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27 Arrested for Defying UK Ban on Nonviolent Pro-Palestine Group
Members of the group Defend Our Juries informed Metropolitan Police of their plan prior to the demonstration.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide that is occurring... democracy and human rights in this country are dead."
"We would like to alert you to the fact we may be committing offenses under the Terrorism Act tomorrow, Saturday 5 July, in Parliament Square at about 1pm," the group said in an open letter to Met Commissioner Mark Rowley.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide that is occurring, if we cannot condemn those who are complicit in it and express support for those who resist it, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning, and democracy and human rights in this country are dead," the letter argues.
Parfitt told Novara Media that members of Defend Our Juries were "testing the law."
"I know that we are in the right place doing the right thing," she said. "...We cannot be bystanders."
"We are losing our civil liberties, we must stop that for everybody's sake," Parfitt said in a separate interview with The Guardian.
Prior to his arrest, Defend Our Juries member Tim Crosland, the former government lawyer, told The Guardian that "what we're doing here as a group of priests, teachers, health workers, human rights lawyers [is] we're refusing to be silenced."
"Because it goes to the core of what we believe in: that we oppose genocide—I didn't think that was that controversial—and we support the people who resist genocide," he added. "In theory we are now terrorist supporters and can go to prison for 14 years, which is kind of crazy. I think what we are here to do is just expose the craziness of that."
Crosland said as he was being arrested, "This is what happens in modern day Britain for opposing genocide, it's quite something isn't it?"
A bystander told Novara Media: "I just feel disgusted by this government. I voted for them and they're now arresting people who are calling for a genocide to end. And this is a Labour government, they're meant to have left-wing roots."
Members of the group Defend Our Juries publicly declare their opposition to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and their support for the proscribed group Palestine Action while Metropolitan Police officers look on before arresting them during a July 4, 2025 demonstration in London. (Photo: Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images)
In a statement, Defend Our Juries sarcastically said that "we commend the counter-terrorism police for their decisive action in protecting the people of London from some cardboard signs opposing the genocide in Gaza and expressing support for those taking action to prevent it."
"It's a relief to know that counter-terrorism police have nothing better to do," the group quipped.
Last week, British lawmakers voted to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group after some of its members vandalized two aircraft at a Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire on June 20. The group—which was founded in 2020 and has also vandalized U.S. President Donald Trump's golf course in Turnberry, Scotland—is known for taking direction action against companies that supply weapons to Israel, which is accused of genocide in an ongoing International Court of Justice case concerning the war on Gaza.
On June 23, U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to proscribe the group under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, introduced under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and widely criticized for its overbroad definition of terrorism. The House of Commons voted 385-26 Wednesday in favor of banning Palestine Action and the House of Lords approved the designation Thursday without a vote.
Palestine Action tried to delay the ban via legal action. However, the High Court on Friday denied the group's appeal for interim relief was denied on Friday, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
The nonviolent group is now on the same legal footing in Britain as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Joining or supporting Palestine Action is now punishable by up to 14 years behind bars.
Earlier this month, a group of United Nations experts urged the U.K. government to not ban Palestine Action.
"We are concerned at the unjustified labeling of a political protest movement as 'terrorist,'" the experts wrote. "According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism."
The U.N. experts warned that under the ban, "individuals could be prosecuted for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and opinion, assembly, association, and participation in political life."
"This would have a chilling effect on political protest and advocacy generally in relation to defending human rights in Palestine," they added.
Hundreds of jurists, artists and entertainers, and others have also decried the ban on Palestine Action.
"Palestine Action is intervening to stop a genocide. It is acting to save life. We deplore the government's decision to proscribe it," Artists for Palestine U.K.—whose members include Tilda Swinton, Paul Weller, Steve Coogan, and others—wrote in a statement last month.
"Labeling non-violent direct action as 'terrorism' is an abuse of language and an attack on democracy," the artists added. "The real threat to the life of the nation comes not from Palestine Action but from the home secretary's efforts to ban it. We call on the government to withdraw its proscription of Palestine Action and to stop arming Israel."
