By Kit Klarenberg – The Grayzone
Files reviewed by The Grayzone reveal a shocking foreign meddling scandal, as British state prosecutors are seen colluding with Israeli authorities to classify anti-genocide protesters as terrorists and imprison them on heavily politicized grounds.
Documents released by the British government reveal that London has been coordinating with Israeli officials to prosecute protestors associated with activist group Palestine Action for disrupting the operations of Elbit Systems, which manufactures deadly weapons being used in the genocide in Gaza.
The documents highlight a years-long Israeli influence campaign, and suggest that Tel Aviv’s meddling has prompted London to abandon well-established legal standards in order to charge anti-genocide activists under highly politicized counter-terror provisions.
One especially revealing document shows the British Attorney General’s Office (AGO) furnishing their Israeli counterparts with guidance on how to avoid an arrest warrant for war crimes, reassuring them that the Crown Prosecutorial Service (CPS) “has strengthened the procedural safeguards around the issuing of private arrest warrants in recent years.”
The Israelis have been on edge since former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was forced to cancel a trip to London in 2009 after a UK court issued an arrest warrant for her involvement in the blood-stained assault on Gaza that year. Leaked Israeli Ministry of Justice files revealed how Tel Aviv subsequently initiated an intensive – and ultimately successful – lobbying campaign to guarantee its officials “special mission” certificates which allowed them to visit London without the fear of arrest. As Declassified UK reported, the British government has granted Israel three special mission certificates through the Gaza genocide.
Another startling file released by the British government revealed that Nicola Smith, the Head of International Law at Britain’s Attorney General’s Office, shared “contact details” for UK prosecutors and counter-terror investigators with Israel’s deputy ambassador to London.
The email was sent to Israel’s deputy envoy, Daniela Grudsky Ekstein, with the subject line “Nicola Smith to Israelis re CPS/SO15 contact details,” indicating the UK government had referred Tel Aviv directly to the CPS, or Crown Prosecutorial Service, as well as to SO15, London’s counter-terror squad, to advance the prosecution of activists affiliated with Palestine Action.
Smith’s email, sent on September 9, 2024, came less than two weeks after Ekstein and Smith held an in-person meeting on August 29, 2024, at Israel’s notoriously spy-infested embassy in London. The message is chummily addressed from “Nicky” to “Daniela,” suggesting warm relations between the two.
Earlier that month, 10 Palestine Action activists were imprisoned after raiding an Elbit factory in Filton, South West England. They destroyed Israeli quadcopters constructed on the grounds. These small drones have been routinely used to maim and murder Palestinian civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Activists who demonstrated against Elbit are currently being detained under “counter-terror” powers, despite facing non-terror related charges such as criminal damage, prompting UN rapporteurs to issue a statement condemning their confinement. The CPS has indicated it will argue their offenses had a “terrorist connection” in order to maximize their sentences.
The files released by the British government suggest the Israeli government has pushed for incarceration and prosecution of the Palestine Action demonstrators, who were known at the time as the “Filton 10.”
The August 2024 rendezvous was not the first face-to-face interaction between Smith, the international law advisor to the UK AGO, and the deputy Israeli ambassador, Ekstein. A month beforehand, the two met alongside Israeli Embassy Counsellor of Political Affairs Yosef Zilberman and UK AGO Director Douglas Wilson. The back-to-back meetings hint at frequent coordination between the British and Israeli embassies – a notion reinforced by declassified emails reviewed by The Grayzone from May 2022 showing Israeli embassy officials in London secretly met with AGO representatives, including Wilson.
Though records of the summit are redacted, it seems Tel Aviv was trying to interfere in ongoing cases against Palestine solidarity protesters. In a subsequent email to Israeli embassy apparatchiks, Wilson signed off, “I know from previous experience there is well-established direct contact between [our] legal teams, both between capitals and via our missions in New York.”
Three months after AGO officials provided the Israeli embassy with contact details of the officers investigating the activists behind the raid of the Filton facility, ten more Palestine Action demonstrators involved in the action were arrested. Eight were subsequently charged and remanded in prison under the same counter-terror powers as the previous ten, and the group is now referred to as the “Filton 18.” If Israel was in any way responsible for this move, it would represent a clear breach of core CPS code, and another layer in what appears to be a major foreign meddling scandal.
As the Service’s General Principle 2.1 explicitly states, British “prosecutors must be free to carry out their professional duties without political interference and must not be affected by improper or undue pressure or influence from any source.”
Palestine Action cofounder Huda Amori has insisted that Tel Aviv is influencing the British prosecutions of anti-genocide protesters. “There is clear evidence showing continuous political and foreign interference in Palestine Action cases,” Amori told The Grayzone, and that “the ongoing prosecutions of journalists and activists who dare stand up for Palestine is politically motivated, and done under the influence of the Israeli embassy.”
“Any violation of the independence of the judiciary is an abuse of process under the rule of law,” she continued. “Therefore, the prosecutions must be stopped and the prisoners freed.”
Long-running secret collusion
Emails obtained by The Grayzone show collusion between British law enforcement bodies, Elbit Systems, and the Israeli embassy in London has been ongoing for several years. On March 2, 2022, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel met with Elbit’s British CEO Martin Fausset. The meeting’s explicit objective was to reassure the international death merchant “that the criminal protest acts against Elbit Systems UK are taken seriously” by authorities in London.
A briefing note for Patel outlined “key points to raise” with Fausset. “Palestine Action’s criminal activity is for the police to investigate,” one note stated. But while local law enforcement were ostensibly “operationally independent of government,” the document revealed that Home Office officials had “been in contact with the police about [Palestine Action].”
