Mass arrests loom as Palestine Action founder Huda Ammori inspires protests

Group's demonstrations in spotlight after controversial ban by UK government

Co-founders of Palestine Action, Richard Barnard and Huda Ammori, outside Westminster Magistrates Court in London in September 2024. Getty Images

Just weeks ago, British activist Huda Ammori was a part-time researcher investigating corporate power. The rest of her time was spent organising disruptive campaigns against an Israeli weapons manufacturer with UK offices and factories.

But when the British government chose to ban Palestine Action, the direct action group Ms Ammori co-founded, she was thrown into the spotlight as the new face of a debate about civil liberties in the UK.

More than 1,000 people are expected to demonstrate in support of the group in London on Saturday. The demonstrators each face arrest on terrorism charges and potential prison sentences of up to six months for expressing support for what is now a proscribed terrorist organisation.

Police issued a fresh warning on Monday against displays of support for Palestine Action as they announced a further 47 people, aged 19 to 78, had been charged after a protest on July 19.

It is not known whether Ms Ammori, who has openly encouraged the protests, will be there herself after she did not attend the first such organised post-proscription demonstration last month. But the movement is at the heart of the mobilisation against Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's clamp down on Palestine focused protests.

Before the terrorist ban came into effect in July, Ms Ammori had spent the past five years organising break-ins and blockades to the UK premises of military suppliers, including Elbit Systems, which makes drones and fighting vehicles that have been used in Gaza and the occupied West Bank by the Israeli military.

Now, she is fighting the UK government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action at the High Court. She argues that her group's demonstrations are non-violent, intended to protect Palestinians from ethnic cleansing by Israel.

"Spraying paint on planes is 'terrorism'. Committing genocide makes you an ally," she wrote on social media this month, in a critique of the ban. Online, she describes her cause as "fighting the British government over the proscription of Palestine Action".

Hundreds came out in support of Palestine Action in London in August, with more demonstrations planned for September. PA

Ms Cooper has promoted the ban, arguing the group did not represent “lawful protest” but “violent criminality”.

Despite consensus among politicians that Palestine Action’s tactics undermine debate, many say the ban is unfeasible and could limit freedom of expression in the long term.

More than 700 people were arrested for showing public support for the newly proscribed group and more demonstrations featuring larger numbers are planned in the coming weeks.

Jonathan Hall, the UK's independent reviewer for terrorism legislation, has warned the appearance of Palestine Action supporters, many of them white-collar professionals and more than half of them over 60, does not exempt them from the law.

"Police have to treat you the same whether you look like a … I use the phrase 'hairy foreigner', or you're some nice white-haired old lady sitting on the road," he said.

Campaign breakaway

Ms Ammori co-founded Palestine Action in 2020, after breaking rank with the more mainstream groups organising rallies for Palestine.

Her co-founder, Richard Barnard, 51, is a veteran of climate action group Extinction Rebellion (XR), and has described himself in a recent interview with Prospect magazine as a self-taught Catholic who converted to Islam.

The daughter of a prominent NHS surgeon, Ms Ammori graduated with a degree in International Business and Finance at the University of Manchester in 2018.

Her father is of Palestinian origin, and her mother, also a doctor, is Iraqi, and Ms Ammori was born and grew up in Bolton in the north-west of England.

As a student, she raised funds for refugees in Greece and took part in emergency search and rescues, which she says secured the landing of refugee boats crossing the Aegean Sea.

She founded a branch of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) campaign at her university in 2016.

She first became involved in direct action protests in July 2016, when she was part of a group of five who blocked the entrance to an Elbit-owned factory. All were arrested but the charges against them eventually dropped.

After graduating, she joined the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), which organises rallies across the UK and promotes the BDS movement, but she left two years later.

Ms Ammori is dismissive of the marches for Palestine happening across Europe, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of people, and have been likened to the youth protests against the US war in Vietnam, or the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa.

In April, she described the marches – including those organised by her former colleagues at the PSC – as “essentially state-sanctioned protests, organised in collaboration with the police.” For that reason, she adds, “they were never going to pose a serious threat.”

