Natalie Strecker’s Acquittal on ‘Terrorist’ Charges Is A Victory for Palestine Solidarity & a Setback to the Attempts to Criminalise Activists

Now We Need to Build Support for the Hunger Strikers & Defeat Lammy’s Attempts to Abolish Juries

Natalie Strecker Speaking After Her Victory

The acquittal of Natalie Strecker on charges of inviting support for proscribed organisations, Hamas and Hezbollah, is a victory for the all of us and a defeat for a government that has given unstinting support to Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.

'Freedom of Speech and Protests Against Genocide are not Terrorism

Please Register for the Webinar on December 11^th 6 pm

https://tinyurl.com/2s3py925

However we cannot rest on our laurels. The government and its Zionist Attorney General Richard Hermer sent a senior King’s Counsel to Jersey to inform the Judge, Sir John Saunders and the Jurants that International Law was to be disregarded.

International law, be it the Genocide Convention  or the European Convention on Human Rights is now a frivolous extra to be disregarded by British courts. One wonders what the point is of signing onto such treaties if they are going to be comprehensively ignored.

We have a miserable ‘Labour government’ that is in hock to Trump who has sanctioned the International Criminal Court for daring to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of war crimes like some second-rate mafia boss.

Trump has attacked anyone standing up for human rights. Francesca Albanesa has lost all her bank accounts, as a full spectrum attack is made on anyone committed to what remains of international law.

Not surprisingly Starmer and Hermer, both of whom were human rights lawyers, have not only failed to criticise a lawless and rogue American government they have actively aided him with their persecution of those who campaign against Israel’s genocide.

Bringing up the rear, the ever pathetic David Lammy is embarked on abolishing juries in most trials as the government does their best to ensure that the only independent voice in our constitution is silenced. Juries have a habit of acquitting defendants in trials whereas judges do their best to secure convictions.

Judges can be relied on to reflect Establishment views because they come from the very same Establishment

It took a long fight before juries were able to establish their right to reach a verdict that the judge in the trial did not like. The government has 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.

Hunger striking UK political prisoners learn lessons from Palestine 

This despite a plaque commemorating this case being on the wall of the Old Bailey. The arrest of Trudy Warner and others who had the temerity to inform jurors of their right was a warning shot across the bows. However Judge Saini in the High Court made it clear that Bushell’s was still good law despite the behaviour of Judge Silas Reid and others in ordering the police to arrest those holding signs informing jurors of their rights. Although the Tory government appealed Saini’s judgment the incoming Labour government dropped it.

Before the Bushell’s Case in 1670 juries had been little more than creatures of the judges. They were termed the Judges 13 voices. It was not unusual for judges to instruct juries that they must return a verdict of guilty.

 In 1670 a jury refused to convict William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania and a prominent Quaker and William Mead, for preaching to an ‘unlawful and tumultuous’ assembly. They were only prepared to state that they had been preaching, which was a statement of fact.

The jury was then locked up for 2 days without food, water or a chamber pot. The jury was heavily fined but Edward Bushell refused to pay the fine and was imprisoned for contempt. He then petitioned for habeus corpus and the Court of Common Pleas under Chief Justice Vaughan established that juries could not be punished for their verdicts.

The independence of the judiciary was brought into stark relief when 3 pro-Israel conservative judges, led by Robert Maxwell’s former lawyer Dame Victoria Sharp, replaced a more liberal judge, Martin Chamberlain, at the last minute in the Judicial Review of the proscription of Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ organisation.

Craig Murray described how

The current legal establishment will adapt themselves to the legal framework of whatever sort is ordained by the rulers. Anybody expecting judges to defend liberties is likely to be sorely disappointed. They will happily remove the ability of juries to defend liberty too.

Democratic rights such as freedom of assembly and speech were established in the teeth of opposition to them by His Majesty’s loyal judges. If our few remaining democratic freedoms and civil liberties had rested in the hands of the judges they would have disappeared long ago.

