The Body as the Final Weapon: Palestine Action and the Spirit of Bobby Sands
When the machinery of the state is totally dedicated to the protection of genocide; when the courts act as private security for arms dealers and weapons manufacturers; and when the political class—from Labour to Tory—competes to see who can bow lower to the Zionist lobby, the only territory left to reclaim is the body itself.
In the United Kingdom, a group of political prisoners from Palestine Action have entered the very dangerous phase of a hunger strike. They are currently locked in British prisons not for violence against people, but for the “crime” of dismantling the supply chain of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms dealer. They are using their starving bodies to scream a truth that the BBC refuses to whisper: Britain is an active participant in the slaughter of Gaza.
The Criminalization of Conscience
Palestine Action has done what no government in the West has the moral spine to do: they have physically intervened to stop the flow of weaponry to a genocidal regime. For years, they have scaled factory roofs, smashed machinery, and blocked shipment gates. They have exposed Elbit Systems not as a legitimate business, but as a merchant of death that markets its drones as “battle-tested” on Palestinian children.
The British state’s response has been draconian. Abandoning all pretense of impartiality, the legal system has utilized counter-terrorism powers and restrictive bail conditions to crush this movement. We have seen the absurd spectacle of Greta Thunberg being arrested—like hundreds before her—simply for the “crime” of holding a placard. Her global celebrity offered no shield against a state desperate to protect Israeli profits, revealing that even peaceful dissent is now treated as a “terrorist” threat to public order.
But the treatment of the core activists—the ones currently refusing food—marks a descent into authoritarian darkness. Kamran Ahmed, Heba Muraisi, Teuta Hoxha, and Lewie Chiaramello remain steadfast on their hunger strike, despite grave medical warnings. Ahmed, just 28 years old, has been hospitalized for the third time as his body begins to shut down. Chiaramello, who suffers from diabetes, is refusing food every other day, yet is already experiencing severe confusion and weakness.
Two other young activists, Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib, were forced to pause their strikes after reaching the brink of death. Zuhrah, just 20 years old, endured 48 days without food and was denied an ambulance for 18 hours while in excruciating pain—a level of state sadism that MP Zarah Sultana rightly called “cruelty.” Yet, even in her weakened state, Zuhrah issued a warning to the government: “We will certainly return to battle you with our empty stomachs in the new year.”
A Global Architecture of Repression
The cruelty of the British state is not an isolated phenomenon. It is one front in a coordinated, transnational war on dissent being waged across the West.
+ In the United States, we are witnessing a McCarthyite purge of academia. Police forces have laid siege to university campuses, brutalizing students and firing professors, while Congress moves to codify definitions of antisemitism that equate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. This atmosphere of terror reached a tragic crescendo with the self-immolation of active-duty airman Aaron Bushnell. Standing before the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C., he declared he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” before setting himself on fire.
+ In Germany, the state’s guilt over the Holocaust has metastasized into a totalitarian “Staatsräson” that mandates unconditional support for Israel. The German police have raided peaceful conferences, banned the Keffiyeh in schools, and unleashed shocking violence against Jewish anti-Zionist protestors in the streets, beating them bloody for daring to say “Not In Our Name.”
+ In Italy, the Meloni government has spearheaded a judicial persecution of the Palestinian diaspora, detaining activists like Anan Yaeesh and witch-hunting students who occupy their schools. Simultaneously, there is a constant, defamatory campaign against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, who is slandered daily by the establishment press for daring to expose the legal reality of the genocide.
The West has constructed an “Iron Dome” of repression over its own citizens, dismantling civil liberties to protect the Zionist colony.
Demands for Justice
The demands of the prisoners are simple, yet they strike at the heart of British complicity. They are calling for immediate bail, the right to a fair trial, and the de-proscription of Palestine Action, which the UK government absurdly outlawed as a “terror” group in July to protect Israeli interests. Crucially, they demand the closure of all Elbit Systems sites in the UK.
They are also fighting for basic human dignity within the prison system: an end to censorship of their communications, the lifting of non-association orders that isolate them from one another, and for Heba Muraisi to be transferred closer to her support network in London. Their lawyers have now launched legal action against the government, demanding a meeting with Justice Secretary David Lammy to address these inhumane conditions.
The Shadow of the H-Blocks
In this context, the hunger strike by Palestine Action inevitably summons the ghosts of Long Kesh and the H-Blocks. In 1981, Bobby Sands and his comrades starved themselves to death to assert their status as political prisoners against the criminalization policies of Margaret Thatcher. Sands famously wrote, “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” He understood that the British state could imprison the man, but it could not imprison the cause.
The parallels today are haunting. Like the Irish Republicans of the 80s, the activists of Palestine Action are facing a British establishment that is pathologically incapable of recognizing its own colonial violence. Thatcher called Sands a terrorist; Keir Starmer calls Palestine Action terrorists. But history has a way of clarifying these distinctions. The “terrorists” are not the ones smashing the drone components; the terrorists are the ones building them, and the politicians protecting them.
The Ultimate Resistance
A hunger strike is a terrifying, desperate, and sacred act. It is the weapon of the dispossessed. It turns the prisoner’s frailty into an indictment of the jailer. As Kamran, Heba, Teuta, and Lewie weaken physically, their moral power grows, casting a long shadow over the judges and politicians who put them there.
They are starving because they refuse to feed the war machine. They are withering away so that the truth might survive. In a world where “civilized” nations have enabled and allowed the annihilation of a people, the only sanity is found in resistance. Palestine Action has drawn a line in the sand—or rather, a line on the factory floor. They are telling us that if we want to stop a genocide, we must be willing to put our bodies on the gears of the machine.
The British state may think it can break them, just as it thought it could break the men in the H-Blocks. But they forget the lesson of 1981: you can kill the striker, but you cannot kill the strike. The hunger of these prisoners is the hunger of millions who demand a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com
A displaced Palestinian woman heats a pot as children look on outside her tent-home as the region experiences rain and cold winter conditions, in Gaza City, 28 December, 2025. AFP - OMAR AL-QATTAA