During an early-morning demonstration, dozens of protesters have reportedly "shut down" a Bristol company. This was initiated by campaigners from Palestine Action who have targeted the Elbit headquarters in Little Stoke.

Protesters targeted several UK sites of the company that describes itself as a "defense, technology, and aerospace company working on a range of technologies for both military and civilian applications."

Elbit Systems UK is part of an Israeli-based company Elbit Systems Ltd, according to Companies House. The company, which makes drones and other military equipment, has contracts with the Israeli occupation.

"Disrupting Israel's military supply chain through direct action and community mobilization is a crucial and necessary tactic to deploy as our Palestinian siblings are under fire by Elbit's weaponry. We do not stand for genocide enablers on our doorstep, and we've once again made it clear that Elbit is not welcome in Bristol or anywhere on British soil," stated a Palestine Action spokesperson.

Capitalism v. anti-weapons, genocide groups

In December, Jurors at Snaresbrook Crown Court acquitted a group of protesters of a total of nine charges but failed to decide on 23 others. They were accused of "criminal offenses relating to direct action targeting the UK operations of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company."

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The group, originally known as the Elbit Eight – now the Elbit Six – had been on trial in December for various combinations of 13 counts relating to a series of protests in London, Kent, Oldham, and Staffordshire. Today, they will know whether the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) intends to re-do the trial in the hope of getting a verdict for the remaining counts.

Genevieve Scherer and Jocelyn Cooney were acquitted of all the offenses they had been charged with. On the other hand, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, was found guilty of one count of criminal damage. However, the jury failed to decide on a majority of the other charges back in December.

“We’re looking at probably spring or summer 2025 [if there is a retrial],” Lydia Dagostino, the group’s solicitor and director at Kellys Solicitors, said. “Some of these incidents date back to 2020, so that’s five years. Broadly speaking, the retrial isn’t really a priority [for the court], but it has a massive impact on defendants and witnesses.”

Milly Arnott, who stood trial with the group last year, added, “I did these direct actions when I had just turned 27. I’m now 30. By the time I get to my retrial, I will be nearly 32. I never anticipated just how long I would be wound up in this whole legal process when I was first arrested."

"It’s another form of punishment for defendants – the pre-trial punishment of waiting around, the psychological burden of not knowing what’s going to happen," she added in the same context as Lydia to shed light on the backlog in British courts due to “over a decade of austerity-led cuts across all of the public sector including the courts."

Arnott described the wait for a potential retrial as a “form of psychological warfare on defendants, because it’s another year and a half where we can’t progress with our life – you can’t make long-term decisions, or get jobs. The consequences go way beyond just waiting for this trial.” Lydia further affirmed that the trial was around six weeks and the thought of going through the exhausting process again was "really daunting".

Huda Ammori, the co-founder of Palestine Action, who was also on trial, told openDemocracy that she feels “certain of the government and the state’s intentions," elaborating that this is all an attempt to try and deter people from taking action. However, Ammori insisted and emphasized that these tactics are in vain as the magnitude of what is happening in Palestine outweighs the British government's efforts to silence people. Her message to the government is that the only way, she and many others, will stop taking action is once the British complicity in the Israeli genocide stops. 

Before the trial began, several defenses – including the position that their actions were necessary and the position that they had been acting to preserve life – were ruled out by the judge. This meant that the only defense available to them was what is known as "consent": they argued that if the owners of the buildings of Elbit and UAV Tactical Systems – an Israeli-French drone company part-owned by Elbit – had all the information and understood the extent of the devastation caused by Elbit’s weapons, then they would have consented to the group’s actions. This is worrisome for Ammori and Arnott as it is unclear to them what defenses will be available if the retail happens. 

Now, the consent defense is also under threat as the attorney general asked the Court of Appeal last month to consider whether it should be available to defendants in the future. The court of appeal is yet to reach a decision, but Dagostino warned that it could “limit the scope even further on availability of defenses for activists."

“We've already seen in the climate change cases that the courts have been really unusually ruling out defences before a jury is even sworn,” she explained, adding that “the judges are restricting what the defendants can tell jurors about their motivations for taking the actions they did, and in some cases, even suggesting that they might be in contempt of court for talking about, for example, the climate emergency.”