Simon was from a Jewish background; his great grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz. This was one of the reasons that he joined the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid. In 2004 Simon travelled to Palestine and spent months as an international volunteer in Balata refugee camp. During Israeli army incursions Simon provided an international presence designed to make people in the camp safer and support Palestinian resistance. In 2008 he led a delegation to the Jordan Valley and worked with Palestinians to establish Fasayil School, despite Israeli military orders that building was prohibited.

Involved in the Smash EDO campaign from the beginning, he was part of the first blockade of EDO in 2004 and fought against EDO’s planned injunction against protesters.  Simon played a leading role in the decommissioning of the EDO factory in 2009 – and was with the others found not guilty of conspiracy to cause criminal damage on the basis that he had acted to prevent war crimes. His own experiences in Palestine were used as evidence. On hearing the verdict he said, “Considering that the whole point of this is that we have broken no law, hopefully it will set a precedent for the people of this country to realise that in a liberal democracy we are the checks and balances.”

Despite personal battles, Simon never gave up on the struggle for justice and the well-being of those lucky enough to count him as a friend.

One such friend said, “Simon was not only a dedicated activist in the name of liberty, against oppression in all its forms, but a sublimely passionate human being, whose eccentricities, eloquence and wild imagination will never be forgotten.”

Smash EDO Mass Demo – Wednesday 13th October

Venue to be announced – to receive updates email smashedo@riseup.net or text 07538093930. www.smashedo.org.uk

On January 17th 2009 six people broke into EDO MBM/ITT in Brighton and caused £189 000 worth of damage to computers, servers, lathes and other equipment. The activists, calling themselves the ‘decommissioners’, took their action in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza which had claimed 1400 lives by the 17th. EDO MBM/ITT manufactures the arming unit for the Israeli F16 bombrack.
The six were arrested, along with three people alleged to have supported the action. All nine were charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage. At a month long trial at Hove Crown Court seven of the activists argued that they had a lawful excuse to damage EDO’s property as the company was complicit in war crimes. All seven were acquitted on July 2nd 2010 after the jury gave five unanimous not guilty verdicts and the judge directed that the final two should be acquitted. One activist had been found with no case to answer earlier in the trial due to lack of evidence.

Decommission Accomplished

The decommissioning of EDO MBM/ITT completely closed the factory for several days, until the main Israeli assault on Gaza was over. Paul Hills, MBM’s stony faced MD, gave evidence that some of the factory’s production machinery was out of action for up to a month. US contract information shows that ITT was negotiating the sale of further arming units at the time of the action but that the contract fell through.

Harassment

After the arrests, three decommissioners were remanded in custody. Chris Osmond was released on bail after a week while Elijah Smith remained in custody until the trial. Robert Alford was bailed briefly but ended up back in jail.

Sussex police threw an unprecedented level of resources at the case. A team from the Serious Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) was allocated to Operation ‘Potato’, (hastily renamed Operation Adio).

The gap between the action and the trial was sixteen months. The police used this time to ramp up the pressure on the defendants, using the judicial process as a means of repression.

It soon became clear that Sussex Police were livid that the decommissioners had been granted bail. Restrictive bail conditions were imposed including a ban on decommissioners ‘associating’ with each other, curfews, electronic tags, confiscation of passports and restrictions on movement. Some, but not all, of these conditions were successfully challenged.

One particularly vindictive tactic used by SOCU was the harassment and arrest of people who had written statements in support of the decommissioners bail applications. Four such arrests of supporters were made, houses were raided and computers confiscated, no charges were ever laid. Similarly, two of the decommissioners were arrested so that their applications to the court could be scrutinised; no charges were forthcoming but it allowed the police to seize more property and fish for more evidence.

Three of the decommissioners were arrested in October 2009 for attending the same demonstration even though there was no proof that they had associated with each other.

SOCU also used the decommissioning as an excuse to go on more wide ranging fishing expeditions. A local independent media journalist was arrested because he had received a phone call from one of the defendants (who had also called dozens of other journalists). His computers, cameras and hard drives were seized. The footage, the real purpose of the police’s raid, found on his computer became evidence in a further EDO MBM/ITT related court case. (see www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news6801.php)

All of this was a deliberate attempt by Sussex Police to create a climate of fear and paranoia among activists campaigning against EDO MBM/ITT and to limit support for the defendants. It worked, for a short time, but the Smash EDO campaign fought on and gathered momentum, huge demonstrations were held against the factory on Mayday 2009 and on the first anniversary of Israel’s massacre in Gaza. A ‘Support the Decommissoners’ campaign was launched.

