“Smashing stuff can also be very quick to do. With an efficient sledgehammer in your hand, you can cause quite a bit of damage! Smashing windows often only takes one or two swings. But air conditioning units, cameras and other external equipment can sabotage the profits of your target even further,” advises the “Underground Manual” of Palestine Action, an organization which Britain designated a terrorist organization in July. The manual offers more handy hacks on how best to get into the (Palestine) action including: “Fire extinguishers can be repurposed and refilled with blood-red paint, so when it’s sprayed it makes a big splash and can cover a massive area within seconds — perfect for a get away action.”
And, for the more gung-ho activists, the manual encourages: “If you’re feeling up for it, and know the site back to front, then breaking into your target and damaging the contents inside is obviously a very effective tactic.” Drawing on the manual’s helpful hints on how to most effectively carry out criminal acts and get away with it, the organization’s members inflicted £55 million worth of damage in vandalism of British military sites.
In failing to report any of the violence and criminal activity which Palestine Action detailed in its manual and committed in England, Agence France Presse took a sledgehammer to the news agency’s own working manual. AFP’s editorial standards and best practices, for its part, calls for “accurate, balanced and impartial news,” along with the fast and transparent correction of misreporting. It advises journalists “to seek the truth and not passively report information as it is presented to them. They should challenge their sources and question the facts.”
AFP’s April 12 article, “Police say over 500 arrested at pro-Palestinian rally in London,” fails to provide readers with even the slightest shred of information about the violence or illegal acts undertaken by the banned Palestine Action organization, whitewashing the group as merely a non-violent protest organization unfairly muzzled by London Metropolitan Police.
Thus, “‘Misguided crackdown'” a subheading states, amplifying the group members’ own character references. Rather than challenging the sources and questioning the facts, the AFP accepts their claims without question, skepticism or criticism, stating:
Protester Denis MacDermot, 73, from Edinburg, said he had been arrested before and had no hesitation about turning out again.
“I’m a supporter of these great people,” he said, waving towards other protesters, adding that if the court process was definitive “there would be no need for all this”.
Protest organisers Defend Our Juries said hundreds of people had taken part in Saturday’s demonstration, protesting against “the UK Government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the misguided crackdown on peace protest at home.”
Police were “choosing to make arrests despite the government’s ban on the group being ruled unlawful by the High Court, and leading lawyers warning that any arrests would be unlawful”, it added in a statement.
Amnesty UK condemned the arrests as yet “another blow to civil liberties in this country”.
“The Met rightly said it would stop making arrests. It has now gone back to its old, failed policy — mass arrests of people holding pieces of card, including today an elderly woman with walking sticks,” it said in a statement on X.
As for any indication that the group does anything more harmful than “holding pieces of card,” the article buries and obscures in the last paragraph that Palestine Action has “mainly targeted weapons factories.” According to AFP’s neutered reporting which ignores the tens of millions of pounds in damage, readers would think that protesters targeted weapons factories with nothing more than slogans and “pieces of cards.”
Bodycam footage from Aug. 6, 2024, shows an officer aiming a taser gun at an intruder at Elbit UK’s site in Bristol, after the intruder struck a police officer with a sledgehammer. (Screen capture: Channel 4)
Times of Israel, much to its credit, added several paragraphs of essential information missing from AFP’s original failed version. The key paragraphs which Times of Israel inserted report:
Palestine Action has carried out acts of “direct action” at military and industrial sites in the UK since the group’s formation in 2020, including breaking into facilities owned by Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems UK and damaging Royal Air Force planes at a base in England.
Six Palestine Action activists are facing a retrial on a number of charges relating to a 2024 raid on Elbit’s UK factory, after they were acquitted of the charge of aggravated burglary earlier this month. The retrial will concern criminal charges on which the jury failed to reach verdicts. It is due to take place in February 2027.
The initial verdict on the raid, in which a police officer’s spine was allegedly fractured in a filmed sledgehammer attack by an activist, drew criticism from police, lawmakers and Jewish communal groups.
Officials say Palestine Action’s activities have caused millions of pounds in damage that affects national security.
On the day that the AFP article appeared, CAMERA contacted editors regarding the misguided coverage of the so-called “misguided crackdown.” As of this writing, they failed to correct the record about Palestine Action’s criminal activity, including vandalism and violence.