Jewish groups dispute claims Palestine Action targets ‘Jewish-owned businesses’

Jewish activists have challenged claims featured in a documentary that the British protest group Palestine Action targeted "Jewish-owned businesses", saying that these organisations were selected due to their complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

In an episode aired this week, Channel 4's Dispatches interrogated the government’s justifications for the proscription of Palestine Action - including alleged links with Iran - questioning whether these claims were used to obscure the fact that the actual basis for the ban was criminal damage.

Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation and a member of its proscription review group, told Dispatches journalist Matt Shea that the press briefings about Palestine Action’s alleged ties to Iran were “wrong”.

Among the other allegations levelled at Palestine Action by the government are claims that the group target Jewish-owned businesses.

This claim was repeated in the documentary by Gideon Falter, chief executive of the controversial pro-Israel group Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).

He told Dispatches that Palestine Action had “created a climate of fear” in the Jewish community following a string of alleged actions which he said targeted “Jewish-owned businesses”.

“This has been years now of people turning up at their places of work, usually places of work, finding that everything’s covered in red paint. Computers have all been smashed, these are thuggish, violent attacks,” he said.

He cited the targeting of Hillsdown house in north London in November 2024, in which Palestine Action activists splattered the office block with red paint. At the time, these were the registered offices of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom).  

Bicom, which was set up after the Second Intifada in 2001, describes itself as aiming “to increase understanding of Israel in the UK”.

The organisation has attempted to shape perceptions of Israel by providing journalists with access to senior Israeli officials and even flying journalists to the country. 

"It is very hard to see what links there are that would justify this kind of thuggery,” Falter told Shea.

“There is a common thread though that connects those seemingly unrelated attacks, and that tends to be that they are Jewish-owned businesses,” Falter added.

“The fear that they cause in the Jewish community may not be their primary objective, but it's incidental to what they do."

In response, Shea questioned "if there is a risk of conflating criticism of Israel with an attack on the Jewish population more generally".

Palestine Action refutes claims

Later in the film, Huda Ammori, Palestine Action’s co-founder, said in response to the allegations that the group has targeted companies "regardless of the identities of the owners, it was never about that, it was about the connection to the Israeli weapons industry". She added that the allegations were "weaponising antisemitism" and "obfuscating the facts".

Ammori told MEE that the offices were targeted on 2 November 2024 as part of a series of actions by the group to mark the 107th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which announced Britain's support for a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. 

'I was shocked that he even suggested that this group of young people, who are trying to hold to account the arms trade, were in any way a threat to Jewish people'

-Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Jewish Voice for Liberation

Campaigners from Palestine Action said they targeted the offices to highlight British complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza. They also spray-painted the London headquarters of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organisation involved in the displacement of Palestinians.

Activists also seized a bust of Chaim Weizmann - Israel’s first president - who was considered central to securing the Balfour Declaration - from the University of Manchester.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, spokesperson for anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Liberation, told MEE that she “really objected” to “Jews as a collective being represented by Falter” in the documentary.

She noted that CAA was “set up in 2014 with the sole explicit purpose of advocating for Israel” and in so doing, “has actually stoked antisemitism in a completely irresponsible way”.

“I was shocked that he even suggested that this group of mainly young people, who are trying to hold to account the arms trade, were in any way a threat to Jewish people. I found that absolutely gobsmacking,” Wimborne-Idrissi told MEE.

In December 2025, a district judge said that CAA had sought to use the criminal justice system for “improper reasons” in a court summons issued by the group against the comedian Reginald D Hunter. 

Another British Jewish group, Na'amod, said that Falter’s suggestion that Bicom is “merely a Jewish business… deliberately obfuscates their complicity in an ongoing genocide in Gaza and the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank”.

“Any business or NGO that is complicit in genocide or forced displacement is a legitimate target for protest and many groups have targeted a range of businesses or NGOs for this reason. We have voiced our own opposition to the JNF for this very reason,” Na'amod added.