Court in the Act

The decommissioners case commenced on May 17th 2010. A hundred supporters turned out on the first day of the case and scores of people attended on most days of the trial. The support campaign geared up providing food for the defendants and their supporters and a constant vigil was held on the court steps (schNEWS video of the first day of the trial – http://schnews.clearerchannel.org/snippet-decoms-day-on…e.flv). Messages of support poured in from all over the UK and beyond.

Jury questions were negotiated between the defence and the prosecution teams and the defence managed to persuade the court to bar serving police from the jury. It’s a good thing they did as the original jury included three policemen, one of whom had previously been involved in prosecuting Smash EDO activists!

The ‘Turkey Shoot’

The jury in the case may not have known anything at all about the situation in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, let alone the historical context of Israel’s assault. During the defence case, the jury were presented with a comprehensive overview of the situation with the aim that, by the end of the case, they were able to put themselves in the shoes of the civilian population of the Gaza strip.

The defence’s expert, Mandy Turner of Bradford University’s Department of Peace Studies, gave evidence summarising Israel’s history since its creation in 1948; from the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Syrian Golan in 1967, to the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Beirut, to the crushing of the Palestinian intifadas (uprisings), the 2006 assault on Lebanon, the development of the Dahiya doctrine (the illegal Israel policy of the use of disproportionate force against civilian populations) and the Israeli siege of the Gaza strip.

The jury heard evidence about the massacre which began in Gaza on 27th December with F16 attacks on police stations, a jail and government buildings and went on to target schools, hospitals, medics, civilian homes and United Nations (UN) facilities. Turner told how the air force dropped leaflets on civilian areas, ordering them to leave their homes and go to the town centres where they could take aid from UN facilities (see www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2009/IDF_warns_Gaza_population_7-Jan-2009.htm). The jury heard how those same UN facilities were deliberately targeted by the Israeli military. Turner told the jury that the entrances and exits to the Gaza strip were sealed and there was no safe place for civilians to take shelter from the incessant aerial bombardment. When asked if she could think of a phrase to describe what happened in Gaza during that month she paused, and then replied softly “it was a turkey shoot”.

Several of the defendants gave evidence about how the events unfolding in Gaza had lead them to make the decision to decommission EDO. The jury were played TV news reports from Operation Cast Lead, shown photographs, newspaper cuttings and blogs from the Free Gaza movement, which the defendants had read. The effect was, in essence, to transport the jury back to January 2009 and show them why the defendants felt that they needed to act.

One recurrent aspect of the reports heard by the jury was the repeated cries for help from the ‘international community’ by civilians in Gaza, journalists and the UN (for example this audio clip from Jenny Linnell of the International Solidarity Movement – http://palsolidarity.org/2008/12/3740/). One section of the evidence concluded with a video clip of the UN compound in Gaza City, bombed by white phosphorous shells and missiles on January 15th. A Gazan journalist stands in front of the burning building and says angrily “the international community (is)… paying money to bring food to people in the Gaza strip – aid given by the international community for people in Gaza. The Israelis are blowing them up. So from now on I don’t think I will blame the Israelis for this anymore. Because there are laws that you (the international community) have put and Israel is breaking these laws all the time and you are not doing anything. I don’t think I’ll blame the Israelis anymore. I think I will blame the international community if you will not act”. (see the clip at www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQWdXZ1_oQY)

Caroline Lucas, an ex Member of the European Parliament, now Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, confirmed that no help had been forthcoming from the international community. All attempts to censure Israel, in any more than words, had failed.

Sharyn Locke, a volunteer who had arrived in Gaza on the Free Gaza movement’s boat, The Dignity, in 2008, gave evidence about one of the attacks that convinced the defendants to take action – the bombing of Al Quds hospital with F16s and white phosphorous on the 15th January and the attacks on patients being evacuated from the hospital. Locke, who was in the hospital during the attacks, explained how a family was shot at by a sniper on the steps of the hospital and their daughter was shot through the cheek. She described how medical staff evacuated those sheltering in the building and, eventually, the bedridden patients as the roof of the hospital burned. (some of Sharyn’s reports, which were used in the trial are at www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh3FsU2gDCg, and http://talestotell.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/14-mins-only/)

The last question put to Sharyn Locke was “what do you think of companies who supply weapons to Israel”. She replied “Every one of them has the blood of the patients who fled Al Quds hospital on their hands”.

