Benjamin's friends.

No other nation has as much influence on our politics as Israel. Now we're going to criminalise protest on their behalf.

This morning, as I was writing this article, Israeli soldiers using tanks and drones, massacred 25 people at a food aid station in Gaza.

These slaughters have become so commonplace that they barely make headlines.

Israel murders civilians. There is no more debate over this than there is over the shape of the Earth. No matter what justifications are offered, no matter how some people might dance around the issue, it is a stone cold incontrovertible fact.

The deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime. So is using food as a weapon. The bombing of hospitals is a war crime. So is the targeting of civilian infrastructure. Israel has done all of this.

It continues to do all of it.

Western nations continue to provide them with political cover. Western nations continue to sell them the weapons with which they attack neighbouring countries and murder large numbers of Palestinians.

The moral stink of this infects every square mile of our public sphere. The Israel government has in it some elements who are every bit as determined to wipe Gaza off the face of the Earth as Hitler was once determined to eradicate the Jews. The language of some of these people is barbaric. The things that have been done in their names are abhorrent.

Members of their cabinet have been indicted for war crimes, including their blood drenched leader.

In a saner world these people would not be able to leave the country without their immediate arrest. A number of countries have made it plain that they would execute an international arrest warrant.

Others have dismissed the idea, even as they support the justified indictment of Vladimir Putin by the same court.

Britain dissembles. There is a very good reason why.

Earlier this week, Yvette Cooper announced that she intends to proscribe Palestine Action. In short, she will designate them a terrorist group, up there with ISIS and Al Queda.

There is no justification for that. There is no legal basis on which to do it. Palestine Action does not threat physical harm far less death. They are a direct action group dedicated to non-violent resistance against the sale of arms to Israel. They have committed acts of vandalism and trespass.

Senior lawyers have said that not only is such a designation disproportionate but that it is also illegal. It will mark a new low for this government in how it deals with protest; no non-violent direct action organisation has ever been proscribed in this fashion.

That there has been lobbying for this behind the scenes, from Israeli linked organisations, is not secret.

Cooper seems to be working off recommendations from a 2022 report from an organisation called We Believe In Israel, whose former director is a current Labour MP. The report contains information that would have had to have come from the Met or the Security Services; it is in unclear how that information was obtained.

There is something chilling, something grotesque, about the speed and ease with which the British state is prepared to criminalise dissent—especially when that dissent threatens not our people, not our country, but the interests of a foreign power. Amidst all the noise, that is the key thing we should focus on.

Palestine Action isn’t Hamas.

They don’t have guns or militias. They don’t blow up buildings. What they do—often disruptively, and yes, sometimes illegally—is make people uncomfortable about the UK’s complicity in the Israeli arms trade.

Their main targets have been Elbit Systems, which manufactures drone components used in Gaza. They’ve protested at RAF Brize Norton. They’ve interrupted the comfort of arms dealers and the companies who sell death.

And for that, they’ve now been classified as terrorists.

Yvette Cooper has a classic conflict of interests here, or she would if this country took such things seriously.

She is one of many Labour MPs who has long-standing links to Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), the powerful lobbying group embedded deep in the parliamentary party. She was the recipient of a £5000 donation from a prominent pro-Israeli donor, Trevor Chinn, in 2013. LFI’s own website highlighted Cooper as a “Parliamentary supporter” in 2024 when she called for the proscription of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, of Iran.

Back in March, on the 600th day of Israeli actions against Hamas in response to the 7 October attacks, Cat Eccles, Kevin McKenna, Peter Prinsley and Mark Sewards, all newly elected Labour MP’s were part of an LFI delegation which visited Israel and some of the Palestinian territories.

The Israeli government plays the long game.

There are over 70 Labour MP’s with LFI connections. Keir Starmer’s cabinet of 25 contains at least a dozen LFI supporters and ministers who have taken donations from or travelled to Israel funded by their government, including Jonathon Reynolds, who I wrote about the other day when he went on TV to suggest that it was Iran who had “rejected” negotiations on their nuclear program when the whole world knew the US had taken the decision to bomb their facilities in violation of international law.

I am not making a case for the Iranians; Iran cannot be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. But suggesting that Iran had in some way provoked that action was a barefaced lie. Reynolds was, in fact, pushing the Israeli government line as our official policy. That needs to be questioned.

On the other side of the chamber sits Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI)—an even more powerful operation. Since 2000, CFI has spent over £330,000 on funded trips for more than 160 Tory MPs. At one point in the early 2010s, over 80% of Conservative MPs were listed as members. David Cameron called CFI “probably the largest lobbying organisation in Westminster.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

And then there’s BICOM—the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre—a well-funded PR and lobbying machine which works with MPs from both major parties.

Unlike LFI and CFI, BICOM doesn’t exist to simply support Israel’s right to exist—it exists to influence how Britain perceives Israel’s every action, especially its war on Gaza. Their briefings are circulated throughout Westminster.

Their influence is felt across committees and within policy units. But don’t expect to see their name on a party membership roll.

It is not a coincidence that Cooper’s decision comes after Palestine Action targeted RAF Brize Norton—where military support operations connected to Israel’s siege on Gaza have passed through.

It’s not a coincidence that Elbit Systems has been a recurring target of their protests. The British state—and by extension its political managers in the Labour Party—have made a decision: protect the relationship with Israel at all costs. And if that means criminalising non-violent dissent, so be it.

Palestine Action is not above criticism.

But to compare them to terrorist organisations is ludicrous. It’s also dangerous. It sends a clear message that activism—even loud, confrontational, messy activism—is no longer safe if it targets the wrong people.

If your protest challenges a foreign policy relationship deemed sacrosanct by the Westminster consensus, you’re fair game.

Meanwhile, the financial links remain intact. The lobbying continues. MPs attend LFI and CFI dinners. They pose with IDF generals. They post statements about Israel’s “right to defend itself” while thousands of Palestinian children lie dead beneath the rubble. And now, they move to silence the dissent that makes them uncomfortable.

When Yvette Cooper stood up to announce the proscription, she did so in the language of national security.

But the real threat is not to Britain’s safety. It’s to the illusion of neutrality. It’s to the pretence that our government’s hands are clean.

The media plays its role too. Note how easily the language of "extremism" is thrown around. How quickly activists become “militants.” How little space is given to understanding why they do what they do. How few column inches are spent questioning the relationship between Britain’s political elite and a foreign power ... and that’s the bigger scandal here.

Here’s the central truth that no-one seems willing to state plainly: no other foreign country exerts this level of organised, strategic political influence over the UK’s two main parties as Israel does.

It is unthinkable that any other country would be permitted to. There are no Friends of France, Friends of Brazil, Friends of Sweden sending 120 MPs on funded trips and shaping core planks of foreign policy. This is something else entirely. This is not friendship. This is coordination.

The public is not stupid. They see the moral failure. They see the tears shed for the hostages, but none for the 14,000 children dead in Gaza. And increasingly, they see the activism criminalised and the lobby emboldened.

But they do not understand where the roots of our unhealthy tolerance for Israel’s darker actions comes from. They do not understand the forces that shape our policy choices.

The real terrorists here are not the ones holding banners and spray-painting airplanes. The real threat doesn’t come from protesters or activists. That threat comes from Benjamin’s friends. They have allowed a foreign government an unparalleled level of influence over our national politics, and in doing so they have made us complicit in their crimes.

Now they seek to silence those who would expose that complicity. We are not as far from Trump’s America as some people seem to believe.