Targets in London and Manchester

The government's decision to proscribe Palestine Action, in effect listing it as a terror group alongside the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, drew condemnation and ridicule across the political spectrum.

Amid this mounting pressure, ministers issued statements citing alleged attacks on "Jewish businesses" as justification for the ban.  

However, an assessment provided by the government's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) to government ministers, which was used to support the decision, does not include these claims.

'It’s really quite clear why Discovery Park Ltd were targeted by Palestine Action - because they were the landlords to an Elbit Systems subsidiary company'

- Huda Amori, Palestine Action co-founder

The JTAC noted that the group “has also conducted direct action against other targets in the UK which are not linked to the Israeli defence trade, but are considered symbolic to its wider pro-Palestinian cause”.

But it found that the basis for Palestine Action’s proscription rests primarily on “incidents that have resulted in serious property damage with the aim of progressing its political cause”, noting that it assessed that the group is not otherwise concerned with terrorism.

One of the main incidents in which Palestine Action were accused of targeting Jewish-owned businesses centred on an address in Stamford Hill, an area with a large Jewish population in North London.

The protest action in May was reported by the Guardian as targeting an unnamed “Jewish-owned business”.

And the incident appeared to be referenced by then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in her 23 June statement announcing her decision to proscribe the group.

Palestine Action claimed responsibility for the incident, stating that its activists had targeted the registered London address of Discovery Park Ltd, which it said is the landlord to a factory run by Instro Precision, a subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons supplier, Elbit Systems.

Photos posted by the group showed the office front with its windows smashed and “Drop Elbit” daubed across it in red paint.

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Instro Precision is headquartered at Discovery Park in Kent, a business park that has long been the target of local campaigns demanding Instro Precision’s eviction.

Discovery Park Ltd, which owns the business park, is registered at 147 Stamford Hill.

While the police would not share information with MEE about the name of the targeted firm, photos from the incident show the address as the same.

Discovery Park Ltd denied to the Standard that it had a contract with Elbit Systems "despite being close to the business park".

MEE contacted Discovery Park Ltd for clarification but the company declined to comment.

“Throughout Palestine Action’s campaign, there were hundreds of actions against companies linked to Elbit, companies which enable Elbit to operate,” Ammori told MEE.  “And throughout this five-year campaign, landlords were always a big target." 

“From our perspective, it’s really quite clear why Discovery Park Ltd were targeted by Palestine Action - because they were the landlords to an Elbit Systems subsidiary company,” she added.

Ammori acknowledged that Discovery Park Ltd is Jewish owned. “But the implication that they were targeted because they were Jewish is deliberately misleading,” she said.

“If the landlords were somebody else, they would also have been targeted, regardless of whether or not they were Jewish or based in a predominantly Jewish area.”

A similar incident occurred in Manchester, also in May 2025.

'They are Jewish-owned. But the implication that they were targeted because they were Jewish, is deliberately misleading'

- Huda Ammori, Palestine Action co-founder

The Jewish Chronicle reported that a "building housing Jewish-owned businesses 'in the heart' of the north Manchester Jewish community" was splattered with red paint by Palestine Action to coincide with Nakba Day, which commemmorates the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948. 

The building was Rico House in Prestwich, the registered address of Aztec West, landlords of Elbit's Bristol headquarters. 

Somerset council, the previous landlords, sold the headquarters to Aztec West following a prolonged campaign by Palestine Action.

Allegations of Palestine Action’s targeting of Jewish businesses re-emerged in the wake of the recent acquittal of six activists on charges of aggravated burglary in connection with a break-in to an Elbit Systems plant near Bristol in August 2024.

The Jewish Board of Deputies (BOD) alleged in a statement that the group had targeted “businesses linked to the Jewish community in London and Manchester”.

MEE asked BOD which businesses they were referring to, but did not receive a response.