Festive Greetings to My Readers but Spare a Thought for the People of Gaza Who Face a Bleak Xmas & New Year Because of Israeli & US War Criminals

Thank you for the Solidarity you have Shown to Mick Napier and Myself as Britain’s Police Try to Criminalise Palestinian Solidarity

If the Rotten & Corrupt Arab Regimes Followed the Example of the Houthis in Yemen & Cut Off the Oil then Israel’s Genocide Would Be Stopped Instantly

Christmas Has Been Shot

Benjamin Zephania

Christmas has been shot away this year,
There are too many choppers chopping up the sky
Too many bullets in the air for good tidings,
There will be no Christ and no mass
And darkness has fallen upon the land.
No one shall make a joyful noise unto the Lord
Or serve the Lord with gladness,
No one shall come before his presence with singing,
And Palestinian Christians who want to declare
The name of the Lord in Jerusalem
Or glorify the boy in Bethlehem
Have been told to piss off to Jordan,
Syria or Iraq.

All the saints have been told
To wait for the resumption of peace talks
And the angels of the Lord have been told
To wait until the Americans are ready
Because Zion means something else now,
And yes it was written that the truth shall flow
From the mouths of babe and suckling,
But babes and sucklings beware
The soldiers have orders to kill,
And the spirit of King Herod is alive.
They’re not doing Christmas this year,
It has been shot away
‘And anyway
Christ is no messiah,’ said the soldier
‘This is our Promised Land.’

What we see over Bethlehem this year
Is a spineless, skeleton of a Christmas,
A Christmas that has been occupied, strangled
And driven to tears, crying tear gas and burning,
It’s a Christmas that has no songs or sermons
Except the song of the bomber;
As loud as dying
As quiet as death.
Welcome to the birthplace of his holiness
Welcome to the humiliation of the natives,
Here even flowers are shot down
If they fly the local flag,
You will not hear the bells of Christmas
And you will not hear the women sing.
‘And let me tell you something else,’ said the soldier
‘No virgin gave birth here – we wouldn’t allow it.’

Sorry gentiles
It looks like it’s gonna be a cold Christmas,
Ain’t no spirit of the Lord moving over the manger
Just a nuclear power
Flying in from Tel Aviv via Washington DC.
The power of the almighty has come for sure
To suck Christmas dry
And to blow Christmas away.
There will be no mercy
And no rejoicing
And no worshipping any little Black Palestinian boy,
And no crosses
And no three wise women or men
And no Arab shepherds,
Because Christmas has been done in
Christmas is coughing and choking
Christmas has been hit by bullets from the west,
So if you want to do Christmas this year
Take a bible,
Sit indoors,
And do your own thing,
Just don’t do it in Bethlehem.    

One thing is for sure. Nothing will ever be the same after the October 7^th break-out from Gaza Concentration camp. ‘Normalisation’ by Saudi Arabia is off the agenda.

The venom attached to the death of 1,200 (but probably lower) number of Israeli deaths is in marked contrast to the indifference if not delight at the genocidal murder of Palestinians in Gaza.

Yesterday anti-Zionist Jewish activist Tony Greenstein was arrested at his home by British anti-terror police for a tweet (below).

Police seized his phone and laptop and held him for nine hours. His electronics were not returned on his release. pic.twitter.com/bpbDP20cfW

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) December 21, 2023

There has been an adamant refusal by the mass media to publish the fact that one-third of the casualties were Israeli soldiers whom it was perfectly reasonable for Hamas to attack. International law recognises the right of an oppressed people to wage war on their oppressor.

Nor has there been an inkling of recognition that, as Israeli survivors like Jasmine Porat have testified, a majority of the remaining civilian deaths were caused by Israeli firepower.

One of the main purveyors of false stories of rape is ex-IDF spokesperson Cochav Elkayam-Levy whom the BBC naturally took to their bosom

Instead we have had fake stories of rape and torture of Israelis and 40 beheaded babies spread far and wide. The death of premature babies in Al Shifa hospital, directly caused by Israel, hasn’t merited so much as a response.

Israeli Anger Over the Truth of How Hamas Treats Its Prisoners Led to the Dismissal of the Hospital Employee Who Facilitated a Press Conference that Yochev Lifshitz Spoke At

The fact is that numerous Israeli hostages testified to their humane treatment by Hamas in marked contrast to the reports of summary execution of civilians by Israel and widespread torture of prisoners.

