Unity of Fields: What You Need to Know

Unity of Fields (UoF), formerly Palestine Action U.S., is a radical far-left, anti-Zionist “direct action network” that engages in and/or promotes aggressive, targeted protests and the defacement of property belonging to Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and individuals it considers supportive of Israel or Zionism or “complicit” in Israel’s alleged actions.

The group’s stated mission is disrupting and “dismantling zionism [sic] and US imperialism” through “militant direct actions.”

Unity of Fields openly celebrates the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel and other terror attacks against Israelis and is explicitly supportive of terror organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Yemen-based Ansar Allah (the Houthis), and Hezbollah, and Hamas terror leaders like Yahya Sinwar.

It has claimed “direct actions” of vandalism and disruption to U.S. sites belonging to a leading Israeli weapons maker and has endorsed and publicized such acts against Jewish targets like a synagogue and businesses owned by Jews.

Unity of Fields shares an image of Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar on its Telegram channel, October 2024. (Screenshot/Telegram)

The group regularly publishes “anti-imperialist” propaganda, toolkits on “direct actions,” and posts from others including one that called for “death to amerikkka,” “glory to the martyrs” and to hold a “knife to the throat of zionism [sic],” submitted anonymously by email following firebombing attacks in California.

It also routinely shares content from Resistance News Network, a radical, antisemitic, anti-Zionist, English-language Telegram channel that promotes designated terror organizations, violence against Israel and anti-normalization with “Zionists.”

Origins

Unity of Fields was formally launched in October 2023, shortly after the Hamas-led October 7 terror attack on southern Israel in which thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 people and abducted around 250, including children and elderly people.

The group was originally set up as Palestine Action U.S., the U.S. branch of anti-Zionist direct action network Palestine Action U.K. but changed its name to Unity of Fields in August 2024. In its announcement, the group said the new brand reflects its position as “a new front against the US Empire” to “build the international popular cradle of resistance,” and called on supporters to send "actions, reports, and analyses" for distribution.

The name “Unity of Fields” is a reference to the efforts of various Palestinian terrorist or Palestinian-aligned terrorist groups and organizations to coordinate activities and attacks since the May 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict. The group says the name comes from the Palestinian "resistance" — a euphemistic reference to the various terrorist groups responsible for violent attacks against Israel — and "refers to the coordination between all the factions on the battlefield."

The name change from Palestine Action U.S. to Unity of Fields occurred around the same time as the first wave of arrests by British authorities of Palestine Action U.K. activists following an attack in early August 2024 on a factory in the Bristol area belonging to Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli military technology company and defense contractor. U.K. authorities made subsequent arrests in the following months and some of the U.K. group's leaders and members are facing charges like aggravated burglary, violent disorder and criminal damage with "terrorist connection.”

In a 2023 interview after the group was established, James “Fergie” Chambers, who is involved with Unity of Fields, said the group was "going to disrupt business and we're going to disrupt business constantly. We're going to use any means that we need to get that point across and to have the material effect that we want -- which is as H [Huda Ammori] said to shut the places down." Ammori is a co-founder of Palestine Action U.K.

James "Fergie" Chambers gives an interview to a Tunisian news channel, October 2024. (Screenshot/YouTube)

Chambers is a longtime American political activist, an heir to the Cox family (of international conglomerate Cox Enterprises) and a self-proclaimed “professional revolutionary." In the 2023 interview, he claimed Unity of Fields was an “affinity network” that shares ideas and an “affinity for direct action and an opposition to the occupation,” but does not necessarily dictate activities to other groups.

Unity of Fields is not a registered organization, and its funding sources are unclear.

Activities and rhetoric

Unity of Fields’ main activity is to encourage and promote direct actions such as defacement and vandalism of organizations, institutions, businesses, or homes of individuals it associates with Israel or Zionism.

Targets have included weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, companies like Starbucks and McDonald's, the office of an elected official, and establishments linked to Jews or Israelis.

The group invites submissions of “actions, writing, or propaganda in any media format” by members or followers of its network who film or otherwise document themselves engaging in vandalism, graffiti or destruction of property and distributes these to its followers on Telegram and/or X (Twitter), often with a caption applauding the action. 

In this Unity of Fields submission, activists filmed themselves breaking Caterpillar equipment in Los Angeles, June 2024. (Screenshots via Telegram)

Since October 7, 2023, anti-Israel activists have claimed credit for at least 72 so-called sabotages of infrastructure or vandalism of private and public property across the United States to protest American support for Israel. Unity of Fields has dutifully reported many of these acts on Telegram, where it has nearly 10,000 subscribers, and on X, where it has a growing audience of over 6,000 followers. The group also regularly reposts such incidents from other accounts. Unity of Fields previously also posted to an Instagram channel with over 75,000 followers before its profile was banned in October 2024.

For a brief period in the fall of 2023, the group claimed credit for "direct actions” in Massachusetts against Elbit sites. On October 12, 2023, activists with the group blockaded the entrance to Elbit Systems’ Cambridge, Massachusetts location, barring employees from entering, and vandalized the building with red paint. The facility was vandalized twice more in the week that followed.

In November 2023, at Elbit’s Merrimack, New Hampshire facility, three activists were arrested on felony charges of rioting, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, burglary, and conspiracy to falsify physical evidence. These were pled down to misdemeanor criminal mischief and criminal trespass. The sentence included 60 days in jail. The activists involved in the incident were dubbed the “Merrimack 3” and their bail was paid by Chambers.

Since it was founded, Unity of Fields has also distributed various toolkits and materials to instruct followers on how and why to undertake disruptive “direct actions,” such as blockading entrances of companies, breaking and entering, spray-painting buildings with converted fire extinguishers (with instructions on how to convert fire extinguishers into spray paint devices) and causing harm to infrastructure.

A screenshot from a Unity of Fields post on Instagram sharing a guide on converting a fire extinguisher into a spray-painting device. (Screenshot/Instagram)

Unity of Fields has also released several publications and statements that call for violence and escalation, including a May 2024 pamphlet titled “Flood the Gates: Escalate” that coincides with the strategic “escalation” by anti-Israel activists on and off university campuses in the spring and summer of 2024. In the document, the group wrote that it was “insincere to glorify the Palestinian resistance if, at the same time, we do not raise our own resistance here....We are not naïve enough to think the revolution will come through "peaceful" means... without organized militancy."

In a post ahead of the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack, Unity of Fields referred to the terror massacre and the eruption of a “global anti-imperialist movement” as a “gift to the world.”

The group said its objective is to “expand the number of people embodying resistance ideas, and to inspire them to take actions that deepen their commitment to those ideas.

The goal is to make anti-imperialism, pro-resistance, anti-capitalist, and pro-liberation ideas an irresistible material force in the world.”

On the anniversary of October 7, it released a statement celebrating “the Al-Aqsa Flood” — Hamas’s official name for the October 7 massacre — and claimed that “If victory over the US Empire and its zionist [sic] proxy is possible, it will be because struggles against them have erupted all over the world — Bring the war home! Two, three, many Al-Aqsa Floods!”

On the first anniversary of the Hamas October 7 attack, Unity of Fields posted a statement celebrating “the Al-Aqsa Flood” — Hamas’s official name for the terror massacre — with a photo from the day of the invasion into southern Israel. (Screenshot/Unity of Fields website)

Earlier that month, on October 1, 2024, Unity of Fields celebrated a deadly terror attack in Tel Aviv that killed seven and injured several more, posting on Telegram. The group took a similarly gleeful tone when in September 2024, a gunman from Jordan killed three Israeli civilians at the Allenby Bridge border crossing, posting an image of a pistol and the outline of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

An image posted to Unity of Fields’ Telegram channel on September 8, 2024 after a gunman killed three Israelis in a terror attack at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan. (Screenshot/Telegram)

In a December 2024 tweet, Unity of Fields engaged in the denial of rapes and sexual assaults that took place during the October 7 attack, quote-tweeting Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime's supreme leader and writing, “The 10/7 rape atrocity propaganda, “Saddam’s rape rooms”, “Gaddafi supplies troops with endless viagra [sic] to encourage mass rape”, the lynching of Black men in the U.S. for their alleged “sexual predation” of white women. This is part and parcel of the colonial playbook.”

Encouragement of Vandalism and Other “Direct Actions” against Jewish Targets

A small but significant segment of activity promoted by Unity of Fields includes the targeting of Jewish and Israeli or Zionist institutions, Jewish symbols, and Jewish Zionist individuals. By supportively sharing these incidents on its influential social media accounts, Unity of Fields helps to foster an environment where such activity becomes more normalized.

On September 5, 2024, it shared an “anonymous submission” where activists taped signs reading “Israel❤️rape”, “Israel rapes”, and “Israel a rapist colony” on a “We support Israel" banner outside Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, Maryland.

