Pro-Palestine protesters demonstrate against supply of F-35 parts to Israel
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised the demonstration at the site in Havant, Hampshire, with protests also taking place at other manufacturers in Rochester, Kent, and Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Scores of people waving flags and holding banners and placards paraded from Havant town centre to the Lockheed Martin premises which had closed ahead of the protest taking place.
A speaker told the crowd: 'I am ashamed at the police today, they should be storming this building, this is a terrorist training camp, this is the sponsored UK terrorism and the police should be shutting it down.'
Protester Alan Elliot, 70, from Southampton, who served in the Army for 28 years held up a placard saying 'Veterans against genocide in Gaza'.
He told the PA news agency: 'I don't want to see babies, children and women being killed indiscriminately – this sends a message but always that message is ignored.
'The only way to stop these things is to stop the money.'
Writer and activist Sarah Goldsmith-Pascoe, 69, from Bournemouth, Dorset, said: 'I feel compelled to do everything I can to stop this horror, especially as a Jew because all of us Jews have been told a load of lies about what Israel does.
'This is genocide and large companies are doing nothing about it, I have nightmares.'
The Government halted 30 out of around 350 arms sales licences to Israel in September last year, for fear they may be used for war crimes.
MPs critical of Israel's actions have called on ministers to go further, and to halt all UK arms sales to the country.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said previously: 'Since day one, this Government has rigorously applied international law in relation to the war in Gaza.
'One of our first acts in Government was to suspend export licences that could be used by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza.
'We have successfully implemented the suspension decision and continue to refuse all relevant licence applications.
'We have suspended direct exports of F-35 parts for use by Israel, and we categorically do not export any bombs or ammunition which could be used in Gaza.
'We have also suspended negotiations on a free trade agreement, while supporting humanitarian efforts through the restoration of funding to UNRWA, and the commitment of over £230 million in assistance across the past two financial years.'
A Lockheed Martin spokeswoman said: 'We respect the right to peaceful protest, and we remain focused on supporting our customers to deliver strategic deterrence and security solutions.'
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Politicians, of course, are not the only popular targets for online hate: Jews should expect to be denounced as baby-killers by righteous 'anti-Zionists'; feminists fighting to preserve the integrity of women's single-sex spaces have long since grown accustomed to accusations of transphobia, often accompanied by rape and/or death threats. With all of the above in mind, the behaviour of Liberal Democrat MP Ben Maguire is disturbing. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad During a Westminster debate last week the member for North Cornwall mocked JK Rowling's involvement in the campaign to defend women's rights against the demands of trans activists. The moment was bleakly entertaining, like a scene from a watch-through-your-fingers comedy. Maguire told fellow MPs Rowling was 'desperate for attention and relevance'. The pathos was almost unbearable. I cringed for the man. Had the Lib Dems' shadow attorney general – yes, really – left things at that, then we could comfortably have continued to ignore him. His words confirm him to be a default-setting sexist. In response to Maguire's pitiful bid for attention and relevance, Rowling evoked the words of the late Labour MP Denis Healey who once said debating Conservative Geoffrey Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I fear the pain of Rowling's barb may have lingered for in the early hours of the following morning, Maguire was still smarting about those feminists and their demands. Following another positively masochistic engagement with Rowling, Maguire turned his ire on the feminist campaign group For Women Scotland. At 12.57 am on Wednesday, the MP responded on X to a post by the group – which brought the recent case that saw the Supreme Court rule, in law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings – claiming it had a 'fascist agenda'. Hours later, Maguire closed his X account. A non-apology followed. The MP said he regretted the comment which had been made in 'the heat of the moment'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'This whole debate,' added Maguire, 'has become quite toxic, so I felt it best to step away from X for a while.' Suggesting the problem was the tone of debate rather than his behaviour, Maguire was riffing on that old classic 'look what you made me do'. I struggle, even when squinting, to detect any difference between Maguire's behaviour and the behaviour of the sort of trolls who revel in making the lives of MPs as miserable as possible. At 12.57 am, Maguire was just another loser lashing out at women who dared to talk back. 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These caricatures of the radical, who see posting something provocative online as an act of leadership, who eschew such basics of politics as diplomacy, intellectual curiosity, and a grasp of the law, while chasing ultimately worthless plaudits from ideologues and social media users, enjoying their own dopamine-hits, with every like and re-post. The contemporary pseudo-iconoclast politician thrives both on the adoration of those who support their positions and the anger they provoke among those they don't. Driven by the need for another roar of approval from the cool kids, they state all-or-nothing positions that betray their failure to engage in the issues they proclaim to care about. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ben Maguire does nothing for the case he wishes to advance by smearing his opponents. Rather, he helps reinforce the position of the majority which believes him to be on the wrong side of the argument over the impact on women's rights of the demands of trans activists. Labour MP Zarah Sultana is another dopamine-chaser who favours virtue-signalling provocation over reasoned persuasion. When it was announced, last week, that the group Palestine Action faced proscription as a terror group after members broke into RAF Brize Norton, Sultana posted on X the message: 'We are all Palestine Action'. A statement which was as provably wrong as it was needlessly offensive. Intentional damage to any part of the UK's defence hardware goes far beyond the principle of freedom of expression and into the serious realm of national security. Members of Palestine Action understood this when they broke into Brize Norton. That was the point. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Like Maguire, Sultana measures political progress in 'likes', sees victories in reposts, and gains validation from outrage. She cannot imagine the existence of someone who might feel sympathy for, even rage on behalf of, Palestinians while simultaneously believing the UK's national security is important.