This government, like its predecessor, have deliberately used the label ‘terrorist’ in order to suppress and close down protest movements. In this the judiciary have played a supporting role.

Protest Outside the BBC at its Silence

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.

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.

True to form - the BBC is REFUSING to cover the hunger strikes

It is the State of Israel not Hamas or Hezbollah who are terrorists. Israel thinks nothing of bombing schools and hospitals, shooting children in the head and dropping 2,000 lb bombs on refugee camps. Yet instead of condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Starmer is helping to supply the weapons of mass murder that enable the Israeli government to carry out its genocide.

The judiciary have proved their mettle by remanding in custody the Filton 24 who have been charged with the non-terrorist offences of criminal damage but have been held in conditions reserved for terrorists. Their only ‘crime’ was to have attack an Elbit factory that was manufacturing Quadcopters that are used by Israel after a missile or bomb attack to pick off the survivors.

It is incumbent upon us to step up the fight for the six hunger strikers, two of whom have already been hospitalised. That is why it is disappointing that neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Zarah Sultana have bothered to sign Early Day Motion 2386 calling on the government to intervene. Nor have the two Muslim independent alliance MPs.

Free the Hunger Strikers

The political prisoners for Palestine currently on hunger strike are  (L to R):

T Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Jon Cink, Heba Muraisi, Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib Their demands are:

1.     An end to censorship in jail. Prisoners’ letters and phone calls have been blocked.

2.     Immediate bail. Most have been held over the usual six-month time limit.

3.     The right to a fair trial. An end to government demonization and lies.

4.     Deproscribe Palestine Action and drop the “terror” link on these cases.

5.     Shut Elbit down.

See     British hunger strikers learn prison lessons from Palestine and

A prosecution under Jersey Terrorism Act affects us all

See The hunger strike is not being televised – nor will the last gasps of our dying freedoms

On Friday December 11^th Clare Hinchcliffe of the Filton 24 campaign will be speaking at a webinar organised by Jewish Network for Palestine along with Andrew Feinstein, Fahad Ansari, Huda Ammori, Richard Medhurst and myself among other speakers.

I will be facing the same charges that Natalie faced, namely ‘inviting support’ for a proscribed organisation when my trial begins at Kingston Crown Court on January 5 next year.

It is essential that we step up the campaign to have the hunger strikers freed. So far Palestine Solidarity Campaign has said nothing and done nothing. The BBC has, as expected, refused to cover the hunger strikes.

See Palestine Action Prisoners’ Hunger Strike to Become Biggest Since Irish Republicans and

The hunger strike is not being televised – nor will the last gasps of our dying freedoms

Open Letter to Chris Ward, MP for Brighton Kemptown

You Say You Share My Anger Over Gaza – If That’s True Then You Will Resign as Starmer’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Bag Carrier & Fixer

UN says it still hasn't been able to distribute any aid in Gaza

Chris Ward is the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, which was a Tory seat from 1950 until it went Labour in 1964 when Dennis Hobden won by a margin of 7 votes after 7 recounts.

This was the first time any Sussex seat had been won by Labour and it owed a great deal to the personality of the Labour candidate, Dennis Hobden who was a son of the working class. Hobden was the son of a train driver and worked most of his life in the Post Office.

In 1966 when Harold Wilson won a landslide victory by 98 seats Dennis only held on to Kemptown by 831 votes. In 1970 he was defeated by Andrew Bowden, the self-styled pensioners' champion. Bowden held the seat till 1997 when he disgraced himself after well founded allegations of having received a £5,000 cash bribe from Mohamed al-Fayed.

I knew Dennis when I was in the Labour Party in the 80s when he was considered on the left though it was hard to pigeonhole him. When a row blew up over a statement of the then councillor Richard Stanton who defended the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel as a legitimate target, it caused a storm amongst the Labour Right. Hobden was staunch in Richard’s support when others on the left, including Militant, were found wanting. Hobden was also a freemason!

