London Palestine Action put up 150 posters across different Underground lines, which caused a furore on social media and even provoked a direct response from Israeli president Netanyahu.
The posters show different ways in which Israel gets support from the UK government, including through arms exports and media bias. The action comes at a time when the government is trying to undermine local democracy and the BDS movement by making it illegal for democratically elected local authorities to boycott companies on ethical grounds.
Arming Apartheid
The UK continues to make and sell weapons to Israel which have been used in indiscriminate acts of violence against Palestinians. This not only gives Israel material support for its assaults on Palestinian people, but also political legitimacy and support. Over 100 companies supplying military and security equipment to Israel are based in the UK, including BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Elbit Systems.
The action kicked off Israeli Apartheid Week which aims to highlight Israel’s occupation and continued human rights abuses. A decade after it first started in 2005, this year Israeli Apartheid Week has a powerful focus on global struggles, and the need for movements to fight for social justice hand in hand.
As London Palestine Action explain: “Israel’s settler colonial project and its deliberate on-going policies of apartheid, occupation and dispossession against Palestinians are part of a broader global pattern of injustice, economic and military domination. Those who fight for Palestine’s freedom recognise the significance of understanding the historical context of similar movements and identify powerful symmetries between settler colonialism in Palestine and elsewhere. Struggles against neoliberal capitalist individualism, the prison-industrial complex and police brutality, racism, militarism, fortress Europe and the environmental justice movement are all connected. Global communities of Palestinian, Indigenous and Black people, who suffered the violent results of colonisation, exploitation and institutional racism, have to be at the forefront of these fights, to preserve collective memories and resist erasure of their cultural identity. ‘Our struggles unite’ is the theme of this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week because the need to link fights and build resistance across borders becomes more and more clear.”
It’s important to insist on the intersectionality of movements. […] to find ways to talk about Palestine so that people who are attracted to a campaign to dismantle prisons in the US will also think about the need to end occupation in Palestine. It can’t be an afterthought. It has to be part of the ongoing analysis.
Angela Davis, Freedom is a constant struggle
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