As Peter Oborne so rightly says, if Jesus was alive today his days would be numbered at the hands of the Zionist military. Gaza has definitively  proved that the ‘human rights’ concerns of Western leaders when it comes to the Uighars of China and women in Iran are utter hypocrisy.

Every abomination from attacks on residential homes to the murder of over 100 journalists to mass torture, murder of doctors and the bombing of ambulances and schools has been applauded by Genocide Joe Biden and his pet puppets Sunak & Starmer.

The outpouring of rage over Russia’s sorely provoked invasion of Ukraine stands in marked contrast to the silence of western leaders over the slaughter of 10,000+ Palestinian children.

If there is one conclusion that cannot be avoided now it is that the ‘Jewish’ State of Israel, as an apartheid, genocidal state has got to go. Reform is impossible. Racism and murder is part of Israel’s DNA.

This should have been obvious all along. A Jewish ethno-nationalist state is, like all ethno-nationalist states, inherently racist. Zionism with its goal of a Greater Israel was never going to be content to stay within the 1948 Armistice Lines.

What is also clear is that the different wings of Zionism, from ‘left’ to ‘right’ are artificial. From Meretz to Otzmah Yehudit there is a consensus that the Arabs are outsiders in Israel.  Ben Gvir wants ‘radical’ solutions such as expulsion but that was also the recipe of the Labour Zionists in 1948.

The difference this time around is that the whole world is watching. After 1948 the Zionists concocted a fiction that the Palestinian refugees left voluntarily because of the orders of Arab rulers despite being begged to stay. This time there can be no pretence as the United States and European powers turn a blind eye to Zionist desires to rid Gaza of its population.

The war against the Palestinians of Gaza has also brought into being a mass movement in support of the Palestinians. Despite the best attempts of the state to repress the movement and ban its marches, it has succeeded in mobilising over a million people in Britain.

We have to capitalise on this and ensure that the movement in support of the Palestinians and in opposition to Zionism grows in the coming months. Just as the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa 30 years ago created a mass movement so must the struggle against Zionism in Israel.

What is also clear is that we must create a national solidarity movement. Palestine Solidarity Campaign is not fit for purpose. It has jettisoned anti-Zionism and tried to appeal to the ‘mainstream’ of British politics. In that it has been wholly unsuccessful. Its refusal to say what it stands for, its failure to condemn the discredited two-state solution has mean that it has nothing to say on the ‘right to exist’ of the Israeli state. PSC has also refused to condemn the Vichy-style Palestinian Authority that the West supports.

PSC’s failure to call-out the fake anti-Semitism smear campaign has meant that its affiliated trade unions have faced two-ways. Supporting the Palestinians whilst also support Israel’s ‘right to exist.’

As you know Mick Napier and I have been arrested on ‘suspicion’ of supporting Hamas, which is proscribed as a ‘terrorist’ organisation on the say so of one man, Home Secretary Sajid David in 2021. We have since learnt of other arrests for the same ‘crime’.

So I want to make my position crystal clear. Although I don’t and never have supported Hamas politically, I support their and all Palestinians’ right to resist the Israeli military occupation and I hope that as many Israeli soldiers in Gaza are killed as possible.

I also reject the designation of Hamas as a ‘terrorist’ group. It is nothing of the sort. This designation is political and is not based on anything so much as factual evidence.

The Nazification of Israel proceeds apace. Gaza today is little more than a death camp where 2 million people are being subject to slow starvation, where water is not allowed in and where all civilian infrastructure is being destroyed on the presence that it contains Hamas headquarters.

A few days ago Israel even invaded a Christian church killing two worshippers, meriting a rare rebuke from the Pope.

Israel today has learnt the lessons of the Holocaust well. Exterminating people is not wrong per se as long as it’s not Jews who are dying. The level of racism in Israeli society today is far, far higher than in Nazi Germany where anti-Semitism was always confined to a minority, certainly before 1933.

Happy Yuletide and New Year

Tony Greenstein 

On Wednesday 7 am I was arrested by the Sussex Stasi for a Tweet in Support of the Palestinian Resistance to Genocide

Orwell’s Prediction that Freedom of Speech & Association Would Be Attacked by the State in the name of ‘Fighting Terrorism’ is Coming True

I had only just gone to bed, having finished a blog criticising Unite’s racist General Secretary Sharon Graham when I heard my front door bell ringing. Curious as to who was calling this early in the morning I hurriedly dressed and answered the door only to find the filth had decided on an early morning raid.

Areopagitica is Milton's famous essay that passionately defends freedom of speech and expression - perhaps Sunak and Starmer might care to read it?

A plain clothes cop dressed in an ill-fitting, crumpled grey suit announced that they had come to arrest me on ‘suspicion’ of having committed an offence under s.12 (1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000.

At the behest of the Zionists & apologists for Genocide Sussex Police Arrested Tony Greenstein on suspicions of 'terrorism

I support the Palestinians that is enough and I support Hamas against the Israeli army https://t.co/ICv99vWQAW

— Tony Greenstein (@TonyGreenstein) November 15, 2023

My offence was having tweeted, in response to a Zionist, that:

‘I support the Palestinians that is enough and I support Hamas against the Israeli army

After having detained me in a police van the Police then proceeded to steal my laptop, desktop computer, two external hard drives and two mobile devices. Why you might ask did they need to remove all my electronic equipment?

William Tyndale was another martyr in the cause of free speech - he was executed by strangulation and then burned at the stake at Vilvoorde in 1536

If they were so confident of the flimsy case against me what need was there for my computers and phones? After all I wasn’t being arrested for having engaged in terrorism or planting bombs etc. My ‘crime’ was that I was alleged to have given my support to a proscribed organisation, Hamas. An allegation that I deny incidentally.

John Lilburne, leader of the Levellers, imprisoned by Cromwell. The Levellers appealed to reason against arguments drawn from precedent or biblical authority 

The real reason for the Police thefts is that they are engaged on a fishing expedition and are using a solitary tweet as an excuse for an intelligence gathering exercise. There is nothing on my computers that will enable them to press further charges that they can’t obtain from the 3,000+ blogs that I have done in 15 years.

What is on my computers is confidential medical information on my autistic son and myself. As well as phone numbers/contacts of people on the left and in the Palestine solidarity movement.

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, (Index of Forbidden Books) was first published in 1559. Publication continued till 1966 and it contained thousands of heretical books

This is not the action of a police force in a democratic state. They are sending out a warning that they are perfectly prepared to abuse the enormous powers that this Government has given them and which Starmer, the leader of the so-called Opposition would give them, in order to gather intelligence on their enemies on the Left and in the Palestine solidarity movement.

Those who are deemed to be the leadership of the radical section of the Palestine solidarity movement are particularly at risk. It is no accident that at almost the same time my comrade and friend Mick Napier, founder of Scottish PSC, was also arrested on very similar charges and given even more stringent conditions for his bail.

But they are wrong.  The movement has far outgrown Mick and myself. It is led by thousands of people who are appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the complicity of the West’s leaders, not least Sunak and Starmer.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was the counterpart to Thomas Paine's 'Rights of Man' - a supporter of the French Revolution

The Legal Basis for the Stasis’s Early Morning Raid

The whole basis of the early morning raid on my home is fraudulent. The Terrorism Act 2000 was enacted in order to prevent acts of terrorism such as the bombing of the Manchester Arena, for which we have to thank MI5 who employed the bomber as its agent.

George Orwell

It is now being used, along with Prevent, not to prevent terrorism but to label political opposition to the foreign policy of the British Government as ‘terrorism’. As Orwell wrote so perceptively:

political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus 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. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

Peterloo Massacre of demonstrators in Manchester by the army - the local magistrates had summoned in the yeomanry to prevent a mass meeting

Clause 1A of Section 12 of the Terrorism Act was inserted in April 2019 by the  Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019. It is the kind of provision that Generals Franco and Pinochet would have been proud of. What it does is criminalise the expression of opinion. It creates what Orwell would have called a ‘thought crime’. It reads:

A person commits an offence if the person—

(a)    expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and

(b)   in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.

Note the weasel wording. The first part doesn’t say you support a proscribed organisation. What you say merely has to be ‘supportive’ of such an organisation.

William Tyndale

The second part of this clause is even more slippery. You don’t have to have an intent to encourage others to support a proscribed organisation. You merely have to be ‘reckless’ as to whether or not someone will be encouraged to give their support.

And how can you just whether someone is reckless? It is entirely subjective and its only effect can be to intimidate people into silence for fear of saying the wrong thing. It is a dictator’s dream.

The list of proscribed groups can be found here. A group can be proscribed under section 3 of the Act on the basis of a decision by one person – the Home Secretary. There is no requirement that the decision be objectively justified.  It is a nakedly political decision.

What is the justification for proscribing Hamas? There are 3 paragraphs. The first gives a potted history of Hamas. Prior to 2021 only the military wing of Hamas was proscribed but under Israeli pressure the government agreed to proscribe its political wing too.

This is justified by saying that

The government now assess that the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial. Hamas is a complex but single terrorist organisation.

We are not told what has changed between 2001 and 2021 which justified this decision for the simple reason that nothing had changed. The decision was political not factual. It follows that any prosecution under this section must also be political.

The second  paragraph attempts to justify Sajid  Javid’s decision in 2021 to proscribe Hamas’s political wing saying:

Hamas commits and participates in terrorism. 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. There was a spate of incendiary balloon attacks from Gaza during June and July 2021, causing fires in communities in southern Israel that resulted in serious damage to property.

This is a truly pathetic justification. It was Israel which broke the ceasefire in May 2021 as it has done on all previous occasions. There is no mention of Israel dropping 2000 lb bombs on peoples’ homes killing scores of children. Even prior to the current genocide some 551 children were killed in Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

According to this definition Israel is a terrorist state but Israel has not been proscribed. Quite the contrary. The British government is not only supplying it with weapons but it has members of the armed forces operating in Gaza.

The dishonesty is obvious. The number of children killed by Israel is greater than those killed by Hamas by a factor of thousands. Over 8,000 children have been murdered so far in Operation Iron Swords. The case for designating Israel as a terrorist entity is overwhelming. As Lord Carrington, Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary once observed ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.’

The arrest of not just me, but Mick Napier of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Haneen Barghouti – a Palestinian student at Sussex University – and others that I am aware of, is strongly suggestive of the fact that the State, knowing that Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians is very unpopular, has decided to brand critics of the war and in particular supporters of the right of Palestinians to resist, as supporters of ‘terrorism’.

The right of an oppressed people under occupation to resist the occupation and engage in wars of national liberation is a right recognised under international law, specifically in the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, as a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere.

The Terrorism Act 2000, if it had been in operation at the time, could just as easily have been used to proscribe the French and Czech resistance to the Nazis. It would certainly have been used to proscribe the African National Congress in South Africa which was classified by the United States as a terrorist organisation.

In August 1988 the ANC was classed by the State Department as a terrorist organisation and until 2008 both the ANC and Nelson Mandela remained on the US terrorism watch lists.

That is why the proscription of Hamas is entirely political. It has no objective basis. What I and the others are being arrested and charged for is not support for terrorism but support for the right of the oppressed to resist their oppressors. The law under which people are being charged is both political and dishonest.

It is indisputable that the arrest and charging of activists is about freedom of speech on Palestine. It is an attempt to prevent us speaking out about genocide. This is made clear in the third of my bail conditions where it says that I am:

Not to post on X (formerly Twitter) in regards to the ongoing conflict in Gaza or the prescribed (sic) organisation Hamas

Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which Western Governments are Busy Ignoring or even seeking to Abolish

This is a clearly unlawful attempt to prevent me speaking out on Gaza’s ongoing genocide. Article 10.1 of the European Convention of Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers

Although there are restrictions in 10.2 they do not cover the expression of pure political opinions.

You might think that Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign would be the first to protest at this misuse of the Terrorism Act. Unfortunately the cowardice of PSC’s leadership of PSC is infinite.

Lost track of how many times Scottish pro-Palestine activist Mick Napier has been arrested over the years, only for charges to be dropped before trial or thrown out by a judge. He was in court again today for alleged activities during protests against Israel's war crimes in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/efEAJt4ovR

— Hassan Ghani (@hassan_ghani) December 19, 2023

Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley reports that when:

Asked about both Napier and Greenstein, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign headquartered in London – a separate organization from the Scottish PSC – declined to comment.

“No one is available to comment,” a spokesperson said on Friday.

The Socialist Action leaders of PSC have made political cowardice into a fine art.

This video from Saturday Dec 16th shows the moment he was grabbed by police in Glasgow city centre as a Palestine protest dispersed. pic.twitter.com/GZJTRRO2J9

— Hassan Ghani (@hassan_ghani) December 19, 2023

Do I Support Hamas?

