Free Palestine!
By Nick Moss
The politics of genocide
At the time of writing, Palestine Action have been proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Those Labour MPs who briefly developed a backbone and a conscience, faced with Starmer’s attempts to save the rich from tax rises by undermining the right to security of disabled people, came back into line and the proscription was voted through by 385 votes to 26.
It is no coincidence that the proscription took place days after the High Court determined that Britain’s decision to allow the export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, despite accepting they could be used in breach of international humanitarian law in Gaza, was legal. In consequence, this government will continue to be party to Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. It will therefore seek to clamp down on activism and deny platforms for speech that protests the genocide and exposes its role in the slaughter of the people of Gaza.
Glastonbury’s opposition to genocide
At Glastonbury, we saw the resurgence of an oppositional culture that was prepared to speak out against the genocide – the Libertines, Jade, CMAT, Nadine Shah, Inhaler, Amyl and the Sniffers, and Wolf Alice all expressed solidarity with Palestine, as did Kneecap, who refuse to be silenced in the face of ongoing prosecution under the Terrorism Act.
Palestinian flags at Glastonbury
Bob Vylan caused uproar in the right-wing and liberal press for leading the crowd in a chant of “Death to the IDF.” As they commented later:
We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs, or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent, military machine. A machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.
The IDF have killed over 57,000 people in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children. They have dropped bombs on hospitals and schools repeatedly, so as to destroy such infrastructure of health and shelter that remains. If in the conduct of their role as the army of a settler colonial power individual soldiers are killed, that comes with the territory. We should shed no tears, but we should support those reservists who refuse to serve, and who speak out against the occupation and the genocide.
Through solidarity with the Palestinian people, a genuine mass anti-imperialist movement in this country has been built. The size of the movement is similar to that mobilised against the Vietnam War. That movement now needs to ensure that no-one is left to stand alone when the state turns its efforts to attempting to silence and criminalise us. The Palestine solidarity movement needs to make links with the anti-nuclear movement and protest the purchase of the recently-announced 12 F-35AS, capable of carrying both conventional warheads and B61-12 gravity bombs. These will likely be stored at RAF Lakenheath or RAF Marham.
Photo by Peadar Whelan
Those of us who are involved in cultural production of any sort need to ensure that the Palestine solidarity movement has a voice and that we both give voice and create spaces for the voices of others. It can be demoralising to have to document every day another atrocity, but as we’ve seen with the witch-hunts of Kneecap and Bob Vylan, and the BBC refusal to screen Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, the ruling class in this country does not want the genocide and its collusion with it to be the primary focus of the public sphere.
Keep writing, singing, filming and painting
We have therefore a duty to keep writing, singing, filming, painting, as part of building an active resistance to the genocide. In the face of proscription, all of us have to be Palestine Action, not in name but in deed.
This government intends that daily life will be militarised, and anti-imperialist speech proscribed. This is an aspect of the new Defence Strategy. It is intended to serve as a new hegemonizing project for a government, and a political class which recognises that it faces a legitimacy crisis.
This is reflected in Keir Starmer’s statement that the defence strategy is intended as:
…part of a new contract to unite the Kingdom…A new spirit of service, flowing from every part of society Doing their duty to the nation and to each other – To preserve our way of life – And the things that we hold dear…
What this will mean in practice is detailed in the Defence Review itself. In it, Starmer states:
We … need to see the biggest shift in mindset in my lifetime: to put security and defence front and centre—to make it the fundamental organising principle of government.”
What does it mean to make security and defence the “fundamental organising principle of government”? It means that security overrides civil liberties – as we see with ICE actions in the US under Trump. It means defence has priority over housing, health and welfare. The agenda is clear, and we as culture workers have to be ready to work together to help develop a culture of solidarity and resistance in response.
For a moment this morning, when I saw that they’d banned the Maniacs Murder Cult I thought they’d proscribed the Netanyahu war cabinet, but it’s apparently just a group of non-UK based Nazis who’ve never actually killed anyone. Mere wannabees compared to Netanyahu and Co.
The economics of genocide
Genocide creates its own economy. Elbit Systems. Israel Aerospace Industries. Lockheed Martin. FANUC Corp. A.P. Moller – Maersk A/S. Hewlett Packard. Microsoft. IBM. A military-industrial-genocidal-penal complex. But don’t speak now. Say nothing. Watch their share prices rise – just testing out tech in the start-up nation.
Palantir ‘s predictive policing software is at work policing apartheid, its Artificial Intelligence Platform is targeting IDF kills. Gifts from a philanthropist who has “lost interest in democracy” to a country where democracy is dead.
Caterpillar, HD Hyundai and Volvo excavators and heavy equipment are demolishing homes and building settler colonies on stolen land. Genocide creates its own economy and its own investment opportunities. Militarisation funded by bonds issuance, underwritten by BNP Paribas and Barclays. Purchased by Blackrock. Vanguard. Allianz/ PIMCO. And each genocide facilitator invests in the next – Blackrock and Vanguard bankroll Lockheed and Palantir.
Blood pooling with blood
Blood merging with blood, growing from a drop to a pool to a sea. MIT conducting drone swarm tests for the IDF. The Israeli Ministry of Defence is the only non-US military research funder at MIT. Genocide creates its own knowledge economy. Learn from this one to better execute the next one. Leave less evidence at the scene. You can invest in genocide and turn a healthy profit. Oppose it and risk 14 years inside.
Blood pooling with blood. As a witness said about the 30 June 2025 bombing by the IDF of Al-Baqa Café, an outdoor venue on the western shore of Gaza City, killing at least 30:
Forget red lines. We’re past that. Nothing left to say. Looked around all I see is blood. Men, martyrs, limbs.
Put a name to one of those lost at Al-Baqa. Frans Al-Salmi, artist. Who worked, using charcoal and paint, salvaged and charred materials, to show the death, trauma, and hope and banality of survival in Gaza. One of her final paintings showed the body of a bloodied woman in a white shroud. Prescience is no protection.
And those who linger in Hugo Boss suits at Biennales, their yachts at anchor, hoping the balm of Creed Aventus will hide the scent of blood, are the paradigm ethical actors of our age – the hand that funds endowments hopes to wipe away the gore that cakes the hand that invests in the 230kg bomb that slaughters artists and photographers and mothers and their kids at cafes by the sea in Gaza.
Not only those who execute but those who facilitate and benefit are genocidaires. Fuck silence. Fuck liberal pieties and moderated discourse and not causing offence. Solidarity with the Palestinian people. Solidarity with Palestine Action.
