On Saturday, 54-year-old Zoe Cohen sat in London’s Parliament Square holding a cardboard sign that read, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”, and waited patiently in the heat to be arrested under the UK’s Terrorism Act.
Police were working their way through some 1,000 people gathered there, displaying the same sign. When her turn came, she didn’t budge.
“Something just told me that I just wanted to lie there and be non-compliant,” she said.
When a young police officer crouched down and informed her she was under arrest under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, she asked him simply, “Genocide is a crime isn’t it?”
By that point, Cohen felt she had tried everything available to her to pressure the British government to do more to stop Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, which has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
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She dutifully took part in national pro-Palestine demonstrations, marching alongside fellow Jews as part of the Jewish bloc, wrote endless social media posts and repeatedly wrote to her MP, with no results.
She said Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s move to ban direct action group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act was the “utter last straw”.
“I struggle for words because I’m so exasperated and I’m so distressed about what’s happening, you know, how can you not be?” she told MEE.
‘It feels like there’s nothing we can do, but we just have to use our body and our voice’
– Zoe Cohen, protester
“It feels like there’s nothing we can do, but we just have to use our body and our voice,” she said. “We have to stand up and be counted, or, in our case, sit down”.
“Another reason I did this is because of the government and media conflation of Zionism with Judaism, and of Israel and all Jews, and my horror and disgust at the implication that this genocide is being committed in my name,” Cohen said.
“Israel’s actions make Jews less safe. There are many Jews who do not support Zionism or the actions of the Israeli state, but our voices are often silenced.”
Criminals over the age of 60
The UK government proscribed direct action group Palestine Action under anti-terror laws on 4 July, following an incident in which members broke into RAF Brize Norton and attacked with paint and crowbars two planes they said were “used for military operations in Gaza and across the Middle East”.
The designation puts Palestine Action on a par with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State under British law, making it a criminal offence to show support for or invite support for the group, punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Cohen was arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, along with over 500 people, half of them aged 60 and above, at the largest protest yet denouncing the ban.
Defend Our Juries (DOJ), the campaign group that called the protest, said it was the largest mass arrest in the history of London’s Metropolitan Police, outstripping the number of arrests during the Poll Tax riots of 1990.
According to police figures, nearly 100 of those arrested at the Palestine Action sit-in were in their 70s, while 15 of them were over 80 years of age.
The majority were detained under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, the less severe part of the legislation, which involves trial in a magistrates court rather than a crown court.
To deal with the volume of arrestees, the police implemented a “street bail system”, setting up “prisoner processing points” housed in pop-up gazebos on the streets of central London.
All those arrested have been released under police bail, with the main condition being that they do not attend future protests challenging the ban.
‘It felt dystopian’
When she refused to comply with the police, Cohen said she was carried by several officers from the protest in Parliament Square.
“As they picked me up, all the emotion of the day, and not just the day, but the collective grief and the distress of what’s happening in Gaza, it just came out of me. I was sobbing,” she said.
Cohen was then put into a “metal cage” at the back of a police van and driven round the corner to a processing site near Great Scotland Yard, where she found herself in a queue of some 150 people accompanied by their arresting officers.
‘I’ve got a young child, and I do look at her and think if I were to be taken away from her because of this, that would rip me in two’
– Hayley Walsh, protester
“My arresting officer was very young, he was very new to the job,” Cohen said. “Quite a lot of them were quite young and junior. I don’t think they knew what was going on, not sure they really understood the law.”
She said they waited for a while and were then “marched down the street on foot” back to another processing centre near Parliament Square.
“I’ve never seen anything like this processing centre, there were generators because they had rows of laptops for entering our details. So like a virtual custody desk on the street. It felt dystopian,” Cohen said.
“We were mainly middle-aged and older people, politely queuing.”
According to Cohen, other protestors reported that some participants were mistakenly arrested under Section 12, and then re-arrested under Section 13.
“There was quite a bit of chaos, but they had clearly organised this”, she said.
She recalled that arrestees were informed that if they did not give their details at the custody desk, they would be taken to a police station in Devon or South Wales.
Rachel Stubley, a 63-year-old who was also arrested, recalled seeing a “massive pile of pre-printed forms” at the processing centre.
“The form I was given, it was quite extraordinary, it said ‘you have been arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act’,” she told MEE.
“So they clearly planned to arrest everyone. There’s no way they could take everyone to the station. So they tried to get everyone processed on the street.”
Hayley Walsh, 43, described the experience as “unfathomably surreal”.
“It’s terrifying, and hearing the words said to you, ‘I’m arresting you under the Terrorism Act’, is frightening, and the consequences are frightening”, Walsh told MEE.
