Over two dozen arrested as UK Supreme Court hears Palestine Action case

More than two dozen supporters of the anti-Israel activist group Palestine Action were arrested outside the United Kingdom's Supreme Court on Wednesday as judges considered a legal challenge to the government's decision to designate the organization as a terrorist group, The Associated Press reported. The hearing marked another stage in the legal battle over the ban, which has resulted in the arrests of more than 3,000 Palestine Action supporters over the past year.

The British government outlawed the organization following a June 2025 incident in which its activists broke into a Royal Air Force base to protest British military assistance to Israel during the war in Gaza. The incident followed several other acts of vandalism attributed to the group. Under the designation, Palestine Action is classified alongside terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas. Membership in or support for the organization can carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

Supporters of Palestine Action and civil liberties organizations have argued that arresting peaceful demonstrators under the ban violates freedom of expression and the right to protest. A lower court initially ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in proscribing the group, but five Court of Appeal judges overturned that decision in June. During Wednesday's hearing, a lawyer representing Palestine Action argued that only three of the organization's 385 actions over five years met the legal definition of terrorism, and that those cases qualified solely because they involved damage to property.

Meanwhile, demonstrators gathered outside the court to protest what they described as inconsistent enforcement of the law. Their signs referenced Sarah Helm, the wife of British national security adviser Jonathan Powell, who had publicly expressed support for Palestine Action without facing prosecution. Last month, British booksellers were prohibited from selling works by Irish novelist Sally Rooney because of her financial support for the organization.

Several authors subsequently defended Rooney, including Helm, who wrote on social media, “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action." London's Metropolitan Police reviewed Helm's post but determined that it did not constitute a criminal offense. Protesters on Wednesday displayed signs using similar language, substituting “authors" with descriptions including “normal people," “students" and “sons of Holocaust survivors."

Palestine Action was established in 2020, when activists vandalized the London headquarters of Israeli defense manufacturer Elbit Systems UK with red paint. The organization describes itself as a “direct action" network campaigning against what it calls British “complicity" with Israel, particularly through weapons sales. Its previous activities have included defacing a portrait of Lord Balfour at Trinity College, Cambridge, with paint and cuts, as well as removing two busts of Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, from a display cabinet at Manchester University.