Israeli produce importers Carmel-Agrexco became one of the victims of the Camp for Climate Action’s day of ‘mass direct action’ when protesters from an anarchist group blockaded the company’s main UK depot.

Members of the State of Emergency protest group coincided their protest with the Climate Camp’s ‘Day of Disorder’ because the company air-freights its produce into Heathrow, but added that they were also accusing the company of ‘breach of international law and abuse of human rights’.

Protesters said the company was guilty of complacency, because it allowed Israeli water authority, Macarot, to drill wells and irrigate the crops close to existing Palestinian wells ‘but at a greater depth, to dry up the Palestinian wells’.

40 Protesters stormed the site in Hayes, Middlesex, with some D-locking themselves to the gates of the firm, while others proceeded to trash the offices. Police made five arrests.

The protest was part of three years of action against the company. Campaigners have taken part in five blockades of the premises, the first of which took place in November 2004.

The Press Association later ran a report quoting Agrexco’s general manager, Amos Orr, saying that many of the protesters were drunk and ‘singing about Hamas’. The group responded by denying the allegations, saying that each activist was subjected to a search under Section One of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and that Orr’s comments ‘are an attempt to smear campaigners’. l

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