ALL OUT ON JUNE 19 - At 10.30 am 19 June at Kingston Crown Court, I will have a pre-trial hearing accused of ‘terrorism’

 My Alleged Crime is Support for a Proscribed Organisation, Hamas But Supporters of Syria’s HTS/ISIS/Al Qaeda Regime Have not Been Prosecuted

Tony Greenstein Speech At the Birmingham Palestine Solidarity March Sunday June 1^st

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https://www.chuffed.org/project/114730-stopping-the-police-persecuting-palestine-solidarity-activists

The charge sheet is deceptive.  I am charged with

‘Express(ing) an opinion or belief in support of (a) proscribed organisation that will encourage support of it (and that) on 7th October 2023 expressed an opinion or be1ief that was supportive of a proscribed organisation, namely Hamas, and the support is not, or is not restricted to, to the provision of money or other property.

This charge is a lie. The Crown Prosecution Service had to obtain the consent of the Attorney General to prosecute, but that wasn't difficult.

Attorney General, Richard Hermer,  although critical of Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank and its contempt for international law, is a liberal Zionist.

In a statement to the Jewish Chronicle he explained that:

As it happens, I am from a “Blue-Box” Jewish family, a former Jewish youth movement chanich/madrich (a movement that my kids are now actively involved in), a graduate of the Machon, a former active member of UJS, a former volunteer for Searchlight magazine and a current member of Alyth Gardens shul.  I actively support a range of Jewish and Israeli organisations.  

I have dear family members currently serving in the IDF.  I also happen to believe... that the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank is unlawful, deeply damaging to the interests of Israel and wholly contrary to the values of tikkun olam that I grew up with and continue to guide me.

Hermer’s opposition to the occupation of the West Bank does not derive from the damage to the Palestinians (who he doesn’t mention) but the interest of Israel.

 Hermer was also a sabbatical officer for the Israeli Embassy funded, ardently pro-Zionist Union of Jewish Students.

The Solicitor General, Sarah Sackman is also the Deputy Attorney General. She is no liberal Zionist. She was the Vice-Chair of Labour Friends of Genocide aka the Jewish Labour Movement, which has mobilised support for continued arms sales to Israel. The JLM was behind the false anti-Semitism smear campaign which helped destroy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

My lawyers have, quite ludicrously, not been allowed to give me copies of the material in which I am alleged to have offered support to Hamas, even though I wrote it.

Sarah Sackman as part of the JLM Zoom Meeting with Kid Starver

Activist Sarah Wilkinson was reportedly asked to reveal the location of her contacts in Gaza when she was arrested by UK police earlier this week.

Wilkinson was taken from her home after a morning raid by Counter Terrorism Police on 29 August. According to her son, Jack: “They… pic.twitter.com/oSXvp54F5Y

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) September 6, 2024

 

It is clear to anyone who isn’t blind that the charges against Sarah Wilkinson, Richard Medhurst, Natalie Strecker, the Filton 18 and myself have nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with attacking Palestine solidarity activists.

The One Paper You Wouldn't Expect to Turn It Into a Free Speech Issue is the Conservative Jersey Evening Post

If the Police seriously believed that we were engaged in the commission of acts of terrorism they would charged us with commissioning acts of terrorism. They haven’t.  The charges against us are about expressing opinions or beliefs that they don’t like.

Alistair Campbell &  Rory Stewart Interview the Head of the Proscribed Organisation HTS, Ahmed al-Sharaa

However there are some supporters of proscribed organisations who aren’t prosecuted. Step forward Alistair Campbell, who wrote the ‘dodgy dossier’ which was a crucial document in fixing the evidence for going to war in Iraq in 2003 and ex-Tory MP Rory Stewart who interviewed the Al Quaeda/ISIS President of Syria, Mohammed al-Jolani, as part of the Establishment’s quest to rehabilitate someone who is presiding over the slaughter of Druze, Alawites & Christians. 

For the first and last time I agree with the former Jewish Chronicle Editor, Jake Wallis Simons when he says ‘Shame on Rory Stewart and Alistair Cambell’.

