Published: 16 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ON THE FACE OF IT, Shenstone, on the edge of Lichfield in the West Midlands, is a fantasy English village. It is the village other villages wish they were.
There are four pubs, a war memorial surrounded by poppies, a library with coffee shop run by 80 volunteers, upholsterers, a railway station and charming, expensive houses.
But on Tuesday 23 February, a stranger driving through this picture-postcard scene of English glory would have happened across a most extraordinary scene.
For just a couple of hundred metres from the Victorian-era train station were scores of police officers from different units, all surrounding a factory building from which the Palestinian flag was flying.
The sheer volume of police in attendance, together with ambulances on stand-by, suggested a guerrilla group had turned up, but the presence of some bored locals having a nosey to combat the boredom of Covid-19 lockdown suggested otherwise.
On top of the factory's flat roof were six activists from the group Palestine Action, protesting against the fact that the company, UAV Engines, is owned by Elbit Systems, one of Israel's largest arms manufacturers and alleged purveyor of war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories and beyond.
FULL STORY Shenstone: The English village caught in anti-Israel rooftop protests (Middle East Eye)
Photo: Rooftop protest at UAV Engines factory in Shenstone, Staffordshire (Twitter/@Pal_action)
