Palestine Action has this morning taken down the Bedford premises of the world’s largest weapons company, Lockheed Martin, with a double blockade which has seen both factory entrances locked off, with activists secured to vehicles to prevent removal. The two groups of activists have since been joined by a demonstration, with Bedford residents mobilising to maintain the Lockheed blockade. The action, as with all by Palestine Action, has been taken in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who have experienced almost seven straight weeks of unrelenting bombing – bombing reliant on Lockheed Martin fighter bombers.

As such, the action today has rendered the high-security premises in Ampthill inoperable, preventing its ability to manufacture weaponry for Israel. The site has been covered in red paint to symbolise the Palestinian bloodshed for which Lockheed’s operations are directly responsible. This campaign of genocide against Palestinians has now claimed the lives of 15,000 people in Gaza, along with over 200 in the West Bank. Airstrikes have murdered the vast majority of Palestinians slaughtered in Gaza – airstrikes primarily committed by Lockheed Martin’s F-16 class of fighter jets, the ‘workhorse‘ of the current onslaught. The cruelty of the Israeli occupation cannot be divorced from the weapons companies which enable its violence – Lockheed Martin not least of all.

Lockheed Martin provides the deadly ‘Hellfire‘ used in levelling Gaza, including the new Hellfire R9X, seeing their first battle deployments. The R9X’s effective targeting of the Al-Shifa hospital promises to be a lucrative advertisement for Lockheed. Lockheed further boasts that Israel’s F-35 jets have the “fingerprints of British ingenuity” on “dozens of the aircraft’s key components”. 

By taking action to interrupt the flow of these aircraft and weapons to Israel, these activists’ intervention specifically aimed to preserve life and protect property in Gaza. Israel is not the only entity which is guilty of genocide – the arms companies which make this violence possible all have blood on their hands. Palestine Action will react when the government has failed to prevent such abhorrent activities from taking place in Britain.

If we want no part in Israel’s murders, then we ought to shut Elbit, Lockheed, Rafael and all other complicit companies down for good. 

~ Palestine Action