In 2010 Simon Kirby won the seat for the Tories by 1,328 votes and in 2015 by 690 votes. In 2017 he was overwhelmed by the Corbyn surge when Lloyd Russell-Moyle overturned a small majority to win by nearly 10,000. The Labour Party in Brighton was the largest in the country.

An Israeli soldier in the world's most moral army looking for a baby to kill

Brighton was at the centre of the Corbyn movement. When the local District Labour Party held its AGM in July 2016, Momentum held a pre-meeting in Brighthelm Community Centre. It was the largest meeting I had ever seen at the Centre. People then moved on to the AGM at City College where the Left won all the officer posts by a margin of 2-1.

Unfortunately Corbyn had done nothing about Labour’s right-wing civil service. John Stolliday, the head of the Compliance Unit and Council leader Warren Morgan immediately moved to have the results cancelled on the basis of fabricated allegations of spitting.

Although Russell-Moyle was elected in 2017 and re-elected by over 8,000 in 2019 he proved a great disappointment, shifting from left to right as the political winds changed direction. As Bob Dylan noted, you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows and Moyle was nothing if not a political weatherman.  An opportunist who was ultimately defeated by his own opportunism.

Gaza's landscape could be that of Nagasaki

The removal of Moyle in 2024 and the imposition of Chris Ward, the ex-Starmer aide and political lobbyist who worked for Hanbury Strategy, who had no discernible support in the local Labour Party, was an example of the dishonesty of the current Labour leadership. Hanbury Strategy specialised in lobbying for the gambling and fossil fuels industry.

Lewis Aaron on Rejecting Starmer Labour's Request for Social Media Help

As Andy Winter wrote,  ‘can you imagine a less appropriate candidate for a seat in Brighton and Hove?’

Allegations from eight years ago have been made (against Moyle), from before he was an MP. The timing that these allegations have surfaced go well beyond suspicion. While ... they may be serious or they might have no substance whatsoever, it shows control-freakery of the worst kind by Starmer and his henchmen and women.

Ancient allegations against Moyle were cynically resurrected, having originally been rejected, thus enabling the leadership to have a pretext for suspending him. Similar behaviour by Jennie Formby, Corbyn’s General Secretarym in suspending Chris Williamson in 2019 met with Moyle’s approval. Literally Moyle was hoist by his own petard.

Chris Ward experenced a 7% swing against him and the Tory had a 14% swing against her as the Green candidate Elaine Hills came within a whisker of the Tories. As befits a former crony Ward was appointed Starmer’s PPS.

Victoria Derbyshire Demolishes Gilad Erdan, Israel's UN Ambassador

I recently signed a petition to MPs including Chris Ward. Some weeks later I got an email from him telling me ‘how angry’ he was ‘at the frankly intolerable humanitarian situation in Gaza’.

The strange thing about his email is that not once did the word ‘genocide’ cross his lips. So I thought I would send him an email!

Dear Chris Ward,

You wrote (16 May) that

I share your anger and outrage at the frankly intolerable humanitarian situation in Gaza and much of the occupied territories’.

I am pleased to hear that we agree on so much because we didn’t last October when I wrote to you. You say that

Israel's decision to block aid into Gaza - and to effectively starve a civilian population that is already suffering terribly – is both cruel and completely indefensible.

                                    

Aamer Anwar Crushes Sky TV Presenter

I agree. However I note that you avoid using the word ‘genocide’. Perhaps you can tell me what else is starvation other than an intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, which is the Geneva Convention definition of Genocide?

Words are cheap. What counts is what you don't say not what you do say.

Israel has been imposing a starvation blockade on Gaza since 2 March. Since 7 October it has waged a war on the Palestinians in Gaza whilst doing its best to prevent aid whilst lying to the contrary.

Moshe Feiglin, an ex-Likud MK's genocidal comments

At the start of Israel’s attack on Gaza Defence Minister Yoav Gallant declared that

‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed’ adding that ‘We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’

It was not as if Israel’s leaders hid what their intentions were. Genocidal statements were made from Netanyahu down. Throughout this whole period you, Lammy and Starmer remained silent.

