 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch and Globetrotter, great to be joined today by Huda Amori from Palestine Action. I got an email just yesterday which said victory in Oldham, Elbit forced to sell Faranti after sustained direct action campaign. Now I've written a lot of press releases I suppose or press statements one way or the other, very rarely does a press statement coming from the humanitarian side of history start with the word victory. So victory in Oldham, I don't know where Oldham is, I barely knew much about Elbit, we'll get to that, certainly didn't know much about Faranti but I know something about direct action. So here we have it, victory in Oldham, Elbit, Huda welcome to People's Dispatch and Globetrotter. Thank you, thank you for having me, it's good to see you again. It's a great pleasure for us and congratulations. Thank you, no it's a great victory not just for us but for everyone involved and the Palestinian people of course. That's amazing, that's a great way to put it but before we get any further Huda can you please tell us what is this thing called Elbit and who knew that in the British Isles they made weapons incredible? Yeah, no I know it's quite shocking and even for me growing up in Britain I had no idea about it and then as I got older I started to realise that actually what Elbit is and they are Israel's largest private arms company. And their business model is basically based on developing and testing weapons on Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza or the Palestinians in the West Bank and they actually develop these weapons in Gaza and market them as battle tested on the captive population there. And then in Britain they actually have 10 sites here, five factories, well one less factory now actually I have to change that. And two offices and they operate in three different RAF sites but they are basically Israel's largest arms company so as you can imagine they produce everything under the sun when it comes to supplying the military regime they provide 85% of Israel's military drone fleet. So often for the people of Gaza these drones are flying above their heads constantly day and night and trenching Israel's occupation over the Palestinian people. But actually and also these drones can also be used as weapons to target missile strikes to the people of Gaza so they have to live with these drones constantly hovering above their heads knowing that it may have killed their family or their neighbours or their communities by these same weapons. And actually many of these parts are built in factories in Britain and Oldham is just as an example of one of the factories where they were producing parts for Israel's drones here in England. And Elbit do have factories across the globe, but they are very densely populated in Britain and I think this has a lot to do with Britain's past and support for the colonisation of Palestine going back to the Balfour declaration. But essentially Elbit are murderous in our eyes and war criminals who are profiting from the oppression of Palestinians and then not only are these weapons then tested on Palestinians that built here and then exported to assist other oppressive regimes across the world. And actually these same drones that they have modelled on the people of Gaza, the British authorities are now contracting Elbit to supply the same drones in order to surveil and stop refugees coming in from the English Channel into Britain. So not only are these weapons and Elbit profiting from forcing and displacing people out their homes, but they're also profiting from the people when they're trying to seek safety and stopping them from even seeking safety. It's disgusting whenever you hear about it and I think for me as a Palestinian and I grew up in a northern town not far from Oldham and finding out just how deeply entrenched Britain is when it comes to not only supporting Israel's apartheid regime but literally hosting their weapons factories here in Britain. And Britain is actually the second biggest exporter of arms across the world and we're a tiny island. So it's actually very populated with these times of arms companies but specifically Elbit managed to profit from this deal that they have with the British government basically. So I mean, you know, they're making weapons in Britain but you said something really interesting. You said in RAF sites, that's RAF, well people who have watched World War II movies know RAF, the Royal Air Force, these are British government facilities. So can you please tell us about that? It's a private company. Did you say that it's operating on British government, British military facilities land? Yes, definitely, yes they are. They operate in three different, in three of those sites which are actually designated as Ministry of Defence land where they help and sometimes they're doing simulations for when people go into battle and assisting the RAF in those type of things. But also with trials for their drones and flight simulations, the British Ministry of Defence and it's something which I've noticed happening even more recently are heavily invested in the success of Elbit. And actually in recent months we've seen them make massive deals and it's almost as if they're doing it to save Elbit's skin in this country because they are being targeted so much by campaigning disrupted so much and they are closely working with the British Ministry of Defence. But also we know that their ties go right to the top of the British government. When we launched our campaign against Elbit in July 2020, it was just three or four weeks after we launched the campaign and we'd taken action against their offices in London several times. So we were getting a lot of attention and we were new, we were a fresh group and there was suddenly a meeting between the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Dominic Raab and Benny Gantz. Dominic Raab was the foreign secretary of this government at that time and basically the Israeli Ministry asked Dominic to crush our movement, which obviously I think for us was a success to be honest with you. To actually have such a strong reaction and to see how worried they were about not being able to operate their arms deals here in private or in secret or behind closed doors because often these factories just look like normal buildings. And actually part of what we do is to expose those crimes of these companies. So just to make sure that I'm getting this clear, Benny Gantz flies from Israel to the United Kingdom or meets Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom at some point last year. In 2020, around 19 months ago or so, and it's high official of Israel tells a high official of the United Kingdom to crush a movement inside the United Kingdom. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a shocking and as crude as you as you pull it. And it's kind of, to be honest, I wasn't surprised. I was actually quite pleased because I thought, well, at least they're reacting. You know, I've been campaigning for Palestine for a long time and to receive such a reaction, you know that it's it's it's shaking the right feathers. I don't know if that's the right term. I'm quite bad at phrases sometimes. But, but, you know, and that followed with numerous things that happened to activists taking direct action, including myself by the British state, you know, heavy handed policing, violent arrests, raids, or like routine for us at this point by the by the British police passports being taken devices being taken by the police. I mean the list just goes on to show how how they were following you know the orders of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and I think compared to other groups who do civil disobedience or action. It's on a whole different level of approach to us as activists. But nevertheless, we have to plow on and I think when you're fighting against something that can seem so big and daunting as Israel's largest arms company then you kind of expect that in order to win in the end, you're going to have to overcome some massive obstacles because they're never going to make it easy for us. You know, if it was easy, we wouldn't, you know, we wouldn't be having to do these type of campaigns in the first place. Well, you had again a high official of the Israeli government telling your foreign secretary to stop you. A foreign entity was telling your foreign secretary to prevent you from exercising your democratic right. Now, we know that in the history of peace movements, particularly the Quakers, they take the Bible very seriously, Huda, they read in the Bible that swords must be converted into plowshares. So famously, Quakers would jump into military bases and bang on, you know, even missiles to convert swords into plowshares and they would pour blood on the weaponry, red blood to say, you know, this is a blood thing. I first came upon the work of Palestine Action when you went in or not you necessarily because I don't want to put that on the table. Somebody went into an Albert area and put red paint or through red something 18 months of sustained action by Palestine Action. Tell us a little bit. And by the way, I want to tell our viewers the group is called Palestine Action. I think the word action is used deliberately. Tell us a little bit about Palestine Action's work regarding Albert systems. Yeah, definitely. I mean, as you said, the clue is kind of in our name. We're all about taking action and doing more action than we talk about it. And so we are a direct action network launched over 18 months ago now in July 2020 and we basically take action against Israel's arms sites here in Britain to disrupt them, blockade them, occupy their sites. And often in most actions there is red paint involved, which is covered to cover their premises and to signify the blood shed by these companies. And also on many occasions, especially at their factories, there has been a high level amount of damage and dismantling done to the machinery inside the factories and to the infrastructure by the infrastructure of the actual factory themselves. And just in our first year, when we launched, we caused an Albert £15 million in losses by doing these type of actions. And that was with just over 100 people being arrested and actually they were shut down for over 105 days, which was three months out of one year. So we went into it with a clear mission. We wanted to shut this company down. We wanted to shut Albert down. It was as simple as that for us. We were sick and tired of begging and appealing to politicians who weren't going to act on this issue. You know, we've been waiting and asking for this for so long, but each time something happens in Gaza, each time something happens in Palestine, there are no sanctions brought by countries like Britain. And instead, they're actually deepening their ties with Israel's apartheid regime. And I think it gets to a point. And when you realise that Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinians in the West Bank and in the refugee camps cannot wait. The situation is urgent and we have to act with that same urgency. And when you start to realise that actually these weapons are never built in front of the people that they will kill. They don't build these weapons in Gaza. They won't be able to because the people would do the same thing we have done. And to stop the weapons from being produced, but they are built in front of us here in Britain where we do have privilege. And we do have an ability to actually go out and stop these factories from operating. So for us, it's the most logical thing to do when you know that most people, I think somebody was going to hurt someone in front of you. Most people would step in the way and try and do something about it. And I think it's exactly the same principle. When you know that you have an arms factory which is building these weapons and will be used to kill people and has been developed on killing people. Then we have a duty to actually go out and do whatever it takes. And if lobbying, if they don't respond to our call out or to lobbying of MPs and politicians, then we will do it ourselves. And I think that's the point is lives at stake and humanity is at stake. And I think when you see the inequality of the world, I think for those who are in a privileged position, we do have an obligation to step out of our comfort zone when it comes to campaigning for these issues. Otherwise we're going to end up in the same situation over and over again. And I think like myself, many people are tired of seeing what we saw in May 2021 when we saw Gaza being bombed once again with weapons again that are probably built here in Britain. And even though there is global support amongst people for Palestine, it's not translated to government legislation. So for us, going out and shutting these factories down is saying we don't need the government legislation to stop Israel from being able to produce these weapons here in Britain. And, you know, for for Elba in Britain, they actually are so and you mentioned before about not knowing where Oldham is and I'm sure many people who are listening to this won't. But these factories are normally not in the kind of metropolitan areas that actually in working class communities. And for example, Oldham actually has a very large Asian community, very large Kashmiri community Arabs there as well, who are actually weren't aware of this factory existing until the kind of action stepped up against this factory. And, you know, it's so insulting to see that they put the manufacturer of these weapons, which we used to kill the communities back home right in front of them and think that they'll be able to get away with it. And obviously they didn't and they won't. Well, you see, they will be outraged with and have been outraged by the by the property damage that Palestine action inflicted thousands of pounds, you said. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge, thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza in a punctual basis through the year. Outrage is minimal. We're not even getting into BAE systems and what's happening in Yemen. We're staying with Oldham and your great victory. Huda Amori from Palestine Action. Congratulations for the victory at Oldham. It's really something and I hope you can come back and talk about how Palestine Action is closed down all these factories. Congratulations. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you.