Kingston Crown Court

Whenever the word ‘terrorism’ is mentioned the Judiciary go weak at the knees. I wanted the trial to be held in Brighton or Lewes Crown Court which are near where I live, since I have a responsibility under a Court of Protection Order for an autistic son. However because this is a ‘terrorism’ trial there are only 3 courts in the South-East that can hear it – the Old Bailey, Woolwich and Kingston Crown Court.

‘Terrorism’ legislation is being used, not to combat genuine terrorism but as a blunt weapon to silence supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of genocide. It is an abuse of the law which our judges are happy to endorse.

As John Dugard, a Professor of International law and an ad-hoc judge of the International Court of Justice observed,

‘‘The label of ‘terrorist’ is ‘a bid to discredit and silence opponents”. 

In the 1980s Thatcher and Reagan called the ANC a terrorist organisation and Nelson Mandela remained on the United States terrorist watch list until 2008. 

Gaza is a post-apocalyptic killing zone: UNRWA chief - Philippe Lazzarini

The accusation of ‘terrorism’ is being used to close down free speech on Palestine and Hamas is the pretext. Previously it was the PLO which was demonised. If proscription had been in operation 50 or 60 years ago then support for any national liberation or anti-colonial movement, from the Vietcong to the ANC, would have been a criminal offence.

What has been done, with the willing complicity and support of Starmer, Hermer and Lammy is to criminalise political opposition to the British government’s support of genocide.

Hamas is not a terrorist but a resistance group. It hasn’t blindly killed thousands of babies and children and then tried to turn October 7 into a second holocaust by engaging in the propogation of atrocity propaganda such as the story of 40 Beheaded Babies.

You might expect the ‘free press’ to take up this abuse of the anti-terrorist laws but instead they are its main cheerleaders. As George Orwell remarked in an essay The Freedom of the Press

‘The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.’

Except today the British press is dishonest on virtually every topic that impinges on the interests of their billionaire owners.  Included in that dishonesty is the broadcast media – not merely GB News and LBC but the BBC and Sky News.

In the United States we are seeing the destruction of even the most basic forms of democratic rights as Donald Trump sets loose the Marines and National Guard at those protesting at the activities of the ICE immigration squads.

It may not be as bad here but when you have a dozen police knocking at your door at 7 a.m. in the morning over a tweet which I posted a month before, you realise that the police state is not far away. When the police officer in my case, Chris Beckford, was asked to explain why he needed to keep possession of my digital devices, he stated when there was copious amounts of evidence in the public domain already:

However, that evidence only shows what Mr Greenstein presents publically. It is important to the investigation that we fully understand Mr Greenstein’s mind set and ideology. This not only comes from public sources, ie his blog and social media, but from his internet search history and communication with others. How, and indeed if, he talks about Hamas with others away from the public domain provides highly relevant insight into Mr Greenstein.

This is the language of the thought police who want to get into your mind. PC Beckford was not an ogre, quite the contrary. A quite affable guy but his mentality was that of Orwell’s 1984. The desire to get inside your mind is the stuff of which nightmares are made.

What is the prosecution based on?  Two things. Firstly a tweet on 15 November 2023 and secondly my blog of October 7 Full Support for the Gaza Ghetto Uprising.

In my blog I say virtually nothing about Hamas but I make it clear that I support the Uprising and that is the real reason for my prosecution. Support for the oppressed and colonial peoples is now a crime.

We cannot expect the British press to support free speech because it is in bed with the political class.

The reporting of my case in the Brighton Argus ‘Brighton man charged with terror offences over Hamas comments’ was par for the course in a paper which, under its present Editor Aaron Hendy, has gone from bad to oblivion.

Contrast the even more abysmal Jo Wadsworth, Editor of Brighton & Hove News whose innovative headline was ‘Tony Greenstein charged with terror offences’.

Wadsworth, who is to journalism what Harold Shipman was to care for the elderly. She once threatened to report me to the Police after I accused her of wallowing in the blood of Palestinian children. These people can get very precious.

BREAKING: Palestine Action are on a roof above Elbit's Israeli drone maker in Shenstone, Staffordshire.

From here, actionists are able to dismantle the factory and halt the production of weaponry. pic.twitter.com/CiivraNDTi

— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) November 28, 2024 

The Police in this country have prioritised the defence of War Criminal Arms Factories like Elbit even whilst ‘ordinary’ crime like rape and burglary has soared. Rape has effectively been decriminalised as conviction rates have fallen to 1%.

