Palestine Action UK: GJP supports demands for hunger strikers’ freedom

For Immediate release re: Palestine Action UK
GJP supports demands for the hunger strikers’ freedom

Eight prisoners associated with Palestine Action have been on hunger strike, in protest against their repressive and inhumane conditions in British prisons. Several have been hospitalised; their health is deteriorating quickly, so they need urgent intervention. To hear their message, see this video.   

Here are the prisoners’ six demands: end all censorship of communications; release them on bail immediately; ensure their right to a fair trial; drop the terror link and all terrorism charges against them; shut Elbit Systems down.

The demands have more details on this page. They are the basis for sending a standard letter, available on this page, to six UK agencies. We ask you to do so urgently. For the prisoners’ history, see the Mondoweiss article, 11 December.

Along with 24 other prisoners, those eight face trial for allegedly taking action to prevent arms manufacturers from shipping weapons to Israel.  These were especially direct actions against Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer which has been central to the Israeli military-industrial complex.  It has supplied weaponry, surveillance, and targeting systems to inflict Israel’s colonization of Palestine and its repeated assaults on Gaza. Elbit’s drones patrol besieged skies, its systems guide lethal strikes, and its electronic warfare suppresses dissent.

The prisoners are being held on remand, i.e. without having been convicted of any crime, some for more than a year.  Their communications with family and friends have been censored. And their right to a fair trial is being restricted; some documents relevant to their defence have been withheld from their or their lawyers’ view. These conditions violate the prisoners’ basic human rights.

Why are they subjected to such cruel, inhumane conditions?  Since Israel’s genocide began in October 2023, mass opposition has contested the UK’s collusion.  In response, the state further demonized the domestic resistance and inflicted more severe repression. It has made hundreds of arrests on false pretences, aimed at imposing bail conditions and deterring protest.  

In June 2025 the government banned Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, so that overt support became a terrorist offence; see the statement by our affiliate JVL. This ban triggered mass defiance.  More than 2400 people have openly declared their support, resulting in hundreds of arrests (see article), including members of  GJP affiliates (JVL and JNP). 

Despite the state’s repression, Palestine Action has become  the solidarity movement’s most effective, well-known resistance against the UK’s military complicity with Israel’s genocide.  It has inspired popular support, other solidarity activities and defiance of UK repression.  So the state seeks to punish Palestine Action’s prisoners even before a trial and to make this more difficult for them. 

The prisoners’ response has analogies with the 1981 hunger strike by Irish Republican prisoners in H-Block at Long Kesh in Northern Ireland.  Shortly beforehand, the UK government had changed their status from political (prisoners-of-war) to ordinary criminals, seeking to delegitimize their struggle and demoralize them. In response, the prisoners demanded restoration of their political status and began a hunger strike.  To highlight this analogy, on 5^th December a London public meeting was addressed by several veterans of the 1981 Smash H-Block Campaign, including Bernadette McAliskey. Echoing their defiance, today’s hunger strikers have said, “Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal,”

GJP urges supporters worldwide to send the letters on the page.

Read this statement on our website

GLOBAL JEWS FOR PALESTINE

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We are Jews from many countries, who are members of local, national and international networks and organizations. We are multi-ethnic and multigenerational and our members embrace a broad range of viewpoints on Jewish religious and ethical traditions. We are connected by our involvement in the struggle for Palestinian rights, and by our determination to work for justice. We oppose Zionism and all forms of racism and colonialism.

We believe that it is our particular responsibility to challenge Jewish organizations whose alliances and actions undermine Palestinian human and national rights, promote Jewish exceptionalism, and overturn Jewish social justice traditions. At the heart of our work is the fight for Palestinian liberation and the struggle for a world free of racial and ethnic hierarchy, colonial domination, and unbridled militarism.