The First Trial of the Filton 24 Draws To A Close with Directions from the Judge that Genocide is no Excuse for Criminal Damage

 Do Not Forget the Hunger Strikers, 3 of Whom Are Dying as Lammy & Starmer Join the US's Narcissist-in-Chief in Destroying International Law 

Tony Greenstein Speech at Trial of Filton 24 at Woolwich Crown Court 9 January 2026 

Last Friday I went to the demonstration outside Woolwich Crown Court. Inside the trial of the first 6 of the Filton 24 was drawing to a close. The Jury should be going out today. There is a good report of the trial from Real Media here.

The Video The Government Doesn’t Want You To See

Not surprisingly there was a heavy police presence but despite the bitter cold there were about 100 protestors there. It was a lively demonstration and made a lot of noise with food and tea/coffee provided.

Geert Wilders – Dutch Fascist MP is Told He is Evil

See Real Media’s The Filton Trial – Week Six

There were a wide range of speakers, including a Christian Vicar who got us all singing along and I spoke on behalf of Jewish Network for Palestine.

We are living in an age of imperialism and authoritarianism. War abroad is accompanied by repression at home and the trial of the Filton 24 is a good example of this. Their only crime is doing their best to stop the Genocide but according to the judge Mr Injustice Johnson, trying to prevent Genocide is no excuse for criminal damage. British Judges are probably the most amoral part of British society after Keir Starmer and this government.

There are going to be 3 more trials and we face the prospect of the hunger strikers dying whilst war criminals Starmer and Lammy look on by, demonstrating their callous indifference to the possible death of 3 young people as they demonstrate their loyalty to Zionism.

This ‘Labour’ Government has no shame at all. All the hunger strikers are unconvicted and but for false allegations of a terrorism connection would already have been released on bail. ‘Terrorism’ is the go to allegation as ‘terrorism’ becomes the catch-all smear made against direct action protesters.

If anything is a good example of terrorism it is piracy on the high seas and the boarding of ships by the United States yet that was what happened this week with the complicity of the British navy thanks to Britain’s most unpopular Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.

Below is an Open Letter from the Lemkin Institute to Keir Starmer calling for him to intervene to prevent the deaths of the hunger strikers. The Institute is named after Raphael Lemkin, (1900–1959) who was a Polish-Jewish lawyer and linguist who coined the term "genocide" in 1944 and campaigned tirelessly to make it an international crime.

Lemkin is known as the "father" of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention and personally lobbied the United Nations to adopt the convention.

Let us keep the pressure up on the war criminals who rule us and the British state.

ESCALATE for the prisoners, ESCALATE for Palestine

On Monday My Trial On ‘Terrorism’ Charges Was Adjourned until 18 August 2026

 The Terrorism Act 2000 Under Which I’m Being Prosecuted Has Nothing to do with Terrorism – It is a Colonial Law Designed to Protect Repressive Regimes ‘However Odious’

Tony Greenstein speaking at Kingston Crown Court at the start of his trial on 5 January 2026 before it was adjourned till August 18, 2026

First my thanks to the many people who came from far and wide to support me at my trial in Kingston Crown Court on Monday 5 January. I was very grateful for the demonstration outside and a full public gallery.

My trial was postponed until August 18 as the Defence has submitted an interlocutory appeal to the Court of Appeal. Judge Plaschkes did her best to avoid the postponement but in the end had to admit defeat.

The trial could have gone ahead this week if the judge, who has faithfully adopted the prosecution position throughout, had not echoed a ruling of Lord Justice Lawton about keeping politics out of the court room. This was in the context of a prosecution attempt to keep out of the Jury Bundle blogs and articles which explain my views about Hamas and the situation in Gaza prior to October 23.

I am accused of ‘Inviting support for a proscribed organisation (Hamas)’ under s.12 Terrorism Act 2000. In fact I supported the October 7 Uprising not Hamas but to the Prosecution this is one and the same. It therefore makes sense for me to explain my reasons for supporting the Uprising although that doesn’t suit the Prosecution.

The Prosecution and Plaschkes are determined to ensure that the reasons why Palestinians rose up on October 7 are kept from the jury. Pulling the wool over the jury’s eyes is an integral part of a Prosecutor and Judge’s toolbox.

Freddie Lawton, as he was known, was not above politics but they were far-right politics. For him racism and chauvinism weren’t politics but the common sense of his class. When Freddie was at Cambridge University he joined the British Union of Fascists and founded the Cambridge University Fascist Association.

Freddie Lawton’s view on wife beating was that it ‘may be socially acceptable in Sheffield, but it is a different matter in Cheltenham.’

In 1987, after he retired, he complained of the difficulty prosecuting "the gyppos and tinkers who invade a farmer's land".

From 1936, when the BUF appended to its name ‘and National Socialists’ he was adopted as the BUF's candidate for Hammersmith North but because the 1940 election was shelved he never actually stood.

Lawton ruled in the case of King and Simpkins [1973] that:

‘This Court wishes to state in the clearest possible terms that courts are not sounding boards for anybody’s political views. Anyone attempting to bring political opinions into court is attempting to introduce wholly irrelevant matter.

While it may be understandable that the political views of someone charged with burglary or assault are irrelevant to the charge they are facing, I am being accused of inviting support for Hamas. My views on Hamas and information about Israel’s illegal occupation are highly relevant to the charge I’m facing and of course they are political.  However Plaschkes decided it was easier to act as a sounding board for the prosecution than to look at the position objectively. Hence the appeal.

Of course the opinions of judges are not considered political, at least by themselves, but normative. Historically though the opinions of judges have been a litany of reflexive reactionary and anti-democratic sentiments.  

As far as the Prosecution is concerned, what happened before October 7 is irrelevant. The attack was a terrorist attack that happened out of the blue for no reason at all. The illegal occupation of Gaza for 57 years is irrelevant. This is how colonialism is normalised. It is the reaction of the natives that is important.

Any attempt to provide context or background is deemed ‘political’ whereas in fact it is the decision to proscribe Hamas in 2001 which was highly political. Added to which Plaschkes is a deeply conservative judge.

I thought as an experiment I would ask Google’s AI ‘are there any sources for judicial opinion of the suffragettes?’ Its response was:

Under the heading Key Judicial Sentiments and Decisions AI summarised that:

·         Rejection of Legal Arguments: Judges consistently ruled against the suffragettes' core legal arguments. For example, in the case of women graduates seeking the right to vote in Scotland, a House of Lords decision rejected their claim. The courts also determined that while there was a right to present a petition, there was no right to do so by means of a disruptive deputation that obstructed police.

·         Support for the Executive: The judiciary often aligned with the government's position, for instance, in the case that found force-feeding was legally justified under the general defence of "necessity" to prevent a prisoner from dying in custody.

·         Discretion in Sentencing: When militancy escalated, magistrates often consigned suffragettes to the second division of imprisonment (harsher conditions) rather than the more lenient first division, to discourage further offences. 

Nor was it merely about women that judges were at their most prejudiced. When Oscar Wilde was found guilty of ‘gross indecency’ Mr Justice Wills described the maximum sentence he could impose, of two years imprisonment, as "totally inadequate" for a case of "such a hideous kind." In 2017 Wilde’s conviction was erased under the  Alan Turing law. In June 2025 the British Library restored the library card of the Victorian era’s finest playright!

The 1977 Blasphemy Trial of Gay News editor Denis Lemon was the last such trial before the Blasphemy statute was repealed in July 2008 in England. Lemon had published James Kirkup’s poem ‘The Love that Dares to Speak Its Name’, Judge Alan King-Hamilton told The Observer on 3 July 1973, the day before the trial began, that homosexuality caused the fall of the Roman Empire.

During the trial itself, Hamilton made his prejudices clear in other ways, such as apologising to the jury for having to read the "offensive" poem.

Likewise there is a long history of judicial hostility to trade unions. In March 1834 six farm labourers, known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, were sentenced by Sir John Williams to transportation to Australia and exile for 7 years for forming a trade union. It was a savage sentence and many men transported died en route.

Such was the public reaction that they were pardoned after 3 years. But judicial hostility to workers combining together remained

The second concerned an industrial dispute in 1901 between the Taff Vale Railway Company and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants over the victimisation of a trade unionist.

The Company sought an injunction against union officials and the union itself in order to prevent further picketing of its premises. The unions' status as unincorporated associations under the Trade Union Act of 1871 rendered them impervious to actions for damages founded in tort but in the High Court, Farwell J held that

it would require very clear and express words of enactment to induce me to hold that the Legislature had in fact legalised the existence of such irresponsible bodies with such wide capacity for evil '

The injunction was granted and the Company successfully sued the union for damages. The case resulted in the passing of the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, which granted trade unions immunity for tortious acts that were committed 'in furtherance of a trade dispute.’

As Winston Churchill, then a Liberal, remarked in 1911 in a debate in the House of Commons:

It is not good for trade unions that they should be brought in contact with the courts, and it is not good for the courts. The courts hold justly a high and, I think, unequalled prominence in the respect of the world in criminal cases, and in civil cases between man and man, no doubt, they deserve and command the respect and admiration of all classes in the community, but where class issues are involved, it is impossible to pretend that the courts command the same degree of general confidence. On the contrary, they do not, and a very considerable number of our population have been led to the opinion that they are, unconsciously no doubt, biased.  (1911) 26 House of Commons Debates col. 1022

The judiciary have been ato the fore in opposing free speech. On December 1792 Lord Kenyon sentenced Thomas Paine to Outlawry after he was convicted of Seditious Libel. In October 1819 Richard Carlile was found guilty of blasphemy and seditious libel for writing an article about the Peterloo massacre and was sentenced to three years in Dorchester Gaol. Henry Cook, Daniel Defoe and Henry Hetherington are amongst others gaoled because they printed what the authorities didn’t like. In all cases the judiciary acted as the willing and eager servants of the government.

This is the historic context for the willingness of today’s judges to interpret the Terrorism Acts in the most austere and repressive fashion. Not only are organisations proscribed but supporting any act by them, even if it has no connection with terrorism, is deemed an offence. Hamas, whose proscription was particularly outrageous, was not only a resistance group but the elected government of Gaza.

In R v Choudary and Rahman [2016]: The Court of Appeal held that "support" includes moral, emotional, and "intellectual" support.

Indeed at times the prosecutor, Kate Temple-Mabe is more reasonable than Plaschkes. At one stage Plaschkes tried to persuade the parties to agree to reporting restrictions on the trial but the Prosecution wasn’t interested and so she didn’t pursue it.

In the afternoon Plaschkes raised the fact that a reporter had asked the parties for copies of their Skeleton Arguments, which are the basis for their respective arguments. Plaschkes seemed have a bee in her bonnet about them although she gave no reasons for her concerns. One can only assume that she is hostile to the principle of open justice

She was clearly unaware that the Bar Council issued advice to barristers in June 2015 about how to respond to requests from third parties for documents in the case and their advice was that the

The default position under the open justice principle is that the court should grant access to the parties’ skeleton arguments and written submissions... unless there is some strong countervailing reason to the contrary.

I am therefore, in the interests of open justice making available both the Prosecution and Defence Skeleton Arguments as well as the Ruling on Monday of Plaschkes.

The Terrorism Act 2000 – a Warrant for Genocide

The purpose of the Terrorism Act 2000 is not to prevent or deter terrorism as we are seeing today with the prosecution of supporters of Palestine Action. It is there to clamp down on any expression of support for groups the government doesn’t like.

These include groups which by no stretch of the imagination can be called terrorists. They are national liberation or resistance groups. As Tom King, the former Conservative Defence Secretary, observed in the debate on the then Terrorism Bill ‘one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.’ But instead of an objective definition of ‘terrorism’ that could then be applied to groups, everything is left to the discretion of Ministers.

So Hamas, even though it doesn’t operate on British soil, is proscribed as a ‘terrorist’ group because the British government supports the Israeli state and its occupation of Gaza. The justification isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It is an insult to the intelligence but in 2021 its political wing was banned by that corrupt liar, Priti Patel.  It states:

Hamas has used indiscriminate rocket or mortar attacks, and raids against Israeli targets. During the May 2021 conflict, over 4,000 rockets were fired indiscriminately into Israel. Civilians, including 2 Israeli children, were killed as a result. Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas, frequently use incendiary balloons to launch attacks from Gaza into southern Israel.

If accidentally killing two Israeli children is proof of terrorism, in addition to flying ‘incendiary balloons’ over the lands that were once theirs, then Israel is a terrorist state 10,000 times over (at least).

Banning the political wing of a group was a new departure and in my view unlawful. It asserted, without any evidence, that Hamas had become one single organisation. It the British Government had adopted the same policy towards the IRA and banned Sinn Fein, as the Unionists demanded, then there would have been no Good Friday peace agreement.

What is worse about this is that Hamas is not just a resistance organisation but the government of Gaza. It includes in its ranks those who have never handled a gun. Teachers, doctors, refuse workers, civil servants, lecturers etc. If a doctor is considered to be a terrorist because s/he is a member of the political wing then Israel can claim that when it targets hospitals it is targeting ‘terrorists’. 

That is why I say this is a warrant for genocide. Israel has targeted every single hospital in Gaza under the pretext that Hamas operates out of them. It hasn’t produced a shred of evidence that Hamas has used them as a base to fire on their military. But if unarmed civilians are called ‘terrorists’ then what Britain is doing is legitimising and justifying Israel’s attacks on hospitals, schools etc. Britain is thus encouraging what amounts to genocide.

Likewise the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is proscribed although it too doesn’t operate in this country. Its crime is that it opposes the Turkish dictator Recep Erdoğan. The justification for the proscription of the PKK is that it is ‘responsible for serious human rights abuses.’ Although acknowledging that the Turkish states tortures its opponents the Assessment justifying the proscription plays it down.

The Israeli state however can’t be proscribed because it’s only actions against governments that are ‘terrorist’. The Terrorism Act conflates two different types of organisations depending on whether the British government is friendly with the dictator in question.

As David Anderson QC observed in his Report ‘THE TERRORISM ACTS IN 2011’

The current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict, however great the provocation and however odious the regime which they have attacked.

Anderson went on to say in para. 4.50 that it is difficult to justify the proscription of:

(c) ethnic/separatist groups whose activities are not directed to the UK or UK interests, or which have no record of recruitment or fund-raising here, or whose ―terrorist‖ acts, performed in the context of war, are lawful under international humanitarian law. 132 That is so particularly when proscription risks affecting innocent members of the communities concerned.

Tony Greenstein relaxing inside Kingston Crown Court!

Section 1 of the Act defines terrorism solely in terms of influencing a government and it involves serious violence, property damage, endangers someone’s life, creates a serious danger to health and safety or disrupts or interferes with an electronic system.

There is nothing in the above cannot be covered by existing legislation. In short it is highly political to begin with. The definition is deliberately framed in terms of actions against an existing government. It deliberately excludes state terrorism of the kind the Israeli state has indulged in for over two years.

The genocidal Mayanamar government is not proscribed whereas groups opposing the government could be proscribed but for the discretion of Ministers. The decision as to who is and is not proscribed is therefore political relying on ministerial discretion.

Hamas is proscribed, not because of anything it has done but because of the British State’s relationship with the Israeli state. Those fighting the Myanamar government aren’t proscribed because the government doesn’t have friendly relations with the regime.

The decision to proscribe a group is arbitrary and has nothing to do with whether the group in question is engaged in terrorism, i.e. the deliberate targeting of civilians as ISIS and Al Qaeda do. This is why the Terrorism Act is not about terrorism but protecting friendly repressive regimes.

Ironically the Blair Government did more to create terrorism when they conducted an illegal invasion of Iraq than anyone. As a result of the invasion of Iraq ISIS was born.

Likewise the United States. By using Afghanistan to weaken the Soviet Union, the US created Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The ‘War on Terror’ was a deception which was used to repress Muslims at home and resistance organisations and unfriendly states abroad.

Plaque Commemorating the Case of Ed Bushells (1670) when the Jury was imprisoned for defying the Judge's instruction to convict - it is displayed at the Old Bailey today

In his follow-up report published in July 2014 Anderson quoted Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights which noted that the definition of terrorism “includes any action designed to influence the policy of any government, anywhere in the world’ and that

“The main problem to which this gives rise is that the counter-terrorism measures are capable of application to speech or actions concerning resistance to an oppressive regime overseas. For example, the creation of the offence of encouragement of ‘terrorism’ in s.1 of the Terrorism Act is to criminalise any expression of a view that armed resistance to a brutal or repressive anti-democratic regime might in certain circumstances be justifiable, even where such resistance consists of campaigns of sabotage against property, and specifically directed away from human casualties. The Home Secretary does not deny that this is the effect of the offence but defends its scope on the basis that there is nowhere in the world today where violence can be justified as a means of bringing about political change. (my emphasis)

It is difficult to think of a more reactionary dictum than saying that people everywhere must accept the regimes that rule them, however bloodthirsty and oppressive.

Judges such as Sarah Plaschkes are left to keep the reality of the Terrorism Act 2000 from juries. All that matters is whether one has broken the law. The law itself is not questioned.

Although I don’t support Hamas I do support resistance against Israel. In the eyes of the Prosecution that is tantamount to support for terrorism. Palestinians are expected to endure whatever Israel does because if they resist that is automatically ‘terrorism’. And if resisting the legal theft of Palestinian land becomes ‘terrorism’ then what is really being said is that the Palestinians are a terrorist people, which is what the Zionists say.

The contrast with Ukrainian resistance to the Russian occupation could not be greater. This is not deemed terrorism. The neo-Nazi Azov Brigade whose founder, Andriy Biletsky said in 2010 that Ukraine’s national mission was to

lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]”

does not face proscription though it satisfies the definition of terrorism in every respect. See The Western Media Is Whitewashing the Azov Battalion.

The irony is that if this Act had been in effect in the 1940s then the French Resistance could have been proscribed but not the Nazi occupiers.  Similarly the Warsaw Ghetto fighters could have been proscribed but not the SS troops led by General Juergen Stroop.

One final word about the backward and reactionary politics of British Judges. As the Law Gazette reported in June 2019, ‘Senior judges (are the) most socially exclusive' of all professionals’.  65% of senior judges were educated at an independent school and 75% attended Oxford or Cambridge.

Matt Foot, the Director of the charity Appeal, in an article ‘The courage and endurance of the jury’ in Counsel, the Bar Council magazine, quoted a ‘seminal book’ The Politics of the Judiciary written in 1976 by J.A.G. Griffith.

Griffith identified the number of judges from public school backgrounds had increased between 1987 and 1994 – from 70% to 80%.... 71% of senior judges attended independent schools (compared to 7% of the public as a whole) and 75% attended Oxford or Cambridge (compared to 1% of the public). Only 4% of 150 senior judges went to comprehensive school – the lowest figure for all groups. In Elitist Britain 2019, … ‘65% of the most senior judges in England and Wales went to an “independent school” – more than any other elite profession it looked at

Judges are not chosen for their brilliant intellects but primarily on the basis of their social class. Most people cannot afford to train as barristers unless their families are rich. With privilege comes a narrow-minded, blinkered and conservative outlook in which justice plays second fiddle to a rule of law that is based on the protection of their class interests. Hence why miscarriages of justice have never figured highly on their agenda and why today, the victims of miscarriages of justice have to prove their innocence in order to receive compensation thanks to a 2014 amendment to the Crime & Policing Act for which we have to thank the Lib-Dem/Tory Coalition Government.

Between 1999 and 2015 approximately 1,000 sub-postmasters were convicted of theft and false accounting. They were convicted on the basis of the common law presumption that the computer was right, following the repeal of s.69 of the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1984.  In this case the bug ridden Fujitsu Horizon software.

Not one Crown Court  judge thought fit to ask whether the Common Law presumptions should be challenged. You would have thought with cases of ‘fraudulent’ subpostmasters flooding through the criminal justice system that at least one judge would have woken up to the fact that something was wrong. 

But no, it took the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance formed by Alan Bates to eventually prove that the Post Office Executives were a bunch of crooks led by Paula Vennels, an ordained Anglican priest who has not yet been defrocked or prosecuted. Which is understandable since the Police hate prosecuting rich crooks.

Remember 236 or one-quarter of the postmasters were gaoled. At least 13 committed suicide. The CPS during Starmer’s time as DPP prosecuted at least 3 cases. As with Jimmy Saville he knew nothing.

This is one of the consequences of saying that something is the law. It means you don’t have to think any further. The idea that the courts should be about justice and that law serves the people and not the other way around is not something that the Sarah Plaschkes of this world understand.

Which is one reason why Plaschkes saw nothing wrong in Sarah Sackman, acting in a quasi-judicial position as Solicitor General, giving permission for my prosecution to go ahead given that Attorney General Hermer had disqualified himself. The fact that Sackman was not only Vice-Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, a Zionist group which was alleging that Palestine solidarity supporters in the Labour Party were anti-Semitic. It was integrally involved in my expulsion, to the point where Sackman attacked me personally in the Jewish News of 26 as ‘problematic’. This did not trouble Plaschkes at all.

Juries though have a wider common sense and appreciation of what is right and wrong. That is why many Palestine Action protesters have been acquitted. It is also why that ‘Christian’ David Lammy is intent on abolishing them. They are held responsible for delays in cases coming to court whereas the real problem lies in courts being empty much of the time. Judges can be relied upon to deliver the verdict that the state requires, whereas juries are more thoughtful.

That is why we should campaign against any attacks by creatures like Lammy on Jury trials. In fact we should reinstate them where they have been abolished. Libel trials used to be held in front of a jury.  Now that judges hear them the establishment has less to fear.

A few years ago I sued the Campaign Against Antisemitism who called me an anti-Semite. I lost. I have no doubt that if a jury had heard my case instead of Judge Nicklin and another nondescript High Court judge then I would have won.

Please sign and share this Parliamentary Petition Do not remove trial by jury for certain cases.

On 5 January I Shall Be On Trial Accused of ‘Terrorism’ – My Crime? Supporting the Palestinian Resistance – Please Join the Demonstration

The British State is Waging War Against Freedom of Speech on Palestine Because It Knows It’s Lost the Argument

Please Contribute to My Crowdfunder

https://chuffed.org/project/114730-stopping-the-police-persecuting-palestine-solidarity-activists 

Justice for Tony Greenstein – Electronic Intifada

For more information or to help with the solidarity campaign please go to Justice for Tony Greenstein

On 20 October 2023 I was arrested at 6.30 am at my home. My crime was posting a tweet one month before supporting the Palestinian resistance. My response was that ‘this is Orwellian’.

The same scenes have been re-enacted up and down the country against people like Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Barnard. Eleven months later I was charged with inviting support for a proscribed organisation, Hamas, based on a blog I had published on October 7.

The Gaza Ghetto Breakout

My trial begins on Monday 5 January 2026 at Kingston Crown Court. I am charged with ‘terrorism’ for writing a blog supporting the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and the right of the Palestinians to resist Israel’s unlawful occupation of Gaza.

The comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza was not mine but that of Marek Edelman, the last Commander of the Jewish Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Terrorism

Israel has had a permanent license from the West to commit genocide and war crimes, not just from October 7 but since the occupation of Gaza in 1967. But if the Palestinians resist then that is ‘terrorism’.

Everyone understands what the ordinary meaning of terrorism is. It is someone planting a bomb in the Manchester Arena and killing 22 people. It is the ISIS attack on the Bataclan concert in Paris by ISIS that killed nearly 100 concert goers. It is Israel dropping hundreds of 2,000 lb bombs on refugee camps.

Our government not only denies that this is terrorism but together with the US and Germany it supplies Israel with the arms with which to carry out its genocide and ethnic cleansing. All Israel’s massacres are ‘self defence’ according to Keir Starmer and David Lammy.

The fact is that our rulers have created the very terrorism that they purport to protect us against by introducing police state laws. Who created ISIS if not Britain and the United States by their illegal invasion of Iraq? ISIS did not exist before 2003 and the US in its efforts to ward of Shi’ite attacks on its soldiers fostered Al Qaeda in Iraq which later morphed into ISIS.

As Hilary Clinton admitted, the West sponsored and encouraged the growth of the Mujahadeen and provided it with weapons and money. Of course there was blow back, as there was when Salman Abedi was encouraged by MI5 to go to Libya to join the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was trying to overthrow Colonel Ghadaffi. The families of those who died in Manchester are suing MI5.

Hillary Clinton: "we have helped to create the problem we are now fighting"

The destruction of Palestinian society, its schools hospitals and universities, is acceptable to these genocidal freaks. They deny there is genocide. Yet Starmer argued that the killing of 8,000 people at Srebenica was genocide.

Mowing down those queuing for food, starving children to death and attacking first aiders is treated as acceptable. Zionist violence is fine when perpetrated against unarmed Palestinian civilians. But if the people of Palestine lift so much as a finger against their occupiers then that is a new holocaust.

In July 2024 the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Gaza unlawful. Yet according to the British government the Palestinians have no right to resist Israel’s occupation and siege. By the same light French resistance to the Nazis was terrorism. Our law is based on the same principles that enabled the violence of the British Empire.

It is worth recalling the words of the American Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,.... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Israel has reduced the situation of the Palestinians to absolute despotism. Their property is not theirs, their olive groves are burnt down, their land legally stolen. Israel’s brilliant judges have even invented the concept of stealing in good faith.

Palestinians cannot travel without encountering checkpoints. Their children cannot walk to school without being tear gassed. They have no hand in the laws that govern them and if they infringe these laws they are tried in Military Courts which have a 99.74 conviction rate, higher even than the Nazi Peoples’ Courts under Roland Freisler.

John Stuart Mill

One right that is inalienable is freedom of speech. As John Stuart Mill, Liberal MP from 1865-8 wrote in his most famous pamphlet On Liberty:

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle... That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

Mill was quite clear. No society had the right to attack or restrict freedom of speech and opinion unless it was to protect others. It was called the ‘harm principle’.

October 7

Israel portrayed October 7 as a second holocaust. As someone who lost a large part of his family in the Nazi holocaust I reject this comparison. Jews were killed by the Nazis because they were Jews, Israelis were killed because they were occupiers.

It is alleged that on 7 October 2023 Hamas committed many atrocities. There were undoubtedly some. No resistance organisation in history has been 100% pure. How can it be otherwise when the occupier, whether Israel, the French in Algeria or the British in Kenya is prepared to commit any atrocity and kill any number of people to maintain their rule?

Atrocity Propaganda

Since October 7 the Israeli government has constructed an atrocity propaganda narrative that outdoes anything that the British did in World War One. It alleged that Hamas had perpetrated mass rapes, beheading and even baking babies. They were following a well worn path. This was the standard reaction of colonists to slave rebellions and the revolt of indigenous people.

The Israeli narrative of mass Hamas atrocities against babies was crucial in the justification of the genocide. It is now accepted that only one baby, Mila Cohen in Kibbutz Be’eri, died. Israel’s own social security statistics confirm this.

But this did not stop the Daily Mail leading with ‘This was a holocaust pure and simple’ alleging that Hamas beheaded 40 babies. Virtually all the British press led with these false accusations, The Times included and not one of them has withdrawn the story.

Before Israel had a chance to fabricate its narrative my eye was caught by an article on October 8 in the Times of Israel which described what happened in Kibbutz Re’im after a fight in which a Hamas militant killed a father and his partner. The mother of the surviving children, Reut Karp, told how

The terrorist calmed down my Daria and Lavi, covered them in a blanket, took lipstick and wrote on the wall: ‘The al-Qassam [Brigades] people don’t murder children.’

It was also alleged that Hamas had killed hundreds of civilians.  It now appears that it was the Israeli state itself which killed most people through using the Hannibal Directive, which was originally devised in Lebanon in 1986. The Hannibal Directive states that it is better to kill a soldier taken captive than to allow him to be swapped for hostages at a later stage.

On October 7 the Hannibal Directive was applied to civilians and every car that was thought to be heading for Gaza was bombed. The resulting car graveyard makes it clear that most of the damage was from Israel’s Apache helicopters. Hamas did not have the firepower to do the damage to the cars that the Apaches did.

In addition at Kibbutz Be'eri we know that General Barak Hiram ordered tank commanders to fire at the houses in order to kill the Hamas militants, despite the fact that they also killed the inhabitants of those houses.

The Misuse of the Terrorism Act 2000

When the Terrorism Bill was debated in Parliament in December 1999, in response to the suggestion that those supporting the Kurdish opposition to Saddam Hussein could be charged with terrorist offences, Home Secretary Jack Straw suggested that such an idea was the product of a ‘fevered imagination.’ Yet today the Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK, which opposes another dictator, Recip Erdogan, is proscribed.

Straw responded to accusations that the widening of the definition of terrorism could encompass protest groups and international solidarity activities by saying that ‘the broadening of the Bill covers domestic terrorism.’ If a week is a long time in politics then 20 years is an eternity.

The British government has been complicit in the Genocide. That is why it has refused to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide despite human rights organisations being unanimous that a genocide has taken place. The Association of Genocide Scholars and even eight former Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges (Baroness Hale, Lord Sumption, Lord Wilson, Lord Carnwath, Sir Stephen Sedley, Sir Alan Moses, Sir Anthony Hooper and Sir Richard Aikens) have reached a similar conclusion.

The use of the Terrorism Act against dissenters, bloggers and writers has been their response to the massive Palestine solidarity movement that has grown up. Mine is the first such trial.

Our rulers try to control our ability to think by redefining concepts such as ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘terrorism’ into their opposites. Anti-Semitism, which is hatred or hostility to Jews as Jews has been redefined as hatred of Zionism and Israeli racism via the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and its 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’, seven of which are about Israel.

The leaders of British Zionist organisations have been recruited by the Police and Media to parrot how ‘offended’ Jews are that people take offence at the pictures of starving Palestinian children. It is no surprise that the Metropolitan Police have adopted the Zionist IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which is no definition at all.

Orwell noted how atrocities are downplayed by describing them in neutral language:

political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.

Orwell defined liberty as ‘the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ Today if you do that you will be called a ‘terrorist’ and arrested. The British security state doesn’t appreciate criticism of its foreign policies. As Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights observed, the proscribing of Palestine Action:

misuses the gravity and impact of terrorism to expand it beyond those clear boundaries, to encompass further conduct that is already criminal under the law".

Challenging the States’ right to define what is and is not terrorism has itself become a form of ‘terrorism’. When Palestine Action was proscribed and people sat with signs saying they supported PA and opposed genocide they were arrested in their thousands.

If anyone should have been arrested it was the owners of Elbit, an Israeli arms company which manufactured drones used to kill children. But in Starmer’s dystopia those who seek to prevent the manufacture of child killing machines are the criminals.

In the words of John Dugard, Professor of Law and ad-hoc Judge of the International Court of Justice ‘The label of ‘terrorist’ is being used in a bid to discredit and silence opponents. Terrorism has been redefined in s.1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 as a threat to health and safety, destruction of property or attacking a computer system.

The definition of terrorism in the TA 2000 is wide enough to drive a coach and horses through. It can encompass virtually any group that the government doesn’t like. The power to proscribe groups is arbitrary, the decision of the Home Secretary alone. This in itself is one of the characteristics of a police state.

If this redefinition involves an attack on freedom of speech we can be sure there will be judges on hand to say that it is a proportionate response to an unknown threat and compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. When the word ‘terrorism’ is uttered judges tend to go weak at the knees.

Although the Supreme Court expressed its unhappiness with the current definition of terrorism in R v Gul [2013] UKSC 64 it wasn’t willing to interpret it in the light of Article 10 of ECHR and read it down. They said:

While acknowledging that the issue is ultimately one for Parliament, we should record our view that the concerns and suggestions about the width of the statutory definition of terrorism.... Any legislative narrowing of the definition of “terrorism”, with its concomitant reduction in the need for the exercise of discretion under section 117 of the 2000 Act, is to be welcomed....

The house of Mr Arthur du Cros at St Leonards, Hastings, burnt down by suffragettes, 1913. The smoking ruins of the house which was burnt on 14th April in protest at the resistance of the Liberal government to grant women the vote. The Liberal MP was a pioneer of the pneumatic tyre and the founder of the Dunlop Rubber Company.

David Anderson, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism, in his Report of June 2012 similarly wrote:

As presently drafted, the definition is so broad as to criminalise certain acts carried out overseas that constitute lawful hostilities under international humanitarian law.... the current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict, however great the provocation and however odious the regime which they have attacked.

In other words the so-called Terrorism Act is a means of supporting friendly terrorist regimes. In his 2014 Report Anderson wrote of the

the extraordinarily broad definition of terrorism under UK law, and the heavy reliance that is placed on the wise exercise of discretions by Ministers, prosecutors and police.’

Genocidal Israeli Rap Song Goes Viral in Israel - this is how sick Israeli society is

Yvette Cooper demonstrated just how broad the definition of ‘terrorism’ is when she banned Palestine Action. Her shallowness and dishonesty was demonstrated when she appeared in the House of Commons in the purple colours of the Suffragettes on the very day that Palestine Action was banned. If any group could have been called ‘terrorist’ then it was the Suffragettes who bombed and burnt their way to universal suffrage.

Anderson wrote that

It seems that the writing of a book, an article or a blog may therefore amount to terrorism if publication is “for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause..  designed to influence the government and liable to endanger life or create a serious risk to health or safety.”

Which is a way of rendering illegal any revolutionary ideology such as Marxism. It is what they used to call sedition, the overthrow of capitalism. Anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism are certainly out. Only capitalist and imperialist violence is allowed.

Anderson wrote that ‘The consequences of publication as a terrorist action stretch well beyond the national security sphere.’ and gave the example of an anti-vaccination article which might be held to cause a risk to public health, which is one of the grounds on which something can be called ‘terrorism’. He also wrote

Nor does the potential for exorbitant application of the terrorism laws end there. The vast penumbra of ancillary offences and powers has the potential greatly to magnify the “chilling effect” of the broad definition.

Anderson concluded that

a)      To afford over-broad discretions to Ministers, prosecutors and police is undesirable in itself. As the Supreme Court maintained in R v Gul, it leaves citizens in the dark and risks undermining the rule of law.

b)      To render people subject to the terrorism laws whom no sensible person would think of as terrorists risks destroying the trust upon which these special powers depend for their acceptance by the public.

c)      To bring activities such as journalism and blogging within the ambit of “terrorism” (even if only when they are practised irresponsibly) encourages the “chilling effect” that can deter even legitimate enquiry and expression in related fields.

Fiona Sharpe Shouting Racist Abuse at a Palestinian Who She Got Arrested When She Claimed She Was the Victim - the Magistrates Threw the Case Out and Warned Her About Perjuring Herself After Film Evidence Was Produced - Which is why the Police Have Awarded Her a Medal for her Snitching - see here for details

The Context of What is Happening and What We Can Do

Yet this has now happened in my case and those of other activists. Not only are the Police monitoring social media instead of tackling genuine crime but they are encouraging the mentality of the Gestapo/ Stasi informer. Zionists such as Heidi Bachram and Fiona Sharpe, known liars who were caught out last week trying to cancel Reginald Hunter are reporting peoples’ names to the Police who are only too happy to act on them.

This is Sussex Police's Perjuror Award Which Fiona Sharpe, standing next to Chief Constable Jo Shiner, easily won again

At the same time rape has all but been decriminalised as the Police claim they don’t have enough resources. It is not resources but where Police priorities lie and they are clearly more happy to criminalise those who say things they don’t like than to solve cases of rape. The question is why?

That is why my case is important. This government supports a terrorist state, Israel, which is openly embarking on extermination and ethnic cleansing. Its leaders are quite open about their desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its inhabitants yet Starmer and Lammy see nothing, say nothing and hear nothing.

Heidi Bachram - following in the footsteps of Gestapo & Stasi Informers - Wears a Scowl Most of the Time She is Awake

Yet it is critics of the genocidal policy of this government, including Jewish critics, who are now being subject to the tender mercies of the Anti-Terror Police who are now the equivalent of Orwell's Thought Police.

Tony Greenstein