The trial of Paul Hills

An oft repeated phrase during the trial was “we are the accusers not the accused”. The cross examination of EDO MBM/ITT’s managing director, Paul Hills, was a make or break point of the trial. Hill’s evidence was scheduled to last for one day by the prosecution, in fact it lasted for over five days. The prosecutor took him through the evidence, photos of a wrecked factory, and Hills detailed what was damaged. The prosecutions case soon became clear: that MBM (the Brighton part of the business) did not supply weapons to Israel. In fact the prosecution tried to paint MBM as a civilian business, omitting police photographs of dummy missiles, thrown out of the window by the decommissioners, from the jury bundles.

The defence’s cross examination of Hills began with this opening statement: “I suggest to you, that you have come to this court fully prepared to lie through your teeth”. Hills was then passed an evidence bundle, running to several hundred pages, which he had never seen before. The bundle was the result of painstaking research undertaken by campaigners over the past six years about MBM’s links to Israel. Hills was under oath so he could not speak to his US bosses or the CPS about the defence documents.

Hills originally denied that the company was heavily involved in the manufacture of components for the F16 and denied any involvement with the Israeli F16. However, as Hills was asked more and more questions relating to the Israeli F16 it became apparent that he was extremely knowledgeable about the aircraft.

Much of the evidence revolved around a package of products which MBM acquired from Lucas Western Gear, an arms company who were in trouble after being fined by the US government for not carrying out safety checks. MBM acquired the intellectual property rights for the VER-2, the bomb rack for the Israeli F16 along with the Ejector Release Unit (ERU) 151, the component inside the VER-2 which propels the missile clear of the plane. They also acquired the rights for the Zero Retention Force Arming Unit (ZRFAU), the trigger unit used in the ERU 151.

Under cross examination, Hills confirmed that, soon after these rights had been acquired, MBM, then part of a consortium called Morgan Crucible, acquired a small US company called Artisan based in Parsippany, New Jersey. Hills admitted that one of the functions of Artisan, whose manager, Paul Roba, joined the Brighton company’s board of directors, was to provide a “shop window” for MBM’s products into the US. This ‘shop window’ proved extremely handy as Artisan was able to procure hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of US government contracts for the Zero Retention Force Arming Unit, delivered to Defence Supply Center Columbus, the US army quartermasters and, potentially, forwarded to Israel as part of the US Peace Marble arms transfer programme.

MBM needed Artisan to procure these contracts as US government procurement rules favour small US owned businesses. Crucially, the details of the ZRFAU constitute ‘militarily critical technical data’, which can only be handled by individuals certified under the Joint Certification Programme (JCP). The JCP stipulates that registrants must be citizens or residents of the US or Canada.

The main point of contention between Hills and the defence was the location of the manufacture of the ZRFAU. Hills maintained that it was manufactured in the US by Artisan and later by ITT. The defence presented evidence suggesting that it is, and was, manufactured in Brighton and accused MBM of running Artisan as a front company. One thing that would suggest this is that EDO’s website said that the ZRFAU was “actively manufactured” in Brighton until Hills ordered the removal of the ZRFAU from the site after the protests began. Another is that, to this day, the contact address given on all US websites for the ZRFAU is MBM in Brighton. When asked why this was Hills said that MBM was the design authority for the ZRFAU, despite his assertion that Artisan had manufactured it since 2000, and that customers would go to MBM in Brighton if, for example, they needed technical advice on fitting the arming unit to a bomb rack.

The evidence took a bizarre turn when Hills brought a ZRFAU, the component he maintained his factory had never made, into court to show the jury. He obviously thought better of it as the unit remained firmly in his pocket throughout the cross examination.

Beryllium

As Hills was starting to hope his ordeal was drawing to close the cross examination changed direction – “Mr Hills, can you tell us what beryllium is?” Hills denied any knowledge of beryllium – a weapon of mass destruction. Beryllium, which is a restricted component on the UK military list, is a strategic precious metal used in the arms industry. It is used in the manufacture of warplanes including F16s, in missile guidance systems and to strengthen metal to enhance explosions in, for example, bunker busting tritonal bombs and nuclear weapons. Abnormal quantities of beryllium were found in Gaza after Cast Lead.