Unity of Fields shares an “anonymous submission” where a “We support Israel" banner was defaced outside Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, Maryland, in September 2024. (Screenshot/Telegram)

That same month, in Brooklyn New York, vandals pulled down an LGBTQ flag with a Star of David. Unity of Fields posted a reel to its previously active Instagram page, with the text “tear down your local zionist [sic] flag.”     

Unity of Fields posts a reel on Instagram in September 2024 showing vandals in Brooklyn, New York, pulling down an LGBTQ flag with a Star of David. (Screenshot/Instagram)

In Houston, Texas, multiple businesses owned by Jewish restaurateur Ben Berg were vandalized in mid-May 2024 with red paint and antisemitic fliers. Unity of Fields celebrated the vandalism, highlighting Berg’s November 2023 participation in a fundraiser organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston to benefit nonprofits supporting Israelis displaced by the October 7 attack and war with Hamas.  

The group also publicized the defaced facade of the Historic Blue Moon Hotel, the family business of a former IDF soldier, Bram Settenbrino, in September 2024.

Unity of Fields celebrates the defacement of a business owned by a Jewish restaurateur in May 2024. (Screenshot/Instagram)

Later that month, Unity of Fields published photos from activists at the University of Minnesota, with graffiti reading "Zionists off campus” and “the intifada is here.”

In May 2024, the group posted to its thousands of Telegram subscribers to “Besiege the Zionist embassies!” with an image that contained the phrase “long live the resistance.”

Other Targets of Vandalism and Destruction of Property

Unity of Fields has also approvingly publicized destructive direct actions and targeted vandalism attacks on sites or offices belonging to shipping giant Maersk, construction and engineering manufacturer Caterpillar, Citibank, Bank of America and Starbucks, as well as city parking meters in Los Angeles, CA and subway fare readers in New York City.

In August 2024, it publicized the vandalism of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) office in Washington, D.C., writing a post that ended with the inverted red triangle: “Escalation needs to increase 10 fold. The Zionist Entity needs to feel the heat from all sides... Honor all the Martyrs and Glory to the Resistance from Hämãs [sic], Jenin’s Brigade, the Lions Den, HezBol, Yemen, and more. 🔻.”

In October 2024, the group posted photos of the vandalism to the New York office of Congressman Adriano Espaillat. In the post, Unity of Fields referred to Espaillat as someone who is” bought and paid for by the Zionist lobby” though they claimed his "action speaks louder than their blood money."

That same month, activists also targeted the home of Gavin Kenneally, co-founder and CEO of Ghost Robotics in Philadelphia, painting "Funded By Genocide" across his garage, and "I Make Killer Dogs" on the sidewalk, throwing paint at the door and ring camera, and breaking windows. Ghost Robotics has supplied its technology to the Israeli military.

This is not the only incident involving Keanneally or Ghost Robotics. In July 2024, activists vandalized his townhome, and in November 2024, activists flooded it by turning on the water and letting it run. In October 2024, activists also vandalized “Pennovation,” an innovation facility at the University of Pennsylvania that hosts a Ghost Robotics office.

A submission posted by Unity of Fields of the vandalism of a Maersk office in Romulus, Michigan, July 8, 2024. (Screenshot/Telegram)

Unity of Fields has also been supportive of student vandals, having taken submissions from those who defaced the University of California President’s office in May 2024, vandalism at Georgetown ahead of its annual homecoming weekend in September 2024, and at Tuft’s Gantcher building. 

In July 2024, Unity of Fields reposted a message from a “Support Committee” for Casey Robert Goonan, a California resident who was charged and indicted by a grand jury for a series of arson incidents at UC Berkeley, asking followers to donate commissary funds. Goonan was charged with the firebombing of a UC Berkeley police car and a truck. At the time of these incidents, when Unity of Fields was still going by Palestine Action U.S, it posted on Telegram that these actions were done “in solidarity with the resistance axis for Palestinian life, liberation, and total decolonization of the zionist [sic] occupied lands.”

The post, submitted to the group, also read, “Blessed is the flame that burns down the settler-plantation. Blessed are the rockets that will free thousands of prisoners held captive by the zionist settler entity and US colonizer police state…Knife to the throat of zionism. Death to amerikkka. Glory to the martyrs.”

In May 2024, Unity of Fields republished a blog post from never sleep, an anarchist blog site. This post reads in part, “four nights ago we set an NYPD bus on fire in Brooklyn as a peaceful protest against the cops for attacking anti-genocide demonstrators and their repression of protestors of Cop City.”