The declassified record is heavily redacted, although an unexpurgated segment on “lines to take” during the secret summit directed Patel to “thank Martin for the work Elbit does in support of the British Armed Forces.” A subsequent internal email discussing the meeting was then dispatched to various senior Home Office “counter-terror” officials, including Michael Stewart, then-chief of Britain’s notorious PREVENT program.
The email summarized the meeting and “immediate next steps as a priority.” Fausset was quoted complaining that “the protests Elbit were experiencing from Palestine Action were getting more and more severe,” with “well organised, funded and trained” protesters, and “a significant online effort to mobilise and train.” Patel was reportedly “deeply concerned about everything she heard,” and proposed a variety of measures be taken in response.
Because the documents are heavily redacted, it is unclear what occurred at Patel and Fausset’s meeting. Prior to their discussion, not a single Palestine Action member had been convicted for targeting Elbit Systems. Just one month later though, the British state made the unusual step of appealing the acquittal of four activists who toppled a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol in June 2020. The perpetrators walked free after asserting human rights defenses, which had been employed by Palestine Action demonstrators to beat charges of criminal damage on previous occasions.
However, in the Colston case, the court ruled that human rights defenses could only be relied on in cases of vandalism of public property, not in cases where criminal damage has been caused to private property. Because Elbit is a private company, the Attorney General’s Office used this determination to dramatically increase prosecutions of Palestine Action activists.
‘Terror’ accusations continue despite lack of charges
The Grayzone has reviewed a declassified February 1, 2023 email sent by a redacted, presumably internal British government source to AGO Director Douglas Wilson, describing a meeting six days earlier between his office and several Israeli diplomats. “The meeting was at the Embassy’s request and covered a variety of topics,” first and foremost a “joint declaration” between London and Tel Aviv’s respective Ministries of Justice. It was presented by Israel’s then-Deputy Ambassador to Britain, Oren Marmorstein, now chief of the Zionist entity’s public affairs and media division.
The declaration “sought closer bilateral cooperation between the two ministries on mutual areas of responsibility” – “namely, legislation and legal reform, civil and criminal law and legal education.” As this fell outside the AGO’s jurisdiction, Wilson “undertook to engage the relevant leads in the Ministry of Justice on this topic for them to engage with the [Israeli] Embassy.” This followed an email to Tel Aviv’s London-based diplomats in which British Justice officials promised they’d be “in contact with you shortly.”
“The Attorney General would be delighted to meet with her Israeli counterpart if you have any suggestion of suitable dates for a meeting in London,” the email cheerily added.
The interpretation that Tel Aviv influences British laws to the detriment of Palestine solidarity activists is reinforced by numerous sections of London’s National Security Act, which came into force December 2023. These passages give every appearance of being custom built to legally neutralize Palestine Action’s wrecking campaign against Elbit Systems.
Priti Patel introduced the legislation in her capacity as Home Secretary. She was reinstated to government in 2019 after being forced to resign from a previous position in November 2017 for holding 12 secret meetings with Israeli officials without official authorization or notification.
On April 19, 2023 Britain’s then-Policing Minister Chris Philp met with representatives of the AGO, Home Office, several police forces and bodies, Elbit Systems, and the company’s French arms supplier Thales, to discuss “Palestine Action criminality.” According to an internal readout, “Minister Philp opened the meeting [by] emphasising that the UK government wants to make sure that UK based business can continue in their lawful activity.” A representative of Elbit “gave an overview of Palestine Action (PA) attacks on initially Elbit and now their supply chain.” Due to heavy redactions, it’s unclear what decisions, if any, were made regarding prosecutions of activists.
But if the prior meeting between Elbit and then-Home Secretary Patel was any indication, acquittal and conviction of Palestine Action members was likely a key subject of interest for attendees. During their March 2022 discussion, the British government openly acknowledged that Palestine Action “does not meet the threshold for proscription” as a terrorist group under British law, “as they do not commit, participate in, prepare for, promote, encourage, or otherwise be concerned with acts of terrorism.”
The recent invocation of counter-terror powers to imprison Palestine Action demonstrators may indicate the British government has identified a legal fudge that allows authorities to treat the group as a terrorist entity, despite its lack of formal proscription. The Filton 18’s pre-trial detention period runs to 182 days, well in excess of typical limits for non-terror-related crimes. Their contact with the outside world is also severely restricted, again contrary to standard British jurisprudence.
This May 1, British prosecutors inexplicably announced that “terrorism connections” would also be considered in the trial of 10 Palestine Action demonstrators who attacked Elbit supplier Instro Precision in June 2024. Again, the charges – aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder – did not fall under even the most expansive definition of terrorism. Such considerations, the CPS states, will only be explored at the point of sentencing.
The documentation reviewed by The Grayzone strongly implies these unprecedented breaches of long-established legal standards directly result from an extensive campaign of Israeli influence and meddling.
The mother of one imprisoned but as yet unconvicted Filton 18 activist told The Grayzone that revelations of AGO officials readily involving Israeli officials in the prosecution of her 21-year-old daughter Zoe made her “feel physically sick.” Zoe has now been in prison for eight months without trial. It will have been 15 months by the time her trial begins in November.
“Zoe took direct action against Elbit Systems because she could not bear to see her country being complicit in a genocide,” said the jailed activist’s mother. “She saw the UK committing war crimes by arming Israel, so she took action to uphold international law. Now we know it’s that same unholy alliance between Israel and the UK that conspired to use UK counter terror powers against Zoe and the Filton 18.”