Campaigners had been particularly suspicious about the beryllium shipment because it was made at a time (September 2007) when General Dynamics (GD) had just been named as a main contractor for a massive proposed sale of guided munitions to Israel (see www.dsca.mil/PressReleases/36-b/2007/Israel_07-32.pdf) to rearm them after they had decimated Lebanon in 2006. It was doubly suspicious as MBM had had a regular delivery of warhead pallets to GD for over a year, described on shipping documents as ‘steel pallets’ or ‘twist/untwist steel’; the addition of beryllium ore to their regular delivery raised suspicions of an illegal export slipped in with their regular legal delivery.

The following day, Hills offered the explanation that MBM had been contracted by Raytheon Systems Ltd on the UK to export steel warhead pallets to the US. This explanation did not explain the beryllium, however, and, under cross examination, he offered several conflicting explanations; that the beryllium was a part of the pallet, that it was a ‘component’, and that it was a ‘separator’ used in the packing of the pallet. None of these explanations make sense. The clear implication was that the beryllium export was illegal.

Credibility?

In Judge Bathurst-Norman’s closing speech, Hill’s credibility was questioned. However, the defence did not need to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Hills was lying, only that the defendants had an honest belief that the factory was supplying Israel. Halfway through the cross-examination, to sighs of despair from the prosecution, Hills conceded that a member of the public would come to that conclusion.

The defence did challenge EDO MBM/ITT’s credibility, however, they maintained he was lying throughout. Hills was questioned about the 2007 court case taken by the US government against ITT, MBM’s parent company. ITT had been found guilty of exporting military equipment to China and the UK without a license and of setting up front companies to achieve that end. They were fined $100 million, one of the largest fines in US legal history. Hills claimed ignorance about the case.

Verdict

During his summing up, Judge Bathurst-Norman, who was born in Jaffa, echoed defence counsel in quoting Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. He indicated that the jury may think that one of the defendants could be awarded a “George medal” for the solidarity work he had done in Palestine and he described the situation in Gaza during Cast lead as “hell on earth”. Crucially, he described UK end user certificates as “not worth the paper that they’re written on”. Bathurst Norman has been the subject of enraged Zionist attacks for this summing up (see, for instance, www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6117164/the-hellish-histrionics-of-hove-propaganda-court.thtml)

The Jewish Chronicle helpfully paid for a transcript of the Judge’s summing up. It can be viewed at www.thejc.com/35771/judge-bathurst-norman-full-summing

The jury had to decide whether each defendant was motivated by an honest belief that EDO MBM/ITT was aiding and abetting war crimes being carried out by the Israeli military.

On Wednesday 31st June, the judge asked the jury whether they had reached any decisions as they had been deliberating for two days, the jury gave five of the decommissioners unanimous not guilty verdicts. After an agonising wait, the judge directed them to acquit the remaining two defendants.

We will be here until you’re not…

With the trial over and done with, defendants held a celebratory march through Brighton (and a big party). On Monday 5th July an all day victory demonstration was held outside EDO MBM/ITT, with Paul Hills looking none too pleased. On 7th July Elijah Smith, who had been in prison since January 2009, was released from Lewes Prison to crowds of supporters and the decommissioners hammers, used to smash EDO, were duly liberated from Brighton Police Station.

The Smash EDO campaign is planning to ramp up its actions with a mass ‘siege’ of EDO MBM/ITT planned on October 6th and weekly demonstrations gathering momentum. Caroline Lucas has agreed, at the decommissioners press conference, to press for a public enquiry into MBM. The question everyone is asking is how long can MBM continue in Brighton. If events in Derry are anything to go by the answer is ‘not very long’. Raytheon closed its offices in Derry after campaigners decommissioned its premises in response to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon in 2006 citing a disappointment in the police and the Irish government for failing to protect them as their reason for leaving. It’s impossible to tell what discussions about the future of the factory are being had between Paul Hills and his US bosses, but one thing is clear, direct action against EDO MBM/ITT will not stop until the factory closes down.

A senior judge is under investigation after being accused of making anti-Semitic remarks in court. Judge George Bathurst-Norman is said by right wing critics to have persuaded a jury to clear a group of campaigners who smashed up a factory making parts for Israeli warplanes.

Read what The Daily Mail have to say on the matter.

