Early in the morning of 6 August, four police officers came to my home with a search warrant. That’s how I found out she had been arrested. She had taken part in direct action against an Israeli arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems, in Bristol. Zoe was about to turn 21.
This was news enough to turn my life upside down, but it got worse. I waited for her phone call from the police station. Everyone gets to make one phone call within 24 hours of their arrest, right? Well, it didn’t come within 24, or 48, or 72 hours. Eventually I discovered that she and her fellow activists were being held under counter-terrorism powers – incommunicado and in solitary confinement, with hours of police interrogation – and this went on for seven days. It was to be nearly two weeks before I would hear her voice on the phone.
According to Zoe’s solicitor, who I finally got to speak to on day six, this use of the Terrorism Act was totally unprecedented. For the first time in the UK, counter terrorism powers are being used to police and prosecute activists.
For the first time in the UK, counter terrorism powers are being used to police and prosecute activists
If you think this doesn’t sound right, there’s a petition for Zoe and the other nine activists who are in prison right now – the Filton 10. They were all refused bail and the trial isn’t until November 2025, so they will have been in prison for 17 months when it starts. The petition calls for the counter-terrorism protocol to be dropped and for all ten to be released on bail.
“The marches aren’t working”
While it was a shock to learn she’d been arrested, in a way I was not surprised. Zoe’s defining quality is her passion for justice. After 7 October last year, she watched with horror on Instagram as a genocide began to unfold. She went on march after march, making placards and recruiting friends to join her.
When the death toll of children reached about 2,000, she bought a huge white sheet and resolved to write all the children’s names and ages on it for the next protest.
The task was so depressing she never even started. She went back to bed for the rest of the weekend. She told me “Mum, the marches aren’t working. The government isn’t listening.”
I believe that was when she decided to join Palestine Action, a group who target Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest arms manufacturer. Their activists blockade factory entrances or occupy the roofs for days on end, or break in and dismantle weapons. Palestine Action explains that while protest is like asking the authorities to dig a well for people who need water, direct action is going ahead and digging the well, daring the authorities to stop them. This article by Palestine Action gives a lot more detail on what they’ve done and why. And it seems to be working. Their unrelenting harassment and exposure of Elbit’s operations has seen three of their UK sites closed down or abandoned, and an impact on the profits of others.
Zoe wanted to do something that would work. She wanted to stop a genocide. So at great personal risk, knowing she would be arrested and possibly go to prison, she took part in the audacious raid of Elbit’s Horizon facility in Filton, Bristol.
What would Jesus do?
As a Christian, it’s taken me a while to work out what I think about Palestine Action’s way of working. I felt a lot more comfortable with protests that don’t involve breaking and entering, or smashing things up. Isn’t it all a bit violent? But as I mulled it over in the days following Zoe’s arrest, the image that came to mind repeatedly was of Jesus in the temple, making a whip, turning over the tables of the money changers, driving the animals out.
I think that while violence against people is never justified, there is a place for anger in tackling injustice. And the injustice being unleashed against Palestinians right now should make us all very, very angry. Now I feel sheer joy at the idea of someone taking a sledgehammer to one of Elbit’s war drones.
Elbit Systems
Until my daughter got arrested I’d never heard of Elbit Systems. I began to do some research. What I found sickened me. Elbit is a monster.
Online I found the Elbit CEO boasting about the critical role his company plays in the ‘operation’ in Gaza. I learnt that Elbit supplies 85% of Israel’s deadly drones and land fleet. It advertises its products as field-tested in Israel, i.e. using Palestine as a laboratory. And Elbit has seen soaring profits since the war on Gaza began.
So Elbit is profiting from a genocide, and yet our government is awarding its British subsidiaries contracts to the tune of 100s of millions of pounds. Plus, Palestine Action says that weapons and parts of weapons bound for Israel are manufactured here.
I now see Elbit as a huge, repulsive beast, bloated with the blood of Palestinians, tentacles in countries all around the world – and our government feeding it money.
