PALESTINE Action protesters strapped in and smashed two cars into concrete bollards, blocking the only entry to an Israeli drone factory in Leicester today morning.
The activists used D-locks to attach themselves to the steering wheels and forced workers arriving at the Elbit factory, UAV Tactical Systems (U-TacS), to return home, said the group.
Online footage shows dozens of activists then coming to reinforce the blockade, chanting “murderer” to the employees as they left the scene. Defence-sector union Unite has condemned personal abuse of arms industry workers of this kind.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said: “The apparatus of the Israeli military has been embedded into our communities without our permission.
“Despite legal and moral obligations, our political lassitude continues to make us complicit in the Gaza genocide.
“So we’re left with no option but to take direct action and shut Elbit down. Day after day, we will disrupt the Israeli war machine in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
U-TacS is majority owned by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, and partly owned by French arms company Thales. It exports military drone equipment to Israel, the group says.
Elbit’s flagship drone is the Watchkeeper, modelled on its Hermes 450, which has regularly been used during previous bombardments and the ongoing genocide in Gaza and was earlier this month used to kill seven aid workers, three of which were British, it added.
Israel’s military has called the deadly drone strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy a mistake, saying it is conducting an investigation.
But today a Unicef spokeswoman told of how the vehicle she was in came under fire during an attempted aid delivery to northern Gaza.
Tess Ingram told Al Jazeera: “This is just another example of how unsafe it is for humanitarian aid workers and how missions like this are made impossible.
“Safety is not guaranteed even when we take all of the required steps, as we saw with the tragic World Central Kitchen incidents — this is just another example of an incident like that.”
A spokesman for Leicestershire Police said officers were called after a report of two vehicles colliding with concrete bollards at the meridian Business Park at 6.20am.
Two men aged 33 and 32 were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and “offences related to locking on.”
The force added: “A number of protesters later arrived in the area but have since dispersed.”