“I’ve got a young child, and I do look at her and think if I were to be taken away from her because of this, that would rip me in two”.
“But I don’t want this world for my children,” she said. ” I look at my five-year-old’s face and I don’t think I cannot take risks for myself if it means there’s a potential for a better world for my children and for all children”.
Stubley said she was moved to take part in Saturday’s protest after a conversation with a younger activist.
“They said to me: you’re white and middle class and older, maybe it’s time for you to step up,” she told MEE.
“I went away and thought about what would be my reason for not doing this. I could pay a fine without it beggaring me. Worst-case scenario, I could go to jail because I haven’t got any dependents, and my mum died last year”.
During the call with MEE, Stubley broke down in tears when trying to explain her reasons for risking arrest.
“A line was crossed for me, when instead of trying to address our feelings of grief that many, many people in the UK feel, the government decided to proscribe Palestine Action”, Stubley said.
‘Having to do this is making my piss boil’
A DOJ spokesperson reported that a number of police officers told arrestees that “the pressure to conduct arrests was coming from on high,” with one officer reportedly telling demonstrators waiting to be processed that “having to do this is making my piss boil”.
In a press statement, the Metropolitan Police said that some protesters resumed the protest after arrest, adding that it was “entirely unrealistic” to prevent them from doing so given the scale of arrests.
If convicted, those arrested under Section 13 could face a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment or a fine of up to £5000.
An arrest under Section 12 could carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
In an interview with the BBC on Monday, Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said participants in the protests would “feel the full force of the law”.
But the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing a senior government official, that ministers anticipate that the “vast majority” of Saturday’s arrestees are likely to receive fines, community sentences or conditional discharges.
This is due to an already strained prison system currently hovering at 97.5 percent capacity, according to a recent review.
Meanwhile, DOJ says interest in the movement to lift the ban is burgeoning, reporting that “hundreds” have already signed up to participate in the next action in early September, which they expect to be “even bigger” than Saturday’s.
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The group said the date will be announced on Wednesday.
“People are now seeing an arrest for terrorism as a badge of honour for resistance to genocide,” Tim Crosland, a former British government lawyer and the co-founder of DOJ, said in a statement.
The group reported on Tuesday that a Telegram channel used by the group for sharing information on peaceful protests and legal advice was taken down without prior warning. “No communication has been received from Telegram as to the reason for the disappearance of the group chat,” it said.
Last Wednesday, DOJ’s site was removed, and on Thursday an open Zoom call organised by DOJ for members of the public wanting to participate in Saturday’s protest was shut down minutes before it was due to start, following a police order.
The government’s banning of Palestine Action comes under increasing public scrutiny.
On Saturday, Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, described the mass arrests as “deeply concerning”, and wrote to Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, ahead of the protest, warning that the arrests “fly in the face of international human rights law”.
On Wednesday, former cabinet minister Peter Hain warned that the ban would “end in tears for the government”, adding that his fellow Labour peers and MPs were regretting voting for the group’s proscription.
On 30 July, a High Court judge ruled in favour of Palestine Action and granted the direct action group a judicial review to oppose the ban on the group.
Hain said that if the legal challenge were successful, “would be a mercy to all concerned, including the government”.
Last month, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said that the ban was “disproportionate and unnecessary” and called for the designation to be rescinded.
He said: “UK domestic counter-terrorism legislation defines terrorist acts broadly to include ‘serious damage to property’.
“But, according to international standards, terrorist acts should be confined to criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury or to the taking of hostages, for purpose of intimidating a population or to compel a government to take a certain action or not”.
In a statement on Monday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson said that Palestine Action is a “violent organisation” that has committed “significant injury”.
“We’ve said that many people may not yet know the reality of this organisation, but the assessments are very clear: this is a violent organisation that has committed violence, significant injury, extensive criminal damage and, as I say, it has met the tests as set out under the Terrorism Act to be proscribed”.
Responding to the statement, the group’s co-founder Huda Ammori hit back saying that these claims were “false and defamatory”.
The protestors who spoke to MEE do not regret their actions. Stubley described the swell of support from the crowd as she was led to the police van where she was sat next to two younger women.
“They were very brave but seemed quite anxious,” she said. “We held hands. I didn’t know who they were, but it felt really good”.
“It was quite moving, because as the van drove off, and we were looking out the window, and everybody was waving flags and saying, ‘We love you’. It was a real moment of solidarity,” Stubley added.
“And that gives you strength. It makes you think, ‘No – we do have to do this,’ and people are strong. And actually, you don’t always have to follow the law. Sometimes its the right thing to do to cross a line”.
