Elbit break-in case: Palestine Action thug hit policewoman with sledgehammer

In August 2024, six anti-Israel activists broke into the Israeli defense firm’s UK site to protest the Gaza war.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A British policewoman testified Monday to being struck with a sledgehammer during clashes between Palestine Action members and the authorities after the anti-Israel group broke into an Israeli firm’s UK site in August last year.

Sgt. Kate Evans told Woolwich Crown Court that she was kneeling while handcuffing one of the six defendants at Elbit Systems UK when she felt a “thud” on her back that made her think her spine had been “shattered.”

“It was just a massive shock vibrating through my whole body…. I had no idea what it was,” she said, until she turned around and saw “a male with a sledgehammer behind me.”

While she remembered only being hit once, another constable, Peter Adams, testified that the alleged attacker, Samuel Corner, 23, struck her twice.

“I remember her screaming in pain, and she’s fallen to the floor on her back,” he said.

An X-ray revealed that she had a fracture in her lumbar spine.

The policewoman was left with “severe pain,” she said, that did not allow her to drive, sleep, dress or shower herself, and she was unable to work for three months.

Evans further testified that Corner accused her and her fellow officers of being “complicit in genocide” and “something about murdering babies,” but not reacting at all when she told him, “You just hit me with a sledgehammer.”

The prosecutors showed video footage from police body cameras of the violence used against the officers after they cornered the three men and three women who allegedly entered one of Israel’s premier defense companies illegally and used axes and sledgehammers to destroy its property.

All six are being charged with aggravated burglary, violent disorder and criminal damage, while Corner is also facing charges of grievous bodily harm.

The prosecution called the attack on the site “meticulously organized.”

Even though Elbit said its Bristol factory only supplied the British military, not the IDF, Palestine Action targeted it several times during the war sparked by the Hamas-led invasion and massacre of nearly 1,200 men, women and children on Oct. 7, 2023.

Activists locked its gates, sprayed its walls with red paint and smashed windows, among other protest actions.

The group was proscribed under British terrorism laws in June after members broke into an airbase and damaged a few planes, and hundreds of its supporters have been arrested at demonstrations since then.

Elbit’s UK subsidiary has reportedly quietly closed the factory, one of more than a dozen sites it owns in England, with The Guardian reporting in September that it was deserted.