I join my dear comrades in the hunger strike, returning to this position with more patience and determination than previous. You need energy to fight your case. Prison tried to dissuade me last time. I remind them this is a witch hunt, not a fair fight, and that behind the arrests of dissenting voices under counterterrorism powers, holding us on remand without trial for nearly two years and targeting protesters who condemn Palestinian suffering, is the palpably desperate attempt to force us all under the imperial boot of submission. But not even these threats and abuse of powers can undo the awakening we’ve had and the deep-rooted solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Labelling us as terrorists only adds salt to the moral injury forced upon us all by Britain’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
In 2009, Elbit Systems Ltd. spooled continuous footage of a simulated attack on a Palestinian village in order to showcase its unmanned drone surveillance and attack aircraft. Last year, its CEO, Bezhalel Machlis, boasted, the fact that our systems are in operational use in Israel helps us because our customers prefer ‘mature solutions’. ‘Mature solutions’ are a weasel phrase for tried, tested, proven to kill and dangerously lethal, the systematic genocide of Palestinians for profit. And our government, the MOD, is entertaining a £2.7 billion contract with Elbit Systems UK, rewarding them for an efficient and effective genocide. Its subsidiary, Elbit Systems UK, continues its manufacturing operations here in our country under our noses, and we demand that the government release the export licences for the last five years.
Our demands are simple and I want it stated for the record that our collective strike should only be interpreted as a will to live, using nothing but our hunger to resist the imperial war machine. We are prepared to push to the very end for these rights. Any harm we sustain lies at the door of the government.
Please act.