Law for Palestine has documented over 500 examples of genocidal statements. Israel's Ministers made explicit their desire to ethnically  cleanse and settle Gaza. For example Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, on 28 January 2024 at a conference calling for the resettlement of Gaza:

We must establish settlements. We need security forces. We need to settle this land because it’s our land.

This despite the decision of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s occupation of Gaza was illegal. Gaza belongs to the Palestinians not Israel. When Russia made far more convincing claims to parts of Ukraine, with the agreement of the people of Crimea and the Donbass, Britain and Europe immediately slapped sanctions on Russia. Why the double standards?

‘Massacre’: Dozens killed by Israeli fire in Gaza while collecting food aid

Even when aid was allowed in Israel did its best to stop it being distributed and we had the flour massacres when starving people, queuing for food, were murdered by Israel in cold blood. Even today, Israel is still blocking aid and the entry of aid lorries.

Bursting Netanyahu's 'Lies'; Point-By-Point Fact Check Of Israeli PM's U.S. Congress Speech

Nothing Israel’s government says can be trusted. They are proven liars. They murdered 5 year old Hind Rajab after falsely assuring Red Crescent paramedics that they would be safe if they rescued her from her parent’s car where the rest of her family lay dead. When the paramedics reached Hind a tank opened fire killing them all.

Israel Deliberately Kills Kids - Hind Rajab's Murder Exposed As DELIBERATE

Sky News investigates slaughter of Palestinian family fleeing fighting

Israel’s lies about the murder of 15 Red Crescent workers are well known. Israel first claimed that the ambulances had approached ‘suspiciously’ without their lights on. When this was disproved by footage from a mobile phone found on one of the dead aid workers they switched to their usual lie -  they were members of Hamas. Yet this government has continued to take the word of Israel’s genocidal leaders and army on trust.

Lammy greeting Israel's No. 1 War Criminal

On Tuesday David Lammy criticised the ‘intolerable’ and ‘extremist’ Israeli blockade and offensive. Indeed he employed almost every adjective except the one that was most appropriate. Israel’s starvation blockade of Gaza is genocidal. Are you prepared to call Israel’s policy, which is the same as the policy of the Nazis in the Polish Jewish ghettos, a Genocide?

New video contradicts Israeli account of Gaza aid convoy attack

I am not interested in how angry you are. I am more interested in what you intend to do. Lammy’s measures were pathetically inadequate – suspension of trade talks not trade. Nothing about halting arms supplies to continue the genocide. Token sanctions on settlers in the West Bank. All mouth and no trousers. Are  you prepared to speak out and demonstrate that your anger is more than a form of words?

I want to ask you a few questions, bearing in mind you are in a unique position to make a difference being the PPS to Starmer.

i.              Will you call for the immediate halt of all RAF flights overflying Gaza which provide intelligence to Israel’s killers? Will you call for the end of any military co-operation with the IDF?

ii.           Will you support and call for the prosecution of any British citizen who is found to have fought in Israel’s genocidal army?

iii.        Will you call for a complete end to the arms trade with Israel?

iv.        Will you make it a criminal offence to trade with the settlements? You say that ‘There also needs to be an end to Israeli settlement building.’ Good. Let’s impose sanctions on trade with them.

v.           Will you demand that the UK enforce the arrest warrants of the International Criminal Court  against Netanyahu and Gallant

          The MORONS who control Youtube removed this video because they said it breached their 'hate' policy.   It seems a video exposing the racism of Israeli school children's singing songs about how they hate and want to kill Arabs is the same as encouraging it.

vi.        Will you call for an end to the attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement and the libel that opposition to Zionism equals anti-Semitism?

vii.     Will you call for the Government to jettison the IHRA which equates opposition to genocide with anti-Semitism?

viii.  Will you call for sanctions on Israel as and until it becomes a state of its own citizens rather than an apartheid, Jewish Supremacist state where Arabs are subjects not citizens?

ix.        Will you also call for the removal of Hamas from the list of proscribed ‘terrorist’ organisations? It is clear that it is Israel not Hamas who are the terrorists. 

