supplies 85% of Israel’s drone fleet and 85% of its land-based military equipment, yet their business of bloodshed is still allowed to operate on our streets.

Palestine Action has always and will continue to refuse complicity in this barbarity and is committed to ending the British operations of Israel’s largest weapons company.

UAV Tactical Systems is a joint enterprise of Israel’s Elbit Systems and France’s Thales, specialising in manufacturing drone technologies, including for Elbit’s Hermes drones.

In previous bombardments of Gaza, Hermes 450 and Hermes 900 drones played a prominent role.

Either dropping explosive payloads for bombing strikes, in the case of the Hermes 900, or by targeting guided missile strikes, in the case of the 450, these drones are responsible for vast numbers of Palestinian dead.

They are certainly playing a role in the current genocidal terrorism committed by the Israeli occupation forces. The Hermes drones have been used in attacks widely and rightly described as ‘war crimes and crimes against humanity‘.

Publicly, the company only advertises the sale of its Watchkeeper drone, which is based almost entirely on the Hermes 900 used by Israel with identical components and design specifications.

çIsrael is not a customer of the Watchkeeper programme, meaning that the drone exports made to Israel from Leicester are, in all likelihood, the Hermes drones or components.

Elbit Systems, more widely, including its subsidiaries such as IMI Systems, manufactures tank munitions and mortar rounds used to murder Palestinians in prior bombardments of Gaza. Elbit Systems has for over two decades been a supplier for the F-16 jets, of which Israel has over 300, along with supplying equipment for the F-35, which is being used to devastating effect against Gaza.

It is widely reported that the Al-Ahli massacre used a JDAM strike, which F16s, F/A-18, and F35 can deploy – with Elbit supplying many parts and equipment for these jets.

The past days of bombing and the rocketing numbers of Palestinian dead, both civilian and resistance fighters, means undoubtedly that thousands of victims’ blood is caked on the hands of Elbit, its shareholders, partners, accomplices, and workers.

“The massacre at Al-Ahli Arabi shows these demons for who they are – not that we didn’t already know. The Western world is standing, not idly by, but firmly on the side of the genocidal Israeli regime as it seeks to make all Gazans either permanently displaced from Palestine or permanently dead.

Those of us in this country who can see these crimes against humanity for what they are have the duty to defy the government and its complicity, to refuse contributions to these actions in our name by dismantling our land’s military ties to the occupation regime.

How many more thousands of dead will it take before the people realise our moral responsibility to shut down Elbit, Thales, Rafael, and all the other companies operating here which make these horrors possible?”

~ Palestine Action