29 November 2024

Today I'll Be Charged with the Crime of Defending the Right of the Palestinians to Resist Genocide

While the Telegraph & GB News Had a Collective Tantrum About Allison Pearson, They've Ignored the Raids & Arrests of Activists for Speaking Out on Palestine


Tony Greenstein's interview on Al Jazeera about Police repression of Palestine solidarity activists

Whilst Telegraph nonentity Allison Pearson is described by the Standard as a ‘free speech martyr’ and the Spectator’s Laurie Wastell attacks Private Eye for not applauding this racist ‘heroine’, the Anti-Terrorist Police have been raiding the homes of Palestine solidarity activists and dissident journalists up and down the country, without a word of protest from the Torygraph, Spectator or Guardian.

Allison Pearson - Torygraph Presstitute

Sarah Wilkinson, a Palestinian supporting journalist, was raided by police thugs in balaclava who trashed her house, stole her money, hid her credit cards and took her passport (whilst making it a condition of bail that she surrenders it). Not a peep out of the Scum, Mail etc.

Our 'free press' only get worked up when the police arrest by mistake one of their stenographers

Sarah was asked for details of activists in Gaza, including their location. Given the close collaboration between the Israeli and British military this suggests that they were setting these people up for assassination.


Fiona Rayan's Xmas message that Jesus was a Palestinian led to the Filth arresting her and the courts sentencing her to a suspended prison sentence

Asa Winstanley, a journalist on Electronic Intifada, had his house raided on October 7 and all his equipment seized, although he wasn’t arrested. In the wake of the raid on Winstanley’s home, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on British authorities to cease using counter-terrorism laws to intimidate the press.  

The National Union of Journalists  “condemned the rising use of counter-terrorism legislation against journalists as an intimidatory measure harmful to public interest journalism and press freedom”.

Its general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said that

The UK government cannot on one hand state its commitment to valuing media freedom whilst endorsing the targeting of journalists through raids and seizures.

Richard Medhurst, another pro-Palestinian journalist, was arrested at Heathrow airport, held in solitary confinement for 24 hours, had his equipment seized and is facing a charge under the notorious Terrorism Act 2000, which carries a 14 year sentence.

The NUJ and International Federation of Journalists also expressed grave concern over the chilling effect of Richard Medhurst’s detention and wrote to Matt Jukes, UK Head of Counter Terrorism Policing with concerns.


These arrests are just the tip of the iceberg. Up and down the country activists, including families of activists, have been raided by the Police using counter-terrorism powers in their efforts to defend the genocidal state of Israel. They have particularly concentrated on attacking activists associated with Palestine Action.

I am pleased to say that the Police have failed. I was arrested driving activists to the Shenstone UAV drone engine factory three years ago. It has been the scene of repeated attacks by PA. As the Canary reported

On Monday 25 November, Palestine Action started the week by shutting down the UAV Engines plant, locking-on inside vehicles, to block the factory gates. On Wednesday 27 November, they were back again, to once more blockade the gates to the Shenstone plant, and close production down.

Now, Palestine Action returned, and this time its actionists scaled the roof of one of the factory’s two buildings. The action coincides with blockades at the Department of Business & Trade and the Foreign Office by allied groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement.

In addition to these actions, on Tuesday 26 November, the UAV Engines factory was the scene of a well-attended protest by Palestine solidarity activists from the local community.

There was a similar report in the Morning Star. The Police claim to be politically neutral but it is clear that when the capitalist state is involved in a war, as the British state certainly is in Gaza, then all such pretences are dropped.

Not one genocide supporting Zionist has been arrested despite genocide being a crime under both national and international law.

On 20 December 2023 I was arrested in a dawn raid on my home on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organisation. No my ‘crime’ was not supporting the terrorist State of Israel which has carried out a genocide in Gaza and is doing so to this day. It was supporting the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, of which Hamas are a component. Needless to say all my electronic devices were also seized.

Nor am I being charged with being an ancillary to, i.e. helping Israel to commit a genocide by for example giving them the weapons to murder babies, children, women and men. Although this is illegal under the International Criminal Court Act 2001. If the above law was being enforced then it would be those who make millions from the death of children who’d have been hauled up before the courts.

