Britain is right to pursue closer military ties to Israel

There’s a group called Palestine Action whose raison d’être is to throw red paint over the British offices of Elbit, an Israeli high-tech arms company, in an orchestrated attempt to hound it out of the country.

Five members of the ‘direct-action network’, which has links to Extinction Rebellion, armed themselves with paint pots and climbed onto the roof of the Elbit offices in Staffordshire in September.

Activists also targeted sites in London, where they not only hurled paint over buildings, but also over several Jewish people, who had gathered to stage a peaceful counter-demonstration.

Quite why the protesters choose to target an Israeli arms manufacturer rather than, say, a British company like BAE – which sold Saudi forces fighter jets as they bombed Red Cross and MSF hospitals in Yemen – is a question where the obvious answer is probably the correct one.

Whatever the group’s intentions, the police, who reportedly sustained injuries during the Palestine Action protests, are taking these incidents seriously.