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Activists shut down a factory supplying parts to Israel for the SECOND time this week

For the second time this week, activists have successfully shut down Sheffield-based arms manufacturer Forged Solutions that supplies parts to genocidal Israel.

Forged Solutions: activists shut down Sheffield F-35 parts factory

From 6am on Tuesday 22 July, a Palestine protest group blockaded Sheffield-based arms manufacturer Forged Solutions.

The Sheffield group Stop Arming Israel halted all traffic heading into the site before the first shift arrived for work at Forged Solutions.

Protestors stood in front of the entrance to the site holding banners, and a queue of lorries had to turn back:

Palestine protesters wearing keffiyehs stand in a line across the entrance to Forged Solutions, holding a long banner that reads: Stop arming Israel.

Predictably, police turned up to the scene and confronted the blockade:

Palestine protester wearing a keffiyeh on their head stands in front of a police car with multiple police officers stood beside it.

However, protesters held their ground:

Stop Arming Israel: UK company’s direct participation in genocide

The Forged Solutions Group produces parts for the F-35 fighter jets. Israel has used these aircraft in Western-backed war crimes across Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria. The company even boasts on its website that it provides parts for “tanks and submarines, to military jets”.

This is an escalation against the Meadowhall site, after protesters shut the weapons manufacturer down on 16 July. Over 500 people also protested outside it on 17 June – travelling from across the country. The group describes it as a form of “peoples sanctions”. They have joined a series of similar blockades, pickets, and occupations that are regularly shutting down arms factories across the UK.

A spokesperson for the Stop Arming Israel group stated:

The Stop Arming Israel group aims not only to target complicity but also direct participation in the genocide in Palestine. Forged Solutions has a long history of supplying parts to companies like Pratt and Whitney and Safran Aero Booster which go on to make engines for fighter jets like the F-35, F-16 and F-15. All of these planes are used by the occupation in its genocide of the Palestinians meaning that Forged Solutions is a participant in the genocide.

Whilst the British Establishment continues to support the Zionist occupation and criminalise resistance to genocide, Stop Arming Israel stands firmly with the Palestinians by disrupting the supply of weapons and death. Freedom to all oppressed peoples.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

Another protestor explained their involvement in the blockade:

As Sheffield residents, we are left with no choice but to take matters into our own hands and blockade the Forged Solutions factory. We have lobbied the council and the mayoral authority countless times about the city’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. The most effective action we can take is to directly halt the activities of this factory and disrupt the supply chain of weapons being exported to Israel. Forged Solutions can continue to deny their involvement – we will continue our disruption.

Featured image and additional images supplied

By The Canary

This post was originally published on Canary.