What is happening in Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinian  refugees were driven from their homes to create a ‘Jewish’ state. Israel has recently invaded Syria and Lebanon in order to capture more territory without justification following the fall of Assad.

What is happening in Gaza is not a consequence of October 7 but a continuation of the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing and genocide that began in 1948. October 7 was no different from the slave rebellions and anti-colonial resistance of the past. As Omar Bartov, the Israeli holocaust scholar wrote in Infinite License:

'On January 12, 1904, the Herero people of German Southwest Africa—today’s Namibia—launched a series of attacks on scattered German farms in the territory... the German settlers who had begun to arrive in the late nineteenth century increasingly encroached on their grazing lands.

The rebels destroyed many of the farms and killed more than a hundred settlers, mostly sparing women and children. For the settlers the rebellion served as a final proof of the need to eradicate the Herero, whom they described as “baboons.” ...  the German governor appealed to Berlin, which sent some 10,000 soldiers. By August they had crushed the Herero fighters. In October the German commander, Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, issued what has come to be known as his Vernichtungsbefehl (extermination order) to those who remained:

.... Any Herero found inside the German frontier,... will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. Most of the Herero were shot or died of thirst and hunger in the desert to which they had been expelled. Several thousand were taken to forced labor camps....

Germany’s famous Vergangenheitsbewältigung  (coming to terms with or overcoming the past) was about the Holocaust, not long-forgotten colonial crimes. Only in 2021 did the German government officially apologize....

That remote genocide at the dawn of the twentieth century shares some remarkable similarities with the campaign of ethnic cleansing and annihilation prosecuted by Israel in Gaza. Israel saw the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, in much the same way that the Germans saw the Herero attack 119 years earlier: as confirmation that the militant group was utterly savage and barbaric, that resistance to Israeli occupation would always incline toward murder, and that Gaza’s Palestinian population as a whole should be removed from the moral universe of civilization.'

“GAS CHAMBERS” In Gaza: Prominent Israeli Demands “HOLOCAUST”

Those who define Israel’s genocide, as Lammy did, in terms of fighting terrorism or Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’ are justifying what Israel has done. It is futile to ask Israel not to complete the Endlosung (Final Solution) of the Palestinians. Lammy and Starmer, by making October 7, rather than the Nakba, the reference point are justifying Netanyahu’s extermination of the Palestinians in exactly the same way as those who supported the genocide of the Herero.

There is no difference, apart from 120 years, between the German genocide of 1904 and the Zionist genocide of 2024. When Nissim Vaturi, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, says that there are ‘no innocents' and that Gaza should be ‘burned now’ or when MK Galit Distel Atbaryan calls for ‘Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth.’ they are following in the footsteps of Von Trotha and Himmler.

When Israeli Channel 14 producer, Elad Barashi, posted on X:

‘Good morning, let there be a Shoa (Holocaust) in Gaza.’ and writes ‘I can't understand the people here in the State of Israel who don't want to fill Gaza with gas showers... or train cars... and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.’

he is not an outlier. He is reflecting majority opinion among Israeli Jews.

When Israeli Jews were asked whether they supported or opposed the idea that Israel should allow the transfer of humanitarian aid, food and medicines, to Gaza residents, 68% of them said they were opposed to allowing in aid, even if Hamas and UNWRA were excluded from its distribution. 

The exterminationist mentality of Israel’s Jewish citizens is crystal clear. Israel is now echoing Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews. Israel is a settler colonial state with the facade of democracy. It is an ethnocracy and far from supporting its ‘right to exist’ we should be calling for its dismantlement in order that the Palestinians can live.

If your anger is genuine Chris Ward, given that Starmer is a ‘Zionist without qualification’ you have no choice but to resign as his PPS. It may be the one good thing you have done in your political life.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein