Drone Against Drones group photo Image by Katy Colley

Droning against the drones

On Saturday 13 September, local people braved damp weather to attend the 3rd Drone Against Drones. Aimed at highlighting the harm done to civilians by armed drones, the event was first held in 2014 and – with the increased use of militarised drones in the years since – has only become more relevant. John Enefer reports.

People set off on the promenade near Hastings Pier, making droning sounds on musical instruments as they progressed to the Old Town.

There, a short rally was held. Those gathered were given some background on the history of drone use. Drones can be traced back over a hundred years, being first developed by the UK and US at the time of the First World War, for the use of reconnaissance. For this purpose, drones were deployed on a large scale in the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until 2001 that armed drones were first used in war, in the botched assassination attempt of Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.(1)

Now, the presence of armed drones in the sky has become a standard feature of war, impacting civilians at ground level. Those gathered heard an extract from an interview, conducted in 2013, with Raz Mohammad, an Afghan man who lived through the Afghanistan war. In the interview he talks of the psychological trauma armed drones cause: ‘People can’t move around freely. In the nights, people are afraid. Drones don’t improve people’s lives, they limit people’s lives.’  He lost a brother-in-law and four of his friends in a drone strike. ‘Today, the idea of humanity has been forgotten’, he observed. ‘Why do we spend money like this? Why don’t we use an alternative way?’(2)

Katy Colley, Chair of Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign, gave a detailed account of the use of drones by Israel in the Gaza war, describing drone technology as ‘the defining feature of this 2-year long dystopian hellscape.’ Illustrating this, she referred to testimony given by Professor Nizam Mamode, a retired surgeon and former clinical lead of transplant surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in London. In 2024, Professor Mamode volunteered for a month at Nasser hospital in Gaza and spoke of his experiences in November last year to an all-party Parliamentary committee. He described how, in a persistent and deliberate manner, Israeli quadcopter drones would shoot at wounded Palestinian children lying on the ground in the aftermath of bombing attacks.(3)

Katy Colley spoke of the huge numbers of civilians killed in Gaza and deplored the material assistance the UK has given to Israel as these lives have been lost: ‘we are suppling the parts to allow theses atrocities to continue.’ Campaign Against the Arms Trade estimates that 15% of the F35 planes that Israel has used to bomb Gaza is made by British industry,(4) including by the Israel-owned company, Elbit Systems UK, which has multiple sites across the country. (5) Coming to the end of her speech Katy Colley said: ‘we must demand an end to all military and economic ties with Israeli companies supplying the hardware and technology that is helping them to continue this genocide.’

The charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza has been endorsed by a growing number of organisations. Amnesty International(6) Human Rights Watch,(7) the International Association of Genocide Scholars,(8) Physicians for Human Rights in Jerusalem,(9) and B’Tselem,(10) the leading Israeli human rights group, have all come to this conclusion. The International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, an independent body initiated by the UN, issued a 72 page report on 16 September, which also charged Israel with the crime of genocide(11). Announcing the report its Chairperson, Navi Pillay, who was President of the International Tribunal on the Rwandan Genocide, observed: ‘The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a moral outrage and a legal emergency. Member states must act now.’

The governing document regarding genocide is the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines the crime as acts ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. (12)

The singers of the ‘Drone song’ in the picture are Katy Colley, Leslie Adams and Sarah Evans Image by John Enefer.

At the rally a song was sung which was written by a Palestinian school teacher and is designed to be sung over the sound of drones, in a spirited act of defiance, turning the noise of war into a thing of beauty.

The rally ended on a light-hearted note, as Phil Colley spun a yarn about Sir Edwin Montagu, a UK government minister at the time of the World War I, who is noted for his opposition to the idea of a Jewish state.

The event was initiated by local musician, writer and campaigner Rob Hill, and co-sponsored by Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Hastings Against War, which is now also known as XR Peace.

(1) https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/america-first-drone-strike-afghanistan/394463/
(2)https://www.palestinechronicle.com/afghan-peace-volunteer-drones-bury-beautiful-lives/
(3)https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7893vpy2gqo
(4) https://caat.org.uk/data/countries/israel/mapped-all-the-uk-companies-manufacturing-components-for-israels-f35-combat-aircraft/
(5) https://www.elbitsystems-uk.com/about-us/elbit-systems-uk-group-locations
(6) https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/
(7) https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/12/19/extermination-and-acts-genocide/israel-deliberately-depriving-palestinians-gaza
(8)https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS-Resolution-on-Gaza-FINAL.pdf 
(9) https://www.phr.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Genocide-in-Gaza-PHRI-English.pdf
(10) https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
(11)https://www.un.org/unispal/document/commission-of-inquiry-report-genocide-in-gaza-a-hrc-60-crp-3/
(12) https://www.un.org/unispal/document/commission-of-inquiry-report-genocide-in-gaza-a-hrc-60-crp-3/

Also in: Campaigns