The Big Lie at the Heart of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza is that It’s a Fight against Terrorism i.e. Hamas

Compared to the IDF Hamas are the equivalent of Orwell’s ‘Old Maids Biking to Holy Communion Through The Mists of the Autumn Mornings’

The commonly accepted definition of ‘terrorism’ is is:

the use of violence or threats of violence to create fear and achieve political, religious, or ideological goals. It often involves targeting civilians or innocent people to influence public opinion, government actions, or policy decisions.

Most people have a good understanding of what terrorism means in practice. It is the planting of a bomb at a concert, such as the Manchester Arena bombing where 21 people died or the attack on the Bataclan Theatre in Paris where 89 concert goers died. Or Israel's bombing of a school or hospital because they believe a member of Hamas has entered the premises.

The Terrorism Act 2000 though has a much wider definition. Terrorism is defined as the use or threat of action which is designed to influence the government [or an international governmental organisation] or to intimidate the public and it is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause which involves:

1.           Serious violence against a person

2.           Serious damage to property

3.           endangers a person’s life,

4.           creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or

5.           is designed seriously to interfere with or disrupt an electronic system

This definition is so wide that the state can label virtually any group it dislikes as terrorists including non-violent protest groups such as Palestine Action.

This definition is absurd. Terrorism is not damage to property, unless it is combined with attacks on people, especially civilians.

It has nothing to with health and safety. Were the Chief Executives of the cladding companies who caused the Grenfell fire deaths prosecuted?

It has nothing to do with electronic systems either.

There is separate legislation to deal with all of the above. Terrorism is about creating terror in a civilian population by e.g. planting bombs in market places, schools and hospitals. If anyone is the terrorist it is the Israeli state in Gaza and the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What is happening is a nakedly transparent attempt to use the spectre of terrorism in order to attack fundamental democratic rights such as freedom of speech and association by labelling protest groups like Palestine Action or resistance groups like Hamas and the PKK as ‘terrorists’.

It results in the arrest of blind people and octogenarians for holding up a sign in Parliament Square supporting Palestine Action. It results in a Police raid on five members of Defend Our Juries to prevent them addressing a press conference. This is terrorism. Indeed one prime candidate for proscription as a terrorist group is the genocide supporting Metropolitan Police!

It’s strange that the Met are so concerned about the proscription of Palestine Action but are remarkably unconcerned about the dozens of British people who have served in the IDF in Gaza committing war crimes, contrary to the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870. The International Criminal Court Act 2001  makes aiding a genocide a criminal act but the Met don’t seem very interested in that law. They pick and choose which laws to implement according to the whims and dictates of their political masters.

If this happened in Hong Kong it would be all over the BBC but because it’s in Britain the fuckwits say next to nothing.

The Terrorism Act allows the State to proscribe and thus render illegal national liberation movements and resistance organisations such as the African National Congress in South Africa, which Thatcher and Reagan termed a terrorist group.

It would have been equally possible, if the Terrorism Act had been in force a century ago, to proscribe the French or Polish resistance to the Nazis. That is what the Nazis called them. In other words it entirely depends on which side you are on.

As Lord Carrington, Thatcher’s first Foreign Secretary declared, ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorists’.  In other words it is entirely subjective and is open to abuse by the government.

Most people would support the right of the Kurds to self-determination but the government has proscribed the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) because the government, is in alliance with Recip Erdogan’s semi-fascist government.

The Terrorism Act and proscription has nothing to do with fighting terrorism and everything to do with defining as ‘terrorists’ groups the government doesn’t like. It is about imperialist foreign policy.

Most people would say that the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade in the Ukraine which openly displays Nazi symbols and whose founder Andre Biletsky declared in 2010 that his country’s mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade . . . against Semite-led Untermenschen”, or inferior races was a terrorist group.

So why the fuck haven't you summoned the Israeli Ambassador the war criminal @TzipiHotovely - or is it that you are a racist coconut @davidlammy and Palestinian lives aren't as important?

The late Bernie Grant the former MP for Tottenham must be turning in his grave that he has… https://t.co/se0zTfs5if pic.twitter.com/HxDQdTRAIP

— Tony Greenstein tonygreenstein.com (@TonyGreenstein) August 29, 2025

 

However the Azov Battalion  are one of the main militias at the disposal of the Ukrainian government in its fight with Russia so politics dictate that they are not proscribed.

Similarly Abu Mohammed al-Jolani heads what is the HTS/Al Qaeda government in Syria which Britain and the United States are establishing friendly relations with, despite the fact that HTS is still proscribed as another name for Al Qaeda in Syria (Al Nusra).