Ms Ammori faced up to five years in prison for a series of actions taken against Elbit Systems' headquarters in London and other premises in 2020.

But she was acquitted in 2024 after she and others argued they would have “consent” in theory from the landlords of the targeted buildings, if they had been aware of Elbit’s alleged crimes, according to Mr Ammori’s own account of the trial.

She has appeared as a speaker on Mint Press, a US-based website linked to peddling conspiracy theories in support of the former Assad regime in Syria.

Growing popularity

Direct-action campaigns come with the high risk of arrest and conviction, which meant Palestine Action’s footprint remained small for some time. But its popularity grew as Israel’s military campaign in Gaza intensified and UK politicians were slow to condemn their ally.

Supporters insist direct action has resulted in the closure of Elbit Systems factories in the UK and that the group helped bring attention to the government’s security relationship with Israel.

“Direct action has been more effective than the marches,” said one sympathiser, who has been marching regularly for Palestine since October last year. “With the demos, you just go to feel good about yourself, then go home.”

Huda Ammori joining protesters outside court in Bradford last year, for the trial of four Palestine Action activists who staged a seven-hour demonstration on the roof of a Teledyne defence manufacturing plant. Sopa Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Since the ban came into effect, support for Palestine Action has been led by Defend Our Juries, a campaign group established in 2023 after a judge tried to stop climate activists from presenting their motivations to a jury.

They have mobilised the hundreds of people who say the ban is an affront to their freedom of speech. Many had been activists with XR and Just Stop Oil.

Speaking at an XR demonstration in London in April 2023, Ms Ammori pledged to “shut down every single Israeli weapons factory in the country”.

"We go to their factories, we climb on to their, roofs, we blockade their gates, we smash inside their arms factories and destroy their weapons of war," she said at the time.

Among Palestine Action’s past donors is American communist and billionaire James “Fergie” Chambers and award-winning Irish author Sally Rooney, who recently pledged to support the group despite warnings against doing so from the UK government.

Donations are used to fund the legal fees of those involved in the group’s actions, in cases which have dragged on for years due to the UK’s overstretched courts.

The occupation of Elbit Systems UK headquarters in London in 2021. Getty Images

Unreliable messaging

Despite its groundswell in support, Palestine Action is nonetheless divisive, even among those seeking to end Israel's occupation and reach an end to the war in Gaza.

Some believe the group’s actions risk alienating a more mainstream public from the Palestinian cause, particularly in actions taken in public spaces, and those that were seen as targeting Jewish spaces.

Last November, the group broke into the University of Manchester to steal the bust of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president, who had taught at the university after moving to England from Belarus. The action prompted Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to issue a statement about “reassuring all students and staff, particularly the Jewish community, of their safety on campus”.

Its last action at the RAF Brize Norton airbase, in which two military planes were spraypainted, is estimated to have caused £7 million ($9.4 million) of damage.

There are concerns about the reliability of the groups’ claims however. Barclays bank rejected a claim from the group last year that it had divested from Elbit Systems in response to Palestine Action, saying it held shares as a result "of client instruction or demand”.

“We are not making investments for Barclays and Barclays is not a ‘shareholder’ or ‘investor’ in Elbit Systems in that sense, and therefore cannot divest; it would be misleading to suggest otherwise," it said.

Shipping company Kuehne + Nagel, whose premises were targeted by Palestine Action in January 2024, had ended its relationship with Elbit Systems six months previously in 2023, according to trade website Break Bulk News.

One company chose to remain anonymous because its employees had been targeted online. “The spray-painting of our offices came with a mass campaign on social media,” it told The National. "It was very aggressive. We were not sure if it was led by humans. People online were saying they will find the people who work with us. It targeted our employees."

And there is no indication the UK government is ready to sever its connections with the arms manufacturer. Reports this month suggested it is poised to enter into a $2 billion contract with Elbit Systems.

Ms Ammori insists Palestine Action is peaceful and that her actions are a last resort in the face of a government that refuses to apply further pressure on Israel.

"Yes, I took direct action out of my own free will," she wrote last year, "because there was no other viable option".