Proscribing Palestine Action is overreach
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MPs last week overwhelmingly voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. It was a striking moment: a protest group whose tactics are criminal and at a stretch a threat to national security systems, but non-lethal—spray paint, trespass, sabotage—now finds itself legally equated with groups like ISIS and National Action.
What the Government hails as a step toward national security may ultimately prove to be a retreat from legal proportionality, democratic accountability, and the public trust on which counterterrorism policy depends. And if my time as a Prevent officer taught me anything, it is that trust in law and government policy is absolutely pivotal in its success.
No one should underestimate the seriousness of Palestine Action’s campaign. It is not merely symbolic. Members have deliberately sabotaged facilities linked to the UK-Israel arms trade, occupied buildings, and damaged property. The attack on RAF Brize Norton was a major threat to national security. They are explicit about their aim to shut down what they see as complicity in Israeli military aggression. Ultimately, they want the eradication of Israel and are therefore antisemitic. But to define racism, sabotage and criminal damage as acts of terrorism, no matter how abhorrent, is a dangerous case of overreach.
Under the Terrorism Act 2000, an act must involve serious violence or damage and be intended to endanger life or public safety, carried out to influence government or intimidate the public, for a political, religious, racial, or ideological cause. Palestine Action’s actions—while unquestionably destructive—do not endanger life. They do not target civilians.
The UK has already demonstrated that it can respond effectively to radical direct action through criminal prosecution. Extinction Rebellion disrupted public infrastructure, blocked transport, and committed acts of criminal damage. Its members were arrested and charged using the existing legal framework. Through employment of Section 45 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, Extinction Rebellion appears a mere whisper of its highway blocking days.
By lowering the threshold for proscription, the Government undermines the integrity of the entire counterterrorism framework. When the public sees terrorism laws used, not against those who threaten life, but against those who threaten reputational or political discomfort, trust in those laws erodes. And that erosion comes at a cost. It hands a narrative gift to Islamist extremists and antisemites who claim that the state criminalises legitimate dissent. It risks driving already radicalised or alienated individuals further underground, fuelling perceptions of persecution and political abandonment. Rather than stifling extremism, such overreach risks breeding more of it.
This decision arrives at a time when the UK faces an unprecedented surge in antisemitism. Jewish communities feel increasingly unsafe amid global unrest and polarised domestic discourse. Addressing this rise demands urgency, seriousness, and honesty. But proscribing Palestine Action under terrorism law must not be a substitute for that work, nor should it be mistaken for a solution. If anything, it deflects from the deeper structural and cultural investments needed to tackle antisemitism meaningfully. Ironically it breaths fire into the very heart of conspiratorial antisemitic thinking – that there is establishment overreach and foul play that the antisemite consciously or even sub-consciously attaches to Jews.
Antisemitic rhetoric has become embedded in parts of the pro-Palestinian protest movement. Addressing this requires far more than sweeping bans or sensational headlines. It demands education, empathy, and clarity in public discourse. It requires the political courage to say that antisemitism is racism—and Jews are our most at risk minority—and must be addressed as such.
Too often, our frameworks of racism exclude Jews. Too often, public outrage is selective. If the state is sincere in its commitment to protecting Jewish communities, it must change the conversation—not simply change the law. But of course this is not about Jews: it is about appeasing conservative red and blue voters.
The stakes — for democracy, for minority protection, and for the legitimacy of our legal system — are far too high for shortcuts. Our Jewish minority deserves more than symbolic gestures. It deserves serious protection. That requires not just action, but the right kind of action. Proscribing Palestine Action might win headlines, it might win votes, but it won’t win trust and it will do nothing to tackle antisemitism.
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