I should make it clear that politically I don’t and never have supported Hamas as an Islamist organisation (see here and here). However I also recognise that it is a Palestinian resistance organisation and as such it is entitled, indeed duty bound, to defend Palestinians against the ethnic cleansing and genocidal actions of the                                                   Israeli state. Ironically Hamas owes its creation to the actions of the Israeli state which in the late 1980s saw Hamas as a way of undermining secular Palestinian nationalism.

Like the United States sponsorship of the Taliban and Mojahedeen in Afghanistan the Zionist outcry against Hamas is completely hypocritical.

Please donate to our Crowdfunder

Unfortunately this attack on Palestine solidarity activists is also financially expensive. For example, although I was legally aided at the Police Station, once on bail I am not eligible for legal aid until charged but I need to retain a solicitor.

Other people who have been arrested are, for different reasons, ineligible for legal aid.

I have set up a Crowdfunder with Just Giving specifically to support people who are arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 in connection with Palestine solidarity. Please give generously whatever you can afford.

Tony Greenstein

See

Exclusive: police try to gag Greenstein, invade privacy through bail conditions

Exclusive: Greenstein arrested by anti-terror cops – for one tweet

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham Refused to Allow Executive Members To Take the Union Banner on the last London Palestine Demonstration

Since Issuing a Pathetically Weak Statement on  Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, Graham Has Done Precisely Nothing Since

If You Are a Unite Member Please Sign this Open Letter to Sharon Graham

https://forms.gle/yrkdZ2avPTXpkx5x7

After having resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire for the first 4 weeks of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, Sharon Graham eventually gave way and issued a pathetically weak statement that didn’t even mention Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. See

VICTORY - Sharon Graham Does What She Said Was Impossible A Week Ago and Calls for an Immediate Ceasefire

The best thing about the statement was the headline ‘Unite calls for an immediate ceasefire’. Graham, who was happy to prance around with the Ukrainian flag and back NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, which has armed a variety of neo-Nazi militias, has done absolutely  nothing to give support to the Palestinians.

Graham supported dockers at Dungeness and Ellesmere Port who refused to load and unload Russian ships. She has done nothing to prevent British arms supplies to Israel.

Not only has Graham not been seen anywhere near a Palestinian flag but Executive members who were on the last demonstration in London reported that they were told that they could not take Unite’s national banner with them according to reports.

Despite Unite having good policy on Boycotting Israel and opposing Israeli Apartheid Graham has repeatedly appeased the Israel lobby in this country. The far-right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism claimed that Graham had been in correspondence with them before a ban was issued preventing Jeremy Corbyn – The Big lie being shown on Unite premises.

On 23 July the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism alleged that

‘Following correspondence with Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Unite union has cancelled the screening of a propaganda film about the antisemitic former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn that was due to be shown alongside a book signing and talk from Asa Winstanley.

Apparently, this is NOT Liz Truss at a Bandera Nazi rally. It's a UNITE union meeting, attempting to whip up support for Ukraine.
I hope they know what Zelensky does to unions in Ukraine.
I fucking despair with levels of cuntery in this ridiculous nation of twats. pic.twitter.com/0DVQAfRcEN

— Mannie Quinn (@MannieMighty1) September 10, 2023

I immediately wrote to Graham about this, given that the CAA, a far right, Islamaphobic ‘charity’ had weaponised anti-Semitism in the fight to remove Jeremy Corbyn.

On 30 August Gail Cartmail, Graham’s dogsbody, emailed me writing that

' Unite as a union is outstanding in both our commitment to anti-racism and solidarity with the Palestinian cause, actions speak louder than words.'

 I agree. Actions speak louder than words and Graham has done fuck all to support the Palestinians. She is a British nationalist and a Zionist. She went overboard to support Ukrainian nationalists despite their neo-Nazi militias being integrated into the state and their hero worship of Stepan Bandera, who had the blood of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles on his hands, but when it comes to the Palestinians she has said and done precisely nothing.

Israel in its latest raid has imprisoned the Director of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin -   this is cultural genocide

Racism runs through Sharon Graham like the lettering through a stick of Brighton rock. Graham is an utter disgrace to Unite and the trade union movement and the sooner she goes the better.

I have therefore drafted an Open Letter ‘Our Response to Unite Statement Calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza’ and over a hundred people have signed it already. If you are a Unite member I would ask you to sign it here.

https://forms.gle/yrkdZ2avPTXpkx5x7