“Terrorists”
Although the ten were charged with offences such as criminal damage, not terrorism, they are still effectively terror suspects. ‘Terrorism connection’ appears on the webpage about their case on the Crown Prosecution website. The investigation is being led by counter terrorism police. The word ‘terrorism’ has clung to the ten and stripped them of their rights at every step. It is probably why they were refused bail. Watching Zoe being led from the courtroom, seconds after the judge made this devastating pronouncement, was possibly the most traumatic moment of my life.
‘Terrorism’ was why, last month, I answered the door to a team of 12 counter-terrorism police officers who spent hours searching my home, leaving me physically shaking. ‘Terrorism’ is no doubt why she and her co-defendants in HMP Bronzefield are under tighter restrictions than the other prisoners. ‘Terrorism’ could mean that if they are convicted of charges such as criminal damage, their sentences will be much longer.
How is my daughter a terrorist? It doesn’t make any sense. I thought terrorists murdered civilians. Isn’t that what Israel and Elbit are doing, in breach of international law?
And it turns out that Elbit may be the reason the ten are being accused of terrorism. The Guardian recently ran an article showing evidence of conversations between the Home Office, the CPS, the Israeli Embassy and Elbit Systems UK about stopping pro-Palestine activists
If Elbit is a deadly, repulsive beast, my daughter and the others are like children, bravely darting into its lair and poking it with sticks. Yet our government is using all the powers it can to defend the beast. These are young people – the six arrested inside the Filton facility were aged 20 to 30 – who were putting themselves at huge personal risk, not to terrorise, but to uphold international law. They were trying to stop a genocide.
Groomed and exploited?
Some people have said to me that Zoe, being so young and vulnerable, must have been ‘groomed’ by Palestine Action. I think nothing could be further from the truth. She knew what she was doing, and more importantly, why. Palestine Action provided the vehicle for something she longed to do – make a difference. The level of damage activists have done to Elbit’s property, operations and reputation has certainly done that. Before a hearing at the Old Bailey I talked to another Palestine Action volunteer, in her early 20s, who did a similar action and faced the same risks. She told me she would do it again, even if it risked her future and life chances. If it prevented the killing of one child, it was worth it.
Another mother, whose son is awaiting trial for occupying an Elbit factory roof, wrote to me: “It shouldn’t be down to our children to risk their liberty to make this world a better place.”
But that is what Zoe has done, and whatever the outcome, I could not be more proud. I will leave you with a poem Zoe wrote in a few weeks ago.
Prison conversations
When they ask why I did it
I tell them about the children
how their childhood was stolen from them
how their skeletons are left charred and smoking
how easily their bodies are crushed by falling buildings
how their skin melts as their flaming tents collapse around them
I tell them of the boy
found carrying his brother’s body
inside his bloody backpack
I tell them of the girl
whose hanging corpse ended at the knees
I tell them of the father
holding up his headless toddler
I tell them of the mother
who received the ‘approximate weight’
of her family in body parts to bury
as they had all been shattered
beyond recognition
Then I tell them about the history
how this has happened time and time again
I tell them about the Stern Gang
the Hilltop Youth
the wars of 48 & 67
Operation Cast Lead & Protective Edge
I explain how they call it ‘mowing the lawn’
'cleaning' the land of these 'human animals’
How they calculate the minimum nutrients
to keep everyone alive
chop a bit off and let only that inside
How since the war they've banned
chlorine morphine and children’s toys
and much more that's needed
for people to survive
Finally I talk about
how it was us that started it
with our Balfour Declaration
and media suppression
and I say I cannot stand for this
it can go on no longer
so I took action against Elbit
their weapons supplier
But I never forget to say
that it was love not hate that called me
watching their songs and dances for freedom
reading their hope-filled books
listening to their dreams
of being doctors teachers journalists
and never giving up
Zoe Rogers
HMP Bronzefield
September 2024
Clare’s blog is reproduced with her permission. It is originally published here Is my daughter a ‘terrorist’ for trying to stop a genocide? | Subversive Suburbanite (wordpress.com)