Despite the thousands of Alawites, Druze and Christians who have been massacred by these fascists, people like John Sawyer, the former head of MI6 and Alistair Campbell and Rory Stuart have praised them without facing legal sanctions. Sawyer spoke of how

‘’the actions we've seen of HTS over the last two weeks have been those of a liberation movement, not of a terrorist organisation."

What is that if not a ‘supportive’ comment in breach of s.12(1A) of the 2000 Terrorism Act?

So why are the Police and Government attacking people that they deem supporters of Hamas, who in reality are supporters of the Palestinians?  The answer is simple. Because of Britain’s alliance with Israel which is a consequence of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

That is why, despite the horrendous massacres and human rights abuses, which clearly amount to a premeditated genocide, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands continue to supply Israel with the weapons they need to continue to carry on the killing.

The hypocrisy of our war criminal rulers, such as Starmer and Lammy is staggering. They constantly refer to the break-out from Gaza, the world’s largest open air ‘prison camp’ (David Cameron), on October 7 as an unmitigated atrocity, whilst refusing to allow the word 'genocide' to pass their lips. They ignore the slaughter and starvation of Palestinian civilians and the open declaration by Israeli leaders that they intend to carry out the war crime of ethnic cleansing.

Think of any of the hundreds if not thousands of atrocities that have been committed in Gaza. All of them have been justified by Israel’s professed determination to eliminate the ‘terrorists’ of Hamas.

Let us leave aside the question as to whether Israel’s real goal is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and their replacement by Israeli settlers. Let us forget the fact that the Israeli government and IDF are liars to whom the truth is a stranger.

Let us pretend that their goal is the elimination of Hamas. The same group that Netanyahu supported over the past 20 years as a means of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel was happy for Qatar to channel funds to Hamas.

Israel was instrumental in the creation of Hamas. But we are supposed to forget everything that is contradicts the imperialist narrative. That means forgetting the Washington Post’s 2014 article How Israel Helped Create Hamas or the Wall Street Journal’s 2009 article How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas and many similar articles.

In order to support US imperialism and its Zionist attack dog in the Middle East we have to put to one side anything that runs counter to the idea that Israel is on the side of the good guys fighting terrorism.

For example we should forget that Israel was born in terrorism. We must pretend that its three terror groups – Lehi/Stern Gang, the Irgun and Hagannah were really freedom fighters. According to the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum archive

Jewish terrorist groups were responsible for repeated terrorist incidents and attacks on the Palestine Police, British Army and British Dependants as well as massacres of Palestinian villagers to free up land for settlement. The major Jewish terrorist groups were Haganah and Irgun, both of whom formed prior to the Second World War, and Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang which formed in 1940. In total 784 British men, women, soldiers and civilians were killed between the years 1945 and 1948 in an attempt to bring peace and stability to Palestine.

But this was not terrorism according to the Zionists. Today there are streets and even towns named after the ‘heroes’ of the Zionist terror gangs including Yair Stern, Commander of Lehi. In 1940-1 Lehi, offered the Nazis a military pact – not once but twice.

Lehi was also responsible for the assassination of both the resident British Minister in Cairo, Lord Moyne and the UN mediator Count Folk Bernadotte, a man who had personally saved thousands of Jews and non-Jews from the Nazis. The latter murder was ordered by Yitzhak Shamir, a man who twice became Israeli Prime Minister.

It is therefore no surprise that it is the IDF, in their ‘war’ against children in the Gaza Strip, who are the real terrorists. If ‘terrorism’ is the problem then it is with the terrorists that western imperialism is aligned. Israel is the classic example of a terrorist state.

There is no atrocity, no abomination that it is not capable of. From bombing hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries, water desalination plants, food stores, even Red Crescent workers. Israel has done the lot. Israel is even arming ISIS gangs in Gaza but you won't get that from the BBC.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP/DFLP are the good guys. No matter how many epithets Starmer/Lammy/Trump use, the fact is that the Palestinian fighters in Gaza are fighting evil.

Al Nasser Hospital Bombing

On 25 August Israeli tanks fired missiles killing two journalists who were using a camera on the 4th floor of the Nasser Hospital. According to Israel the target was a “Hamas Camera” that was tracking the movement of Israeli soldiers in the area who “felt threatened and moved to eliminate the threat.”

This however was a lie. The camera fed into a Reuters news feed. It had nothing to do with Hamas but as we know Israel never knowingly tells the truth when a lie suffices. The BBC however will accept any Israeli lie at face value. See Jonathan Cook’s Even the media's Gaza 'investigations' hide the real story of Israel's atrocities

As journalists and rescuers gathered, a second strike targeted them, in what was termed by Israel as a “double tap” attack. It was intended to murder those who were trying to rescue the victims. Since the second attack was filmed live, Israel had no option but to admit to it.

New video evidence shows that Israel's 'double-tap' was in fact a 'triple tap' involving three missiles designed to ensure as many people as possible were killed.

Netanyahu apologised for what he termed was a ‘mishap’, stating that “Israel does not target journalists and rescue workers as such.” 20 people were killed, including 5 journalists, a doctor and a number of hospital and rescue workers.

More journalists have been killed in Gaza by Israel than in both world wars, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan combined, says Costs of War project. It is the deadliest conflict ever for journalists.

There were no allegations of Hamas Command and Control Centres. The five journalists were murdered, along with the health care staff and patients, because they were journalists. That is a simple message that our media avoids telling.

All western journalists are barred from reporting on Israel’s war crimes. Only Palestinian journalists are able to provide the stories. That is why they are a target.  Israel doesn’t want its crimes reported. What is this if not terrorism?

The first strike killed journalist Hussam al-Masri, who worked for Reuters. The second and third killed journalists Mohammed Salama (Al Jazeera), Mariam Abu Daqa (Independent Arabia and AP), Moaz Abu Taha (NBC) and Ahmed Abu Aziz (Quds Feed). Palestinian journalist Mohammad Fayq is in a critical condition.

The attack on Nasser Hospital came two weeks after six journalists, including four from Al Jazeera, were killed in an Israeli targeted attack near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

There was no 'Hamas camera' - just complicity in Israel's genocide | David Hearst |

One Reuters journalist, Valerie Zink, mourning her colleague who died in the strikes, resigned. saying she can no longer work for an agency she accuses of ‘justifying and enabling’ Israel’s systematic killing of journalists in Gaza by repeatedly and uncritically parroting the Israeli narrative.

In the Hebrew-language Israeli press (not covered in the Western Press) the soldiers involved were furious at Netanyahu for apologising insisting that the “double tap” operation was authorised by the higher echelons of the army. A number of prominent Israeli journalists publicly supported the action, saying “there are no journalists in Gaza”, something repeated by the Christian Zionist war criminal, Richard Kemp, in the Telegraph. Kemp argued that killing all those “pretending to be journalists was mandatory and that their killing was “better late than never.” Kemp is a regular guest on the BBC who treat him as an ‘expert’.

Ha'aretz reported that i24NEWS Arab affairs analyst Zvi Yehezkeli claimed that the murdered  journalists were "[Hamas elite] Nukhba terrorists in every sense". In other words, because telling the truth is so damaging to Israel’s genocide it is justified to kill them. Can one imagine any more despicable creature than an Israeli ‘journalist?

Journalists congregating on Al Nasser's stairwell before Israel's strike

As Peter Beaumont wrote in the Guardian:

The attack targeted a civilian building, specifically a hospital, in a reckless double-tap strike that killed civilians, with rescue workers and journalists among them. All categories that should be protected under international law.

While the Israel Defense Forces, which have killed about 200 journalists already in the Gaza war, immediately attempted to suggest the killing of civilians had been in error, the reality is that it appears to be policy and not a mistake.

What is striking about this incident is that each individual element – the targeting of a working hospital, of journalists and rescue workers, of civilian injured already under treatment – would be expected to draw accusations of a war crime in its own right.

There is no war crime of which Israel is not guilty.  It is completely indifferent, like the madman in the White House, to international law.

The coconut who masquerades as our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy called in the Russian Ambassador because of an attack on Ukraine which killed 21 people. This is a fraction of the number Israel kills each day. Why has this racist buffoon not called in the Israeli Ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli? Racism and its handmaiden imperialism is the only explanation.

The disparity in treatment demonstrates that despite his hollow words of condemnation, Lammy and Starmer have no real problem with Israel’s genocidal war other than that Israel barely bothers to hide its intentions and the consequent damage to their reputation.

My own position is quite clear and always has been. Hamas is a resistance organisation against an illegal Israeli occupation and all resistance, including that of Hamas, should be supported.  Does that mean I support Hamas politically? No. I have frequently criticised them on my blog for their social policies, their use of torture and their Islamicisation policies. Their ideal goal, the creation of an Islamic state is a reactionary utopia.

I shall be going on trial shortly under s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act because I support the right of the Palestinian resistance to oppose the occupation and siege of Gaza and that includes October 7. Because as I said earlier, the real target of the British State is freedom of speech not terrorism.

Tony Greenstein