Criticising Israeli War Crimes Is Not A Crime

After the historic victory of the EDO Decommissioners, the judge in the case, Judge George Bathurst-Norman, has become subject of a concerted campaign of smears and defamation by a number of right-wing columnists, the Zionist Federation, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews on grounds that his summary of the evidence was ‘anti-semitic’. The Office of Judicial Complaints (OJC) has as a result opened an investigation into Judge Bathurst Normans handling of the case. Although we don’t normally find ourselves defending judges, we find the charge of anti-semitism a grossly cynical attempt to undermine the significance of these acquittals of pro-Palestinian activists on evidence of Israeli war crimes that was for the most part agreed by the Crown Prosecution Service. There is nothing anti-semitic in putting agreed evidence of Israeli war crimes to a jury. You can express your concern about this investigation by sending an email to the Office Judicial Complaints, marking your email ‘Bathurst Norman’. customer@ojc.gsi.gov.uk
A full transcript of the Judges summary of the evidence has been published by the Jewish Chronicle here.

“It’s a real victory for the anti-war movement, The jury were presented with the facts and they supported our motivations. If people in Britain knew the truth away from media manipulations they would all support our actions” – Ornella Sabeine, EDO Decommissioner.

After a nail-biting twenty-four hiatus, the jury came to decision on the Decommissioners Case – 100% Not Guilty! Six of the seven defendants Tom Woodhead, Bob Nicholls, Ornella Saibene, Harvey Tadman, Simon Levin and Chris Osmond came smiling out of Hove Trial Centre at the end of a gruelling three and half week trial. Elijah Smith was remanded in custody for another offence. Five were acquitted on Wednesday afternoon, the other two Chris and Elijah had to wait until this morning. They had waited eighteen months for this moment.

The jury decisions were all completely unanimous, an indication perhaps of the depth of feeling ignited by the evidence presented of war atrocities committed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

It was on the night of the 16th January 2009 that six activists broke into EDO MBM’s manufacturing facility on Home Farm Rd Brighton. For an hour they wreaked havoc with hammers. Filing cabinets and computers were hurled from top-floor window. Machinery was also sabotaged. One of the reasons that the six had so much time in the factory was ironically that Sussex police saw a bomb in the car-park and cordoned off the area for specialists to arrive. The ‘bomb’ was in fact a dummy, a prop for EDO to display at trade fairs, precision guided out of an upstairs window by the decommissioners.

The six had pre-recorded videos to be posted on Indymedia after the action You can watch these here. In his video Elijah Smith said “I don’t feel I’m going to do anything illegal tonight, but I’m going to go into an arms factory and smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually produce munitions and these very dirty bombs that have been provided to the Israeli army so that they can kill children. The time for talking has gone too far. I’m not a writer, I’m just a person from the community and I’m deeply disgusted”.

The jury requested to view those videos again before they made their historic decision …and they obviously liked what they saw.

In effect the trial was turned around: it was EDO MBM in the shape of managing director Paul Hills who found themselves in the dock. Laughably they had come to court intending to pass themselves off as a company primarily manufacturing in-flight entertainment equipment. He was presented with a dossier of evidence painstakingly built up over the years by campaigners, which pointed firmly at the company’s complicity in war crimes.

Paul Hills was due to be giving evidence again on Thursday after accusing a campaigner of intimidating him as a witness at the regular weekly noise demo. Funnily enough Hills wasn’t available at the time and the court heard that he was flying to the U.S. Perhaps we should spare a thought for Paul standing right now in front of ITTs board explaining how a bunch of goddam two-bit limey punks were able to smash his factory up with hammers and walk out of court smiling.

The answer is that Paul Hill’s evidence was more full of holes than his factory’s windows. Here’s just a few edited highlights of five days of his cross-examination.

Hills revealed that the company have owned the rights to the main bomb rack used on Israeli F-16s – the VER-2 – since 1998. He admitted removing website evidence of his company’s dealings with Israel as early as 2004, the date of the first protests. He admitted having interfered with the crime scene, retrieving debris and papers, before police photographers arrived. He claimed to have police permission but no police statement backed him up. There has been speculation that £189,000 is actually an underestimate of the damage caused and that more controversial evidence may have been spirited away. After being warned at one stage by the judge that he was at risk of perjuring himself if he contradicted evidence he’d produced in earlier court cases, crucially he ended by admitting that anyone looking at the evidence presented to him in court would form the reasonable belief that his company was involved in arms sales to Israel.

