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‘Yvette Cooper’ direct action group targets transporter of Israeli weapons

Britain’s pro-Israel government is cracking down on non-violent direct action, in order to protect its genocidal ally. But as complicit MPs overwhelmingly voted to ban Palestine Action, another similar group has sprung up. Using the name ‘Yvette Cooper’, actionists have shown solidarity with Palestine Action’s efforts to shut down Israel’s economy of genocide.

Yvette Cooper: respect existence, or expect resistance!

As parliament shamefully moved to proscribe Palestine Action, the ‘Yvette Cooper’ group targeted Time Logistics near Birmingham, which “transport weaponry for Israel’s biggest weapons firm”.

As Palestine Action has explained previously, Time Logistics is:

One of various haulage and logistics companies used by Elbit Systems and specifically UAV Tactical Systems Leicester.

In UN expert Francesca Albanese’s new report highlighting Western capitalism’s enabling of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, she highlighted that Israeli arms company Elbit Systems is a key genocide profiteer. “The military-industrial complex has become the economic backbone” of the apartheid state, she says, and:

For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture

Elbit has been the primary target of Palestine Action’s non-violent direct action.

This week, the UN called on the British government not to proscribe Palestine Action, insisting:

According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism…

These offences would criminalise legitimate activities by innocent members of the group that do not contribute in any way to property damage by other members, let alone ‘terrorism’ which, if properly defined, the group has not committed

Days before their most recent action, the Yvette Cooper group took action against investment firm BNY Mellon, “shareholders in Israel’s biggest weapons producer”. It added:

Yvette Cooper may try to ban Palestine Action, but will she ban herself?

Palestine Action pointed out previously that BNY Mellon “invest in excess of 12 million dollars in Elbit Systems”.

They tried to bury us, but didn’t know we were seeds

The genocide in Gaza has brought unimaginable suffering to the Palestinian people. But it is also, Albanese said, an:

ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech

Israel’s racist war crimes in Palestine have helped to ‘automate’ repression, with the active support of “United States tech giants”, leading to “unparalleled developments in carceral and surveillance services”.

Albanese listed the powerful companies complicit in Israel’s economy of genocide, and it reads like a who’s who of Western capitalism. Profit and death are going hand in hand more clearly than ever before. It is ever more apparent that big-business profiteering has no interest in ethical behaviour. And the war criminal-capitalist alliance is actively modelling a dystopian future that could spread throughout the world if we don’t hold those responsible to account.

The merciless misanthropes dominating the Western economic and political order want to silence anti-genocide voices because that would make it so much easier for their dystopian vision to flourish. That’s why Palestine Action is about so much more than spray paint. If we want to avoid sleepwalking further into dystopia, we need 10, 100, and 1,000 more Palestine Actions – and Yvette Coopers. And we need them urgently.

Featured image via screengrab

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.