There are a number of reasons for this. It isn’t just the attitudes of the Police but also the fact that the Police  prefer to spend their time harassing Palestine protests and activists to doing the boring work of tracking down rapists and violent criminals. Its so much more enjoyable persecuting political opponents than doing the hard work tackling rape. 

Many police officers don’t even accept that there is such a crime as rape. The murderer of Sarah Everard, Wayne Couzens was known by the nickname of ‘the rapist’.  Apparently this was considered to be quite a joke.

Please come and support me on June 19^th because it’s not me who is on trial but the right to freedom of speech and the right to support the Palestinians. See also

How to fight illegal police raids and win, with Asa Winstanley

Illegal police raid on my home won’t stop me covering Gaza – Asa Winstanley

On Thursday I will be Charged Under the Terrorism Act 2000 with Expressing an “Opinion or Belief” that the Government doesn’t like – We are sleepwalking into an Orwellian Police State

 Of One Thing We Can Be Certain – This is Not About Fighting Terrorism but Suppressing Freedom of Speech

I hope to see you on Thursday morning at 9.45 a.m. outside Westminster Magistrates Court, 1818 Marleybone Road, London NW1 5BR.

I would also ask you, if you can afford it, to contribute to my Crowdfunding Appeal Stopping the Police Persecuting Palestine Solidarity Activists.

On December 20 2023 my home was raided at 7 a.m. in the morning by South-East Counter-Terrorist Police who informed me that I was being arrested on suspicion of committing an offence under s.12(1)A of the Terrorism Act 2000.

This is what Starmer and Lammy Support By Approving Arms Sales 

What you may ask was my offence? Planting or conspiracy to plant a bomb? Assassinating war criminals Starmer and Lammy? Not a bit of it. The Police referred to a tweet I had posted a month before which expressed support for Palestinian Resistance in its fight against Israel’s genocidal occupation of Gaza.

I understand that the charge that has now been laid relates to a blog which I posted on October 7, Full Support for the Gaza Ghetto Uprising. Its subtitle referred to the hypocrisy of Biden & those who support Ukrainian resistance but condemn Palestinian resistance.

I referred to the Commander of the Warsaw ghetto resistance, Marek Edelman, who compared their resistance with that of the Palestinians. This is not of course a message that is welcome to the British state.

Despite the BBC and British press commenting favourably on the Syrian Jihadists of the HTS, who are still proscribed, there have been no arrests!

There can be no doubt about the intention of s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act. It states quite clearly:

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.

The word ‘supportive’ is a weasel word. It is intentionally ambiguous or misleading. If what you say about a proscribed organisation is at all positive, that can be held to be supportive, regardless of whether it is true or not. This legislation deliberately embeds lies into British law.

The result is that when writing an article you must look over your shoulder in case what you write might offend the Zionist lobby which may report you to the Thought Police. This is the stuff of 1984. We are sleep walking into an Orwellian Dystopia. It cannot help but chill freedom of speech and is clearly contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights which guarantees the right of freedom of speech and expression.

William Tyndale died at the stake because the state disapproved of what he said

The second part of s.12(1A) criminalises the expression of an opinion or belief if the person is reckless as to its effect on someone who reads it. This is the stuff of police states. Recklessness forms part of the mens rea in criminal cases such as gross negligence manslaughter. Where the defendant was aware of the risks involved but nonetheless pursued a particular course of conduct and someone died they may be held liable. It is known as Cunningham recklessness.

Such a test is completely inappropriate when it comes to someone’s opinion or belief. We are not dealing with any fatal consequences. What is really intended is that you should keep your mouth shut when talking about a group that the government doesn’t like, which it defines as ‘terrorist’ or else face the consequences.

In the case of the expression of one’s opinion nothing need happen but you are held to be reckless as to whether someone might support the said organisation. Only a liar and a bully like Priti Patel could introduce such a clause into law.

I must confess that when I write an article, I hope that this is not used in evidence against me (!), I don’t think of consequences in terms of what my readers might do. I wonder if people understand the points I’m making, I wonder how many hits it may get and what readers think of the article but as regards what they might do? Nothing. Only a police state could think of introducing such a subjective law.

There is the question of what is or is not terrorism. Section 1 of the Terrorism Act defines terrorism as the use or threat of violence designed to influence a government. This is completely inappropriate when applied to a resistance or anti-colonial movement. Israel is not the government of Gaza. It is an occupying power whose occupation has just been ruled illegal by the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice. Since the occupation is illegal how can resistance to it anything other than legal?

Subsection 2 of Section 1 states that the action must involve serious violence to a person, serious damage to property, endanger a person’s life, create a serious danger to health and safety and be designed to interfere with or seriously disrupt an electronic system. These provisions are not what most people call terrorism.

The irony is that the Israeli state itself played a key role in the formation of Hamas

Damage to property, health and safety or the disruption of electronic systems have their own criminal offences. There is no need to invoke the use of terrorism unless there are hidden motives and specific political objectives in mind. It is, after all, highly unlikely that a company which puts its workers at risk will be charged with terrorism, though it would be nice if they were!

Thatcher and Reagan both described the African National Congress as a terrorist organisation. If this law had been in operation back in the 1970s and 80s then support for the overthrow of Apartheid in South Africa would have been a criminal offence. Indeed support for any anti-colonial movement that used violence against the occupier would have been ‘terrorism’. This is the law of the occupier, the racist, the imperialist. It is no wonder that Starmer and Attorney General Hermer and his Zionist Deputy Sarah Sackman are so happy to use it.

Today the law is being used by the institutionally racist Metropolitan Police to attack the Kurdish community in London who largely support the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) who are conducting a struggle against the semi-fascist Turkish state of Recep Erdogan. Erdogan is trying to ban and has severely harassed the HDP, which obtained 6 million votes at the last election.

The ban on the PKK in effect means supporting Erdogan, who has been waging his own genocidal war in Kurdistan, which Turkey occupies. It is another example of how this so-called anti-terrorist law is being used to support colonial oppression and fascism. See Banning the pro-Kurdish HDP in Turkey is a move towards fascism.

Terrorism is quite simple to define. It is the use of violence against civilian populations by groups which have no mass base, the intention of which is to coerce or frighten them. The Israeli state is the classic example of a terrorist organisation. ISIS and Al Qaeda similarly. Neither ISIS or Al Qaeda have any mass base and have never been elected by anyone.  That is why they send people to Europe to commit random acts of mass murder such as at the attack on the Bataclan in Paris when 130 people died and hundreds were injured.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the PKK are entirely different organisations from ISIS. They operate within the territory of their own countries. They have never planted bombs in this country. Hamas was elected in 2006 by the majority of Palestinians. However the US and Israel didn’t like the result so they ignored it and in 2007 Gaza was subject to a suffocating siege and repeated attacks on it which Israel’s military called ‘mowing the lawn’. Thousands died in these attacks but to reptiles like Starmer and Lammy Palestinian deaths are of no consequence. Assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated in 1992  that “I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won’t happen, and a solution must be found”.

John McDonnell MP speaking truth to power -

Its time to act now. All arms licences need to be closed down. When will this government stop selling weapons to Israel who seem to be using their right to defend themselves as an excuse to kill children? pic.twitter.com/YjrLO5jJGf

— Mish Rahman (@mish_rahman) December 16, 2024

Anti-colonial resistance struggles are lawful under international law. The Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 include the protection of peoples fighting against colonial domination and occupation and against racist régimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.  Likewise UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) confirms that those living under colonial domination have the right to struggle to remove that occupation.

Nothing in this Definition, and in particular article 3, could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter, of peoples forcibly deprived of that right and referred to in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination: nor the right of these peoples to struggle to that end and to seek and receive support, in accordance with the principles of the Charter and in conformity with the above-mentioned Declaration.

International law and the Conventions in question are part of British law. See Do Palestinians have the right to resist, and what are the limits?

Furthermore, the Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions (1977), to which Palestine acceded in 2014 (joining over 160 countries), in its Article 1(4), classifies conflicts in which peoples are fighting against alien occupation and racist regimes as armed conflicts. Individuals engaging in such “fighting,” if captured, should be afforded the status of prisoners of war, meaning their fighting is legitimate.