It was this that the defendants needed to convince the jury of – that there was an obvious link between this factory and the bombardment of Gaza.

A witness, Sharyn Lock, provided the background necessary for the jury to understand the full scope of the horror then unfolding in Gaza. Now a trainee midwife, in 2009 she was a human-rights volunteer in Al-Quds hospital, Gaza City. She was in the Gaza strip for the whole of Operation Cast Lead, and able to show footage of a missile strike on the hospital, just metres from the maternity ward. The jury also saw news reports of the white phosphorus attacks on the UNWRA compound, which incinerated much-needed food and medicine. Sharyn closed her evidence by saying she had no doubt that those who armed the Israeli Air Force ‘had the blood of children on their hands’.

After hearing of the verdict she told SchNEWS “Brilliant news. I am so proud not only of the eight UK civilians who risked their liberty to protect fellow civilians whom they may never meet – but also of the jury who recognised that it is everyone’s responsibility to uphold international law, even if that means decommissioning the weapons.”

By the time this went to print the news of the verdict was spreading. Right-wing nutjob and Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips was first in with her considered opinion on ‘the ignorance and bigotry of the judge’. The Israeli ambassador was crying foul saying that it was ‘not a great era of the British system’ (sic) – according to Israeli news source he was reportedly ‘furious’ at the judges ‘blatant anti-semitic stand’. Even David Icke put it up on his website.

On the more positive side, the decommissioners were congratulated by Noam Chomsky, who said “I would like to express my respect and admiration for those who are undertaking non-violent resistance to oppose British participation in Israel’s cruel crimes in Gaza”.

So what next for Smash EDO? Unable to extract any usable quotes from the after-verdict party at the Community Garden, SchNEWS spoke to an increasingly bleary eyed Andrew Beckett, press spokesman for the campaign: “When we first started banging pots and pans outside the factory back in 2004, we never believed we’d get anywhere like this. EDO must be reeling, their dirty laundry is now flapping out there for the whole world to see. We’re not to going to let up the pressure on this factory – watch this space”.

James has spent over 18 months on remand for preventing war crimes, he has endured more than most could even imagine and his commitment to peace and the end to the immoral trade in arms is impressive to say the least.

James said “Thanks to everyone for your support and especially those who wrote letters, responding to them helped me pass the time.”

Meanwhile, the campaign continues weapon components used in war crimes around the world are still being made in Brighton, and unless we push for the closure of EDO/ITT they will continue to be. Although the not guilty verdict is a victory, it is not THE victory. “We will be here until EDO isn’t” For upto date information on the campaign keep an eye on www.smashedo.org.uk

I remember first hearing the good news of the anti-war activists decomissioning the EDO arms factory in Brighton, England. It was the 3rd. week of the relentless Israeli blitzkrieg of Gaza in January 17th. ’09. More than 2,300 air-strikes were to devastate Gaza during this three week attack, as civilians had no where to flee or take shelter. The Israelis bombed 3,354 houses, 280 schools, Gaza’s only flour mill, the chicken farm that provided 10% of the eggs in the beseiged enclave, the sewage plant, wells that provided drinking water. The massacre promised to continue without serious opposition until the U.S. Presdiential inaugaration later that month. The Israeli government unleashed Operation Cast Lead shortly afer Christmas Day killing over 1400 Palestinians

It was a bleak and wet winter’s Saturday morning in Dublin. I had been couch surfing for 6 months and was presently ensconsed in a friend’s high rise, vault like apartment. My friend was making his living off online poker and had just turned in as I began to stir. I was lying in bed trying to convince myself of the dubious signifcance of going on yet another Paletinaian solidarity march that had become a regular Saturday morning fixture since the start of the Israeli military campaign. In over 30 years of activism I’ve come to dread the empty liturgies, rallies and marches of “the left”, the gulf between predictable protest and solidarity with resistance. How much these events are a sincere response to the sufferings of others and how much they are about well seasoned grouplets posturing, ambulance chasing and self promoting remains an open question?

I stumbled out of bed, grabbed a coffee, rearranged the ashtrays in front of the computer and flicked on the internet. Over on UK indymedia I discovered that while I had slept, good folks had moved from protest to nonviolent resistance and entered the EDO arms factory in Brighton.

