They told us it was about security. They lied. The proscription of Palestine Action was not a sober counter‑terrorism decision; it was the outcome of a deliberate, well‑resourced campaign by Israeli‑aligned lobby networks, defence contractors and high‑profile advocates that bent UK policy to punish critics of Israel.
At the centre of that campaign stood Catherine Perez‑Shakdam and the lobby group We Believe In Israel, working with industry allies to amplify alarm, press ministers and shape media coverage. Reporting and campaigners document repeated, targeted approaches to officials, the circulation of sensitive material and a coordinated media strategy designed to recast civil disobedience as an existential threat to defence infrastructure. Those moves steered Whitehall toward proscription as a political instrument rather than a proportionate security response.
This was not ordinary lobbying; it was political engineering. When advocacy groups feed ministers privileged or classified material to secure a legal outcome, they are not persuading policy so much as manufacturing it. The result here was the state’s most draconian tool being used to silence a movement that opposed a foreign government’s actions.
Judges have exposed the government’s case as spin, not substance, laying bare how legally thin it was and how it failed to meet the high threshold required for proscription. Property damage and disruptive occupations do not, on their face, meet the definition of terrorism. Yet the proscription went ahead because the story had been sold hard and loud by those with influence.
Leaked cables, internal Home Office memos, ministerial correspondence and full disclosure in litigation are the only things that will move these allegations from documented pattern to proven conspiracy. The public has a right to see the receipts: how ministers were persuaded, what material was shared, and whether a foreign‑aligned network effectively steered domestic counter‑terrorism policy to punish dissent.
The human cost is already visible: activists criminalised, families traumatised, and a precedent set that chills dissent. If a foreign‑aligned lobby can push another country to criminalise peaceful protest, democracy is dead.