To those who argue that Hamas, Hezbollah and the PKK have no right to resist Israel militarily, I point them to Stanley Cohen’s Palestinians have a legal right to armed struggle Al Jazeera 27.7.16. Cohen points out that the Israeli state was born in blood and fire. Its terrorism makes Hamas seem like amateurs:

On April 12, 1938, the Irgun murdered two British police officers in a train bombing in Haifa. On August 26, 1939, two British officers were killed by an Irgun landmine in Jerusalem. On February 14, 1944, two British constables were shot dead when they attempted to arrest people for pasting up wall posters in Haifa. On September 27, 1944, more than 100 members of the Irgun attacked four British police stations, injuring hundreds of officers. Two days later a senior British police officer of the Criminal Intelligence Department was assassinated in Jerusalem.

On November 1, 1945, another police officer was killed as five trains were bombed. On December 27, 1945, seven British officers lost their lives in a bombing on police headquarters in Jerusalem. Between November 9 and 13, 1946, Jewish “underground” members launched a series of landmine and suitcase bomb attacks in railway stations, trains, and streetcars, killing 11 British soldiers and policemen and eight Arab constables.

Four more officers were murdered in another attack on a police headquarters on January 12, 1947. Nine months later, four British police were murdered in an Irgun bank robbery and, but three days later, on September 26, 1947, an additional 13 officers were  killed in yet another terrorist attack on a British police station.  

Throughout this period, Jewish terrorists also undertook countless attacks that spared no part of the British and Palestinian infrastructure. Numerous attacks were carried out against the oil industry including one, in March 1947, on a Shell oil refinery in Haifa which destroyed some 16,000 tonnes of petroleum.

Zionist terrorists killed British soldiers throughout Palestine, using booby traps, ambushes, snipers, and vehicle blasts.

In 1947, the Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps non-commissioned officers and threathened to hang them if death sentences of three of their own members were carried out. When these three Irgun members were executed by hanging, the two British sergeants were hanged in retaliation and their booby-trapped bodies were left in an eucalyptus grove.

In announcing their execution, the Irgun said that the two British soldiers were hanged following their conviction for “criminal anti-Hebrew activities” which included: illegal entry into the Hebrew homeland and membership in a British criminal terrorist organisation – known as the Army of Occupation – which was “responsible for the torture, murder, deportation, and denying the Hebrew people the right to live”. The soldiers were also charged with illegal possession of arms, anti-Jewish spying in civilian clothes, and premeditated hostile designs against the underground (pdf).

Well beyond the territorial confines of Palestine, in late 1946-47 a continuing campaign of terrorism was directed at the British. Acts of sabotage were carried out on British military transportation routes in Germany.  The Lehi also tried, unsuccessfully, to drop a bomb on the House of Commons from a chartered plane flown from France and, in October 1946, bombed the British Embassy in Rome. A number of other explosive devices were detonated in and around strategic targets in London. Some 21 letter bombs were addressed, at various times, to senior British political figures. Many were intercepted, while others reached their targets but were discovered before they could go off.

Of course the British press, both locally and nationally, refuse to see that charges under the Terrorism Act have any connection with such subversive ideas as freedom of speech. ‘Terrorism charge over man's online comments was the BBC headline on my arrest. The headline in the Brighton Argus was Brighton man charged with terror offences over Hamas comments and Tony Greenstein charged with terrorism offence.

There are some who will say that it was the Palestinian resistance that breached international law when they seized Israeli captives and took them back to Gaza in order to exchange them for Palestinian captives. If this is unlawful under international law then so is the holding of 10,000+ Palestinians in Israeli captivity. A third of them have had no trial at all and the remainder are ‘convicted’ in Israeli Military Courts which have a 99.74% conviction rate.

We should also bear in mind, although our pitiful press won’t inform people of this, that Israel has regularly captured hostages to exchange for its own prisoners. The ‘liberal’ President of the Israeli High Court Aharon Barak held in 1997 that

a detention is legal if it is designed to promote State security, even if the danger to State Security does not emanate from the detainees themselves.

and that “detention ... for the purpose of release of ... captured and missing soldiers is a vital interest to the State.”

Tony Greenstein