Videos of pre-action statements had ben posted on on indymedia. These folks sounded like the real thing; The EDO factory, provider of bomb release mechanisms to Israeli F16′s being used extensively over Gaza, looked well and truly trashed. Machinery was disabled and computers, filing cabinets and office furnishings had been thrown out the windows.
One of the reasons that the six had so much time in the factory was that ironically Sussex police on arrival at the scene saw a bomb in the car-park and cordoned off the area waiting for specialists to arrive. The ‘bomb’ was in fact a dummy, a prop for EDO to display at trade fairs, precision guided out of an upstairs window by the decommissioners.

Bristol based activists – Elijah Smith, Tom Woodhead, Robert Nicholls, Robert Alford, Ornella Saibene and Harvey Tadman – who had entered EDO were now in custody. Three Brighton activists – Rosa Bellamy, Simon Levin and Chris Ormond – were lifted outside the factory were also banged up.

I recall Phil Berrigan telling me once that “Brothers and sisters in jail for peace and justice sake speak to our conscience, which is how God speaks to us!” Such speech demands a response of solidarity. I truly believe if 1% of the people who marched against the US/UK war on Iraq in ’03 had gone into nonviolent resistance in the spirit of King, Berrigan and the EDO 9 and the other 99% had remained in proactive solidarity – the governments and corporations would have had a tough time waging their wars. Likewise with the Israel’s ongoing war on Palestine. It shouldn’t be a case of these, or any, resisters feeling isolated in jail and other dissidents remaining at home feeling disengaged. There has to be a powerful mutual dynamic between resisters and the broader movement. We would be a better movement for it. So I drew up a placard of the EDO 9 and headed off into the wind and the rain to share the good news of this resistance with the Dublin protest rally.

In the lead up to the ’03 invasion of Iraq, some Brighton folks made the decision that marching around in circles against the oncoming war in downtown London was a waste of time and energy. They decided to focus on where the rubber hits the road in terms of the war machine in their community. So by the time of the ’09 Gaza massacre they had waged a 7 year campaign against the EDO arms factory based in Brighton. The Schnews DVD documentary “On The Verge” covers this local; grassroots campaign very well.

Meanwhile in Bristol, in the lead up to the ’09 bombing of Gaza activsts had focused on their own locally based Raytheon and British Aerospace arms factories. As the relentless bombing continued through the first half of January ’09 a group of them began to coalesce to directly intervene. They chose EDO in Brighton as it was producing components essential to the Israeli F16′s being employed extensively by the Israeli military. These Bristol activists met up quite rapidly, shared a resolve and clambered into a slow moving van and set off for Brighton. They arrived in the early hours of Friday morning knocked on the door of some Brighton anti-EDO activists. Within 24 hours they were all in custody following the disarmament of EDO.

One of their number – Elijah Smith – has been denied bail since the action. In March ’09 I travelled to Bristol to meet the defendants during a demonstration outside the Bristol jail where Elijah was then being held. The defendants had been released under strict bail conditions banning any communication between them. They took great care not to make any eye contact with each other outside the prison. These conditions remained in force in the entire 18 month lead up to their trial. It was great to idividually meet these folks and as I returned to Australia for a year I kept them in thought & prayer, spread the word of their action, circulated the “On the Verge” DVD and wrote to the imprisoned Elijah Smith sporadically. Many people underestimate the significance of small acts of solidarity open to them to those in jeaopardy. As Judy Small sang, “Because we think we can do little, we do nothing at all!”.

In contrast to that dreary Dublin day I first heard of the EDO 9, it was a bright sun shiny day when I arrived in Brighton in June 2010 for the trial. Dispatched by my London Catholic Worker community, I was delivered by National; Express to the Brighton pier. As I walked along the shoreline past all the holiday time amusements it was hard to connect this scene to the seaside town of Gaza where bombs had been delivered by components constructed in Brighton. I walked past where the mods & rockers had it out in the ’60′s portrayed in the movie “Quadraphenia”, past the Grand Hotel rebuilt after the IRA assasination attempt on Maggie Thatcher in the ’80′s as payback for Bobby Sands and the deaths of the hunger strikers. I swung right up the hill to the Hove court. On the steps of the courts I met the support which consisted mostly of friends of the defendants. There was little evidence of the mainstream anti-war organisations mobilising around this trial. It continues to mystify me how such organisations abandon nonviolent anti-war resisters before the courts and in jail?

