Demonstration 9.30 am Friday 31 January, The Old Bailey

My ‘Crime’ is Supporting Palestinian Resistance While the British State Aids Israel’s Genocide

Hillary Clinton: "we created the problem we are fighting today" | How the US created al-Qaeda

On December 20 2023 I was arrested in a dawn raid at my home by officers of Counter-Terrorism Police SE. Their logo states that their objective is to counter terrorism but today it is to criminalise support for liberation movements and anti-colonial struggles – be they in Palestine or Kurdistan.

My first reaction on being told I was being arrested for a tweet I had posted a month previously was ‘this is Orwellian’ .  At first I was led to believe that I was being prosecuted under s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000, ‘expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation’.

Now I understand the prosecution is under s.12(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000

This is a blatant attempt to criminalise support for any anti-colonial or resistance organisation of the oppressed. Israel is in an illegal occupation of Gaza, as it has been for 58 years but any expression for armed resistance against Israel’s military and genocidal violence is a criminal offence.

We only have to remember when Margaret Thatcher called the ANC a terrorist organisation to know that none of this is new. There has always been an attempt by governments to brand armed opposition ‘terrorist’. The Nazis called the French and Czech resistance ‘terrorist’.

As Professor John Dugard KC, a distinguished South Africa International Lawyer and ad-hoc judge of the International Court of Justice said:

Terrorism is an emotive word that has no place in the assessment of the conduct of either a government or a resistance movement. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Few would today label members of the French resistance in World War II as “terrorist” and most would have no hesitation in describing the Nazi forces as “terrorist”. Yet today most western states refrain from describing the acts of government forces as acts of terror but have no hesitation in so describing the acts of resistance movements and other non-state actors.

The Central Criminal Court 'The Old Bailey'

The use of proscription, be it against Hamas or the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party is an attempt to shut down free speech on support for groups that the British government does not approve of for political reasons. It has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

We all know what terrorism is. It is the planting of a bomb in July 2017 that killed 22 young people at the Manchester Arena Ariana Grande Concert or the attack by ISIS on the Bataclan concert in Paris that murdered some 100 people.

But here’s the rub. Salman Abedi was allowed to go to fight with Libyan jihadi groups in the fight against Colonel Gaddaffis’s government by MI5.  ISIS which carried out the Bataclan attacks didn’t even exist before Britain and the United States illegal attack on Iraq.

The ‘terrorism’ that is used as a pretext to attack domestic support for the resistance organisations of the oppressed has in most cases been created by western foreign policy. Hilary Clinton admitted that it was US policy of supporting Jihadi fighters in Afghanistan which created Al Qaeda.  Every time that the British and American states have employed far-right Islamist fighters to take out regimes they don’t like there has been blow back.

And today we see the blow back in terms of our own rights and civil liberties. It is not me, Natalie Strecker, Sarah Wilkinson or Asa Winstanley or Richard Medhurst, all of whom have had their homes raided, computer equipment stolen and been arrested and/or charged (except for Asa) accused of supporting terrorism. That accolade belongs to the British government and the intelligence agencies.

That is what my trial and the trial of all the other people who have been arrested is about.  And that is why you should join me on Friday January 31 outside the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in London.

The government has even attempted to roll back the right of jurors, derived from the 1670 case of Edward Bushells, to deliver a verdict contrary to a judge’s directions and in accordance with their conscience with the arrest of Trudy Warner and others who had the temerity to inform jurors of their right.

In other words the right of juries to do justice rather than to follow the conservative interpretation of the law that one can expect from the most exclusive profession in Britain, i.e. Judges. See Solicitor general to appeal over case of climate activist who held sign on jurors’ rights

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Brighton Argus Editor Arron Hendy

When the Police Arrest People for their Opinions It’s Not Terrorism they are attacking but Freedom of Speech 

Unlike Hendy & Wadsworth’s rag the Jersey Evening Post Declared ‘We should be defending our freedoms, not abandoning them’

Freedom of Speech in Britain, which is enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, was not handed down on a plate. It was fought for and people died fighting for it.

William Tyndale, the Father of the English Bible, was strangled and burnt at the stake. The Oxford Martyrs, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer were burnt at the stake for heresy.  Today the new heresy is to support the Palestinians and in particular to support their right to resist the genocide they are undergoing.

There was a time when the Argus had a vigorous correspondence column - not least about Free Speech and its limits

Anyone who dares to raise a voice in support of the right of Palestinians to defend themselves is guilty of supporting Hamas, a crime that is worse than rape or child abuse. No one has charged Justin Welby with covering up child abuse. He was allowed to resign in disgrace from the Church of England.

Arron Hendy - the Argus's Invisible Man

The ‘offence’ for which I have been charged, under s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 states that it is an offence if someone:

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.

The maximum penalty is 14 years imprisonment though I have been told that the Sentencing Guidelines recommend 4 years for a first offence.  If like Hugh Edwards I had merely been found guilty of downloading hardcore child pornography I could expect a 6 months suspended sentence.

One would expect the press to stand up for freedom of speech and the rights of journalists, at least 3 of whom have been arrested or raided so far for supporting a proscribed organisation. In Jersey where Natalie Strecker, a long standing Palestine solidarity activist was raided and arrested, the local paper the Jersey Evening Post has been magnificent.

Genocide Supporter and rabid Zionist Jo Wadsworth took offence when I said she delighted in Palestinian children's deaths - so disappointed was she with the Comments section under the article about my charges, most people were outraged by what  had happened, that she deleted all of them!

However the Brighton & Hove papers – the Argus and the rancid Brighton & Hove News run by presstitute Jo Wadsworth, reported that I had been arrested for ‘terror offences’.

I therefore wrote an Open Letter to the Editor of The Argus (there is no point writing to Starmer groupie Wadsworth as her mind is as closed as a tin of sardines (& intellectually on about the same level!).

Arron Hendy is the invisible editor of The Argus. He once asked me to write a comment column for the paper but it became a little too radical for him and I gave up trying to say anything about Palestine. However I was the only person in the local press to oppose the scandal of the Council spending over £30 million on the now bankrupt i360.

The Argus prefers to forget when I was a columnist - and alone criticised a project that is now crippling the Council's finances

Hendy is the kind of person who can walk into a room without anyone noticing or even remembering whether he was there. He has edited the Argus for 7 years and ensured that in that time it has become little more than a vehicle for press releases.

Long gone is the time when the Argus had investigative or even court journalists. I can remember conducting employment tribunal cases where an Argus journalist sat in for the whole 3 or 6 days.

There was a time when the Argus was a campaigning paper.  Most notably it waged a fierce campaign in support of the repatriation back to Britain of Omar Degayes who had been held in America’s Gulag, Guantanamo.

Terrorism is about people planting bombs in tube stations, buses or opening fire on concert goers such as the Bataclan in Paris or the knife attacks on London Bridge. Terrorism is not advocating support for the right of the colonised to resist their occupiers. It isn’t about resistance to either Israel’s occupation of Gaza or the Turkish state’s occupation of Kurdistan.

Of course Hamas and the Palestinian Resistance are called ‘terrorists’. The British always called their colonial opponents ‘terrorists’ from the IRA to the Mau Mau in Kenya but the truth was, of course, that it was the British who terrorised the local population.

Thatcher and Reagan called the ANC 'terrorist' when it was fighting the Apartheid South African state.  Always the opponents of apartheid are the 'terrorists', never the racists.

However even Thatcher resisted the temptation to proscribe Sinn Fein knowing full well that it would close the door to any peace settlement. Not so the war criminal Tony Blair, who should have been locked up for an illegal  war in Iraq. Instead he introduced legislation that enabled the proscription of resistance organisations that were now called ‘terrorist’ organisations. It was however Priti Patel in 2021 who decided to proscribe, not just the military wing but the political wing of Hamas. The justification, if that is what it can be called merely stated that:

At the time [March 2001] it was HM government’s assessment that there was a sufficient distinction between the so called political and military wings of Hamas, such that they should be treated as different organisations, and that only the military wing was concerned in terrorism. 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.

However we are not told why the Government’s assessment changed. In reality it was because Zionist lobby groups had been pressing for the change. It was political expediency that led to the proscription.

As we can see with the raid on the Kurdish community centre in Haringey, over support for the PKK, this legislation is very much part of the police and government’s racist attack on Black and migrant groups in this country.

We can also expect the billionaire press in Britain, both local and national, to support this attack on those who support liberation and resistance movements such as the PKK and Hamas.

Tony Greenstein

Racists, Fascists & Zionists Seek to Exploit the Paris Massacres

An excellent column from one of the very few excellent Israeli columnists,  Gideon Levy, who is unsurprisingly a target of the Israeli far-Right.

people-hold-hands Bataclan

His message is a simple one.  There is no connection, as the Zionists are trying to make between the bloody murder in Paris by the barbarians of Isis and the children who wield knives in Hebron or Jerusalem because they see no other way of gaining their freedom.  The Paris murderers are fighting against any concept of freedom, as we are seeing with the mass graves being uncovered in Sinjar city.  Palestinian youth are fighting in the only way they know, to achieve freedom from the Israeli military state that dominates and rules over their lives.

Israel exploits the Paris massacre  -  Tel Aviv city hall lit up in French colours

Candles placed outside the Carillon cafe

Gideon Levy also lays into the idea that you can draw an equals sign between Hamas, Hezbollah, Isis and Al Qaeda.  Apart from the small fact that Hezbollah is a Shi’ite group, Hamas is fighting a national resistance campaign.  Yes they are all Islamic organisations but that is where the comparison ends.  For example both Hezbollah and Hamas condemned the Charlie Hebdo killings whereas al-Qaeda in Yemen, with whom Saudi Arabia is presently aligned, carried them out.