The war criminal leaders of the West – Genocide Joe, Killer Kamala, Blind Blinken, to say nothing of Sunak, Starmer, Lammy, Scholtz et al. are not facing justice. It has taken over a year for the International Criminal Court to even issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

It is those who are opposed to these genocidal monsters who are facing Stasi-like repression from the British state and its echo chamber scribblers in the mass media – from the BBC, Daily Mail to the ‘liberal’ Guardian. It is opponents of genocide, racism and apartheid who are being criminalised.

My arrest was for a tweet I made on 15 November 2023 by someone identifying himself only as James who demanded:

“Just tweet I support Hamas!’ 3 words is all you have to tweet and then we know where you stand.”

I refused to take the bait and responded “I support the Palestinians that is enough” before going on to say ‘I support Hamas against the Israeli army’. As I told my police interrogators after my arrest I would have supported the devil against Israel’s genocidal army.


In fact because of a hospital appointment the date of charging was put back to Friday 29 November


But one tweet was enough for a dozen police to descend on my flat in the early hours of the morning to conduct a raid. The Police often complain that they are under-resourced when it comes to burglary, rape and other trivial offences. But when it comes to defending the government’s criminal foreign policy, because that is what it’s really about, then the Police have an abundance of people.

We are facing a concerted attempt to close down free speech in Britain using ‘terrorism’ as the State’s chosen weapon. Of course me or dozens of others expressing a viewpoint about Hamas, or supporting the right of Palestinians to defend themselves, has nothing to do with terrorism.

In the words of George Orwell

‘If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’.

Today the Police have determined that there are certain things that we are not allowed to tell people. Liberty is the last thing on their minds.  In the words attributed to Voltaire “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Freedom of Speech and Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights has become a dead letter.

Voltaire

The Police, the Judiciary, the Wealthy and Corrupt have never much liked the idea of freedom of speech but today it is under systematic attack. Once again there is no difference between Starmer and the Tories when it comes to extinguishing the flame of liberty. Supporting Israel’s ‘right to genocide’ is more important than freedom of speech.

Lord Waheed Ali - Bribing the rich but never the poor

But our rulers aren’t stupid. When they attack our right to protest or suppress freedom of speech they do it, not in the interests of the corrupt rich funders of Starmer, like Lord Waheed Ali, who freely donates gifts to his corrupt political friends – Starmer, Reeves and the already rich - but out of concern for the ‘safety’ of Jews or some other minority.

When I was arrested by the Police on October 4th for comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany I quoted the key case on freedom of speech, Redmond-Bate v DPP [2000] HRLR 249, a case concerning a Christian fundamentalist street preacher who was clearly irritating those around him.

Lord Justice Sedley ruled that:

'Free speech includes not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to promote violence.

Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having,'

Sedley was one of the few radical judges in Britain, as well as being Jewish and anti-Zionist. My interviewers hadn’t even heard of the case and I suspect this is true for most politicians too.  In Redmond Bate, Sedley was merely restating old principles that are being forgotten as ‘terrorism’ is used as a weapon to silence anyone who disagrees with Starmer’s support for genocide in Gaza.

One might expect that the Counter-Terror Police would concern themselves with terrorism but that would be a mistake. As we learnt from the Manchester Arena bombing which killed 22, mainly young people, at an Arianne Grand concert, the evidence points to a close link between the perpetrator Salman Abedi, MI5 and the Libyan February 17 Martyrs Brigade and Tripoli Brigade. The subsequent public inquiry report by Sir John Saunders was seen by the families and others with knowledge of what happened as a whitewash.

In essence Abedi was being used to wage war on Britain’s enemy, Col. Ghadaffi, without MI5 realising that he had turned on the infidels who had funded him. Hence Saunder’s cover-up.

The reality is that terrorism in Britain, primarily from ISIS, is a direct consequence of British and US foreign policy. There was no ISIS before the illegal invasion of Iraq just as there was no Al Qaeda and Taliban before the United States and western powers began supporting the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

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

Although it has disappeared down the memory hole, during the cold war against the Soviet Union, the West often sponsored Islamic fundamentalist groups.

Indeed in its efforts to dislodge President Assad in Syria, the West via Qatar and Saudi Arabia began financing ISIS and Al Qaeda’s offshoort, Al Nusra. Indeed Israel was providing hospital and medical care for them!

This is the hypocrisy which lies behind the current police raids on ‘terrorist’ supporters. Only yesterday they were our friends. Indeed Hamas itself owes its origins to the time when Israel preferred to use it against its Palestinian opponents. Indeed Netanyahu is accused of having done much the same until October 7.

Tony Greenstein 

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