The Prosecution case had closed the previous week and one of the Brighton defendants, Rosa Bellamy, had been released with no case to answer. In effect, the trial had been turned around in the cross examination of the prosecution’s star witness EDO managing director Paul Hills who found himself spending four days in the dock. He had come to court intending to pass EDO off as a company primarily manufacturing in-flight entertainment equipment. He was presented with a dossier of evidence painstakingly built up over the years by campaigners, which pointed firmly at the company’s complicity in war crimes.

Under cross examination, Hills revealed that the company have owned the rights to the main bomb rack used on Israeli F-16s – the VER-2 – since 1998. He admitted removing website evidence of his company’s dealings with Israel as early as 2004, the date of the first protests. He admitted having interfered with the crime scene, retrieving debris and papers, before police photographers arrived. He claimed to have police permission but no police statement backed him up. There has been speculation that £189,000 is actually an underestimate of the damage caused and that more controversial evidence may have been spirited away. After being warned at one stage by the judge that he was at risk of perjuring himself if he contradicted evidence he’d produced in earlier court cases, crucially he ended by admitting that anyone looking at the evidence presented to him in court would form the reasonable belief that his company was involved in arms sales to Israel. It was this that the defendants needed to convince the jury of – that there was an obvious link between this factory and the bombardment of Gaza.

A witness, Sharyn Lock, provided the background necessary for the jury to understand the full scope of the horror then unfolding in Gaza. Now a trainee midwife, in 2009 she was a human-rights volunteer in Al-Quds hospital, Gaza City. She was in the Gaza strip for the whole of Operation Cast Lead, and able to show footage of a missile strike on the hospital, just metres from the maternity ward. The jury also saw news reports of the white phosphorus attacks on the UNWRA compound, which incinerated much-needed food and medicine. Sharyn closed her evidence by saying she had no doubt that those who armed the Israeli Air Force ‘had the blood of children on their hands’.

By the time I had arrived two of the Bristol defendants, community worker Ornella Saibene and Buddhist homeless worker Bob Nicholls had also given evidence. I heard a Buddhist monk give character reference for Bob in regards to his community and aid work in Bristol and India. We then heard Tom’s evidence in relation to the development of his conscience through his Catholic upbringing, attending peace & justice protests with his parents and how it had spurred him to act in the face of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) assault on Gaza.

Brighton defendant Chris Ormond took the stand. He shared his personal experience in Palestine. The jury heard of his mistreatment at tha hands of the IDF and his observations of others who had been wounded and killed for speaking out. He told of his involvement in the 7 year campagn in Brighton against EDO. We heard of his surprise when the Bristol crew landed on his doorstep, his distress at the ongoing massacre in Gaza and his support for the action they planned to take at EDO. He spoke of the stress and fears experienced by all the defendants over the preceeding 18 months as they faced the courts amd the threat of prison. He spoke of how they felt compelled to act in the face of these fears, in the knowledge what they were doing was legal and in solidarity with those suffering in Gaza.

After I returned to London, Caroline Lucas, the Green Party Member of Parliament for Brighton, testified to how all democratic processes had been exhauisted in January ’09 in relation to staying the deadly hand of the Israeli military over the people of Gaza. Th MP testified that nonviolent direct action was the only response left open by Jaunuary 17th. ’09.

I arrived back in Brighton for the last week of the trial. It’s amazing how quickly you bond with people at such court cases – the defendants and support. A commnunity brought together by shared jeopardy and solidarity. The defense had won the legal arguments around war crimes, lawful excuse and necessity defences. The eight closing arguments were eloquently delivered by the defense Queens Counsellors and barristers.

On the Wednesday afternoon the jury returned unanimous acquittals on five of the defendants. The imprisoned Elijah Smith and Chris Ormond were left hanging until court resumed Friday morning when the Judge directed the jury to find the remaining defendants not guilty.

Celebrations continue at time of writing. Yesterday Elijah Smith was freed from Lewes Prison after 18 months in custody. Before the trial, Israeli commandos murdered 9 international peace activists nonviolently bringing supplies to break the siege of Gaza. The “acts of mercy” – feeding the hungry, bringing building supplies to the homeless and medical supplies to the sick has now been made a capitol offence by the Israeli state. Israel continues to maintain the only gulag in the Western Hemisphere, the open air prison that is the Gaza Strip containing 1.5 million inmates. Companies like EDO continue to make a killing. The victims demand our resistance. Our resisters deserve our solidarity.