Six members of a notorious anti-Semitic activist group were arrested in the United Kingdom after plotting to inflict "significant disruption to Israel's weapons trade" by shutting down the London Stock Exchange.

U.K. police announced the arrests Sunday, noting in a statement that all six perpetrators are members of Palestine Action, an anti-Semitic activist group that endorsed Hamas's Oct. 7 terrorist attack on the Jewish state. The group's members intended to cause "huge economic damage" by chaining their necks to London Stock Exchange entrances on Monday, ensuring that those who wished to enter the exchange could not do so without hurting the agitators, according to the Daily Express.

"These are significant arrests," Metropolitan Police detective superintendent Sian Thomas said in a statement. "We believe this group was ready to carry out a disruptive and damaging stunt which could have had serious implications had it been carried out successfully."

Since Hamas's terrorist assault on Israel, Palestine Action has carried out dozens of illegal demonstrations—which the group refers to as "direct actions"—against Israeli defense companies and other friends of the Jewish state.

The group's American spin-off, Palestine Action U.S., has especially targeted Elbit Systems, an Israeli company that provides the Jewish state with counterterrorism equipment. Late last year, for example, the group's members clashed with police outside the company's Boston office in a demonstration that the group said "completely halted" Elbit's business. The radical group also defaced Elbit's Washington, D.C.-area office with graffiti reading "Free Palestine" and "War Criminals Work Here," the Washington Free Beacon reported in November.

While those demonstrations have led to the arrests of Palestine Action members, the group's London Stock Exchange plot seems to mark an escalation in the group's tactics. That escalation could spell trouble for James "Fergie" Chambers, an avowed communist whose family controls the Cox Enterprises empire. Chambers cut ties with his family last year and secured "multiple hundreds of millions of dollars" in the process—money that he has used to fund Palestine Action U.S.

Source: The Washington Free Beacon