Fans stream out of football stadium where Germany-France were playing

The far Right and the Zionists will make common cause over the Paris bombings.  It’s all the fault of the Muslims.  Their recipe will be to wage war on Muslims throughout Europe.  There is nothing that Israel would love more than to export its war on the Palestinians to Europe even if it makes common cause with Europe’s fascists.

Tony Greenstein

Before the Israeli Right Rejoices Over Paris

The Israeli right will say: We told you so. That is how the Palestinians are, that is how the Muslims are - bloodthirsty animals. The conclusion: There is no partner. This is of course a propagandist house of cards.

Ha’aretz Gideon Levy Nov 15, 2015 2:50 AM

Just before the right in Israel begins to celebrate, we must tell them: There is no connection whatsoever between the child with a knife from Hebron and the French Muslim with a suicide bomb in Paris.

Palestinian demonstration in Paris - pro-Palestinian activity is heavily suppressed by French state

Just before the right in France and all of Europe starts to celebrate, we must tell them: Don’t you dance on the blood as well. The nationalism, hatred of foreigners, racism, deportation of refugees, isolationism and the war against Islam — your magic solutions will not solve anything. The rejoicing calls of “we told you so” from Israel and the European right are already being sounded loudly.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Marine Le Pen are once again those who are profiting the most from the terror. We must not fall into their trap.

The Israeli right will say: We told you so. That is how the Palestinians are, that is how the Arabs are, and that is how the Muslims are - bloodthirsty animals. The conclusion: There is no partner. We will forever live by our swords. Now Europe is experiencing what we have been experiencing for years. Now Europe will take steps toward a war on terror — the same steps which it condemned when we took them. Now Europe may leave us alone; after all we have a common enemy. Let’s see them labeling products now, let’s see it condemning the settlements.

Israelis exploit the French massacre

Our daring raids on the al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron and the primary school in Silwan in Jerusalem are part of the war of civilizations which West is fighting, and which Israel is so proud to belong to. Whoever does not invade al-Ahli is not fighting terror. Whoever does not shoot a young woman holding a knife at a checkpoint gets Paris. The law for Ahmed Manasra (the 13-year-old Palestinian boy who stabbed an Israeli boy) is the same law as that for Jihadi John. Hamas is the Islamic State organization and the same goes for Hezbollah, Mahmoud Abbas, (Islamic Movement leader)Sheikh Ra’ad Salah, Joint List Members of Knesset Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi —and all of them are ISIS, all the Arabs.

This is of course a propagandist house of cards, which is completely unrelated to reality. The goal of the knife wielder from Hebron is completely different from that of the jihadist from Stade de France, and so is their worldview. Here the Palestinian is battling for his land and country, for his liberation from occupation, for self-determination and freedom — and there the game is destroying Europe and taking control of it. Here the main motive is national and political, and there it is religious fundamentalism.

Palestinian demonstration in Paris

But the truth is that the Israeli right is not completely wrong. In the end, its prophesy will be self-fulfilling. If Israel continues with its policies, the child stabber from Hebron will turn into the adult suicide bomber of ISIS. Already today he is looking with eager eyes at the success of his big brothers. His despair leaves him little other hope.

ISIS is still not here yet, but it is possible to count on Netanyahu and his ilk to bring them here. The occupation has already given birth to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. A desperate West Bank and an imprisoned Gaza Strip are the appropriate fertile grounds for growing them. The storm troopers of the occupation and the assassins in the hospitals provide the particle accelerators for ushering in jihadists.

The European right is wrong too. After all, the tens of thousands of the Muslim refugees knocking on the gates of Europe are trying to flee for their lives, escaping the very terror of the jihadists who are now attacking Europe. They are fleeing from the people who earlier destroyed their homelands and are now perpetrating a massacre in the Bataclan Theater. Closing the doors in their faces, inflaming the hatred of foreigners in Europe, along with the continued Islamophobia and the rise of the extreme right, will only play into the hands of ISIS.

There are now quite a few Israelis who are rejoicing in their hearts (or on the social networks) in light of the events in Paris. In addition to the perverseness of rejoicing over the death of other human beings, this is also a celebration of the blind. The correct lesson from what happened in Paris is that there are no longer any local wars. The world cannot continue to shut its eyes in the face of what is happening in Syria, and also not in the face of the Israeli occupation. When the world pulls itself together from the shock, maybe it will also free itself from the paralysis and understand that it must harness itself to find a solution to these conflicts, both in war­­­­­­­­-torn Syria as well as in the occupied Palestinian territories. Then let's see the Israeli right.

Gideon Levy

Haaretz Correspondent