Yes, It’s Terrorism

By Seth Mandel

Monday, June 15, 2026

 

Americans should pay close attention to an ongoing court battle in Britain. No matter which way the ruling ultimately goes, the case has managed to reveal the fundamental nature of the networks of post-October 7 anti-Zionist activism.

 

The case is that of Palestine Action, which I’ve written about previously and which is one of many identical groups all over the West.

 

In 2022, Palestine Action stormed into a factory owned by French defense manufacturer Thales because of the group’s belief that Thales supplied the Israeli military. The group vandalized equipment and threw a smoke bomb at people as they were being evacuated, and its members set off pyrotechnics that caused 1 million pounds of damage.

 

In 2024, in one of the group’s two break-ins, activists drove a truck into an Elbit Systems factory, smashed up equipment, and broke a policewoman’s spine with a sledgehammer while her back was turned. Four of the culprits were recently jailed after two trials: The jury in the first trial found them not guilty after a successful campaign of jury interference on the part of supporters of Palestine Action. A second, legitimate trial was then held, and they were found guilty on lesser charges.

 

Last year, members of the group broke into a Royal Air Force base and attempted to sabotage planes.

 

While this is only a partial list of the group’s exploits, it helps explain why last year, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group, making membership of it or aiding and abetting its actions a crime. Parliament then ratified the order. A higher court overruled the move, arguing that not enough of Palestine Action’s work counts as terrorism to outlaw the entire group.

 

Now an appeals court has reversed the earlier appeal, allowing the ban to stand. The court’s reasoning is important.

 

A group of judges led by Chief Justice Baroness Carr explained that the home secretary has the power to make such designations and that, therefore, the proscription of Palestine Action was legal. She also said it would be “a fundamental mistake to overlook the fact that Palestine Action overtly promotes unlawful violence amounting to terrorism. It is not — as claimed — a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes, operating transparently in the open.”

 

That mention of the suffragettes is a reference to the argument made at the first Palestine Action trial over the Elbit Systems attack. The perpetrators’ attorney claimed that the actions of his clients shouldn’t be punished because they believed their anti-Semitic violent romps were equivalent to demonstrations by rights activists like the suffragettes. In any normal criminal justice system this would be laughed out of court, but the jury was convinced by this and the corresponding campaign by activists claiming that ideological intent could render otherwise criminal activity permissible.

 

It was a deeply humiliating moment for the British justice system, which was revealed to be hanging by a thread. It also proved the wisdom of Cooper’s move the following year to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization: It met the criteria, and the justice system had become too corrupted by ideology to maintain the equality of Jews before the law, thereby leaving the terrorism designation not only fitting and accurate but the only means by which to effectively keep Britain’s democracy from further backsliding through constant manipulation by Hamas supporters.

 

Chief Justice Carr continued: Palestine Action “is a covert organization which operates with secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy property and cause injury.”

 

In other words, when you look at what Palestine Action does, it’s clear to impartial officials that it is a group of terror cells.

 

Palestine Action was one of three groups put on the terrorism list the same day last year. The other two were Maniacs Murder Cult and Russian Imperial Movement. There was no outcry for these white supremacist groups, though their belief systems are comparable to Palestine Action’s.

 

Last week, I wrote about a case here on U.S. soil with similar implications. The Justice Department announced federal conspiracy charges against a Michigan-based pro-Hamas ring for its members’ own campaign of harassment, property damage, and terroristic threats. In the course of the investigation that led to the charges, it became clear to law enforcement that the group had nothing to do with “protesting.” It was, they alleged, simply a ring of violent maniacs who fully understood the illegality of their actions.

 

The Palestine Action ruling will still be appealed to the UK Supreme Court. But the court cannot change the facts as the judges laid them out above. And by trying to equate terrorism with free speech and civil protest, the West’s various Hamasnik groups and their defenders continue to undermine both.