Thousands March to US Embassy in London With Message for Trump: 'Hands Off Gaza'
"Think of it as a big real estate site, and the United States is going to own it and we'll slowly—very slowly, we're in no rush—develop it," Trump told reporters last weekend.
Marchers carried signs Sunday expressing contempt for the president's proposal, which Amnesty International denounced as "inflammatory, outrageous, and shameful."
Protesters march to the U.S. Embassy in London on February 15, 2025. (Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, told AFP on Saturday that Trump's proposal is "completely immoral and illegal, and also impractical and absurd."
"It's not going to happen," Kapos added, "but it does a lot of damage simply stating that as an endgame."
The mass demonstration in London, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other organizations, followed news that Hamas freed three additional Israeli hostages on Saturday in exchange for the release of more than 360 Palestinians who were held in Israeli prisons.
The exchange was part of a tenuous cease-fire deal reached in January after 15 months of incessant U.S.-backed Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
The assault's impact on Palestinians in Gaza was, and continues to be, catastrophic. According to an article published in The Lancet earlier this month, Israel's war on the Gaza Strip "generated a life expectancy loss of more than 30 years during the first 12 months of the war, nearly halving prewar levels."
"Actual losses are likely to be higher," the researchers noted, stressing that their estimate was conservative and "did not account for the indirect effect of the war."
Over 125,000 March in London Against Israel's Gaza Genocide
"It's vital we continue to take to the streets in huge numbers to demand an end to British complicity in Israel'a genocide and apartheid, including through an end to all arms trade with Israel," said the Palestine Solidarity campaign ahead of the march.
Stop the War coalition rebuked BBC's reporting for downplaying the size of the march, saying: "For the record, it was at least 125,000!" Various news outlets put the size of the march in the tens of thousands.
In his remarks to the demonstrators, actor and human rights activist Khalid Abdalla heralded those who attended.
"All of you here are beacons of hope in this darkness," said Abdalla. "Here you stand embodied, with the fullness of your voice, in a world that demands we are always in motion, numb to the reality that enters our lives through our phones, and the images that come to us day after day of this genocide in Gaza."
Marchers carried banners and chanted in unison as they made their way through central London, passing by counter-protesters near Piccadilly Circus and then making stops at 10 Downing Street, home of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, before concluding their demonstration in Parliament Square.
"The demonstrators voiced an uncompromising call to the UK government to end its support for Israel’s brutal occupation and its violations of international law," reported the Middle East Monitor. "Protestors demanded that the U.K. cut all diplomatic, military, and economic ties with Israel and impose an arms embargo. The march was a call for the U.K. to uphold its moral and legal obligations, including complying with the ICC arrest warrants and ensuring that Israeli war criminals face justice."
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 30: The march approaches Piccadilly from Hyde Park during a national demonstration for Palestine in Central London on November 30 on November 30, 2024 in London, England. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has once again convened a national demonstration for Palestine, asking the UK government to stop arming Israel. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Image)
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the rally and assailed Starmer's current government for complicity in the Israel military campaign that claimed the lives of over 45,000 Palestinians, mostly civilian men, women, and children.
"I say to our government: if you knowingly supply weapons to a government led by someone wanted for war crimes, the long arm of international law will extend to you too," Corbyn declared.
In a plea to the world from Gaza on Saturday, poet and writer Nour Elassy said she and her family are currently starving as she expressed disbelief over the international community's failure to put a stop to Israeli atrocities.
"It is difficult for me to explain and capture the feeling of hunger for someone who does not understand the depths of its pain, and it is even more challenging to explain this experience while being under constant bombardment and shelling from Israel for more than 400 days now," Elassy wrote in a column for Al-Jazeera.
With her nieces and nephews, all under age six, also crying out in hunger, Elassy says this makes everything more difficult. "Hunger has affected everyone I see," she reports. "People are visibly thinner, they walk around with an empty look in their eyes, dark circles underneath. The streets are filled with children and elderly people begging for food. I see misery and hunger everywhere I turn."
"While Israel may hope that we starve in silence, we will not," she concluded. "The world can and must stop the starvation of Gaza."
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