Campaigners challenge Hastings Council over its complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Palestine campaigners are challenging Hastings Council leader Julia Hilton over the local authority’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Notably, the Hastings Palestine Solidarity Campaign (HDPSC) is demanding Hilton release legal advice which she claims makes her powerless to stop arms company General Dynamics from carrying out illegal activities on Hastings Council property.

General ‘Genocide’ Dynamics: manufacturing components for Israel in Hastings

The UN Human Rights Council has ordered General Dynamics – which pro-Palestine campaigners refer to as ‘Genocide’ Dynamics – to end all sales to Israel. In particular, this is in the context of Israel’s ongoing attacks on civilians in Gaza which:

may constitute serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws.

General Dynamics has refused to abide by this UN ruling. Therefore, campaigners argue that it is carrying out illegal activities by assisting Israel to perpetrate a genocide.

The arms company currently leases the factory building on Castleham Road from Hastings Borough Council. Its website states that it makes parts for avionic and tactical communications systems for ground vehicles. But under terms of the lease, Hastings Council can revoke it if they are involved in “illegal or immoral” activities.

In January, HDPSC raised the issue with the council leader. This was when it first came to its attention that General Dynamics was operating on council land. In response to HDPSC, councillor Hilton claimed that the terms of the lease are subject to “commercial confidentiality”. She detailed that she had received legal advice that there was no grounds to take action because General Dynamics is manufacturing components which is “a permitted use within the law”.

However, HDPSC has rejected this. In his reply to councillor Hilton, HDPSC secretary Laurie Holden wrote:

If the components being manufactured by GD in Hastings are playing a key role in the commission of an ongoing genocide, then their manufacture and export would appear to violate section 52 (1) of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 which makes it ‘an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to engage in conduct ancillary’ to ‘genocide, a crime against humanity or a war crime’, where such ancillary acts include ‘aiding’ the commission of these. For example, it might ordinarily be legal to manufacture and export machetes, but not to Rwanda during its genocide.

Councillor Hilton responded in an email that the council had plans to introduce an ethical lettings policy in the future.

Manufacturing bombs for Israel’s massacres

Campaigners insist, however, that the lack of a current policy would not absolve the council from its responsibility to act in an ethical way now. Moreover, nor would it excuse councillors of the crime of aiding a genocide if they refused to take action once they are aware that this was happening on their land.

Al Jazeera verified that it was bombs General Dynamics manufactured, Israel dropped on the then ‘safe zone’ of Al Mawasi in Gaza last year.

Hastings has long-standing links to a community in al Mawasi and councillor Hilton herself denounced these massacres as “inhumane” last September.

An organiser of Hastings Friends of Al Mawasi Grace Lally said:

The council leader joined with us in condemning the attacks on our friends in Al-Mawasi last year.

But condemnation is really a meaningless gesture if we don’t do everything we can, and use any powers we have, to stop companies like General Dynamics enabling this genocide.

Mr Holden, who the police arrested, and courts tried and found not guilty of aggravated trespass after taking part in a peaceful protest against General Dynamics in February last year, urged the council to immediately question General Dynamics about whether their factory in Hastings is supplying components to Israel. He called on councillor Hilton to act now:

to ensure that HBC is not directly or indirectly implicated in the most heinous crime that any human beings can perpetrate – genocide, the deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire people.

HDPSC has led 16 demonstrations at the two General Dynamics sites in Hastings over the past 19 months. It has disrupted and shut down operations in protest at the arms company profiting from the genocide in Gaza.

The group has recently launched a new campaign: Schools Out for Genocide Dynamics. This gives parents, carers, and students the tools to challenge their academic institutions over the presence of General Dynamics in schools and at careers fairs.

The campaign has already claimed a victory with the Big Futures career fair in Eastbourne. It dropped the arms company from its list of exhibitors. The campaign has also prompted a flood of letters to the heads of local schools.

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