Freedom of Speech is not Terrorism - Opposition to Genocide is not Terrorism - Supplying Weapons to Enable a Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing is a War Crime

 My Trial at Kingston Crown Court Begins on 5 January 2026 – My Charge? Supporting the Right of the Palestinians to Resist The Occupation

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

'Freedom of Speech and Protests Against Genocide are not Terrorism

https://tinyurl.com/2s3py925

Background to My Arrest

Nearly two years ago I was arrested in a dawn raid by a dozen police officers. My ‘crime’ was posting a tweet a month before. A Zionist had asked me to say 3 words ‘I support Hamas’.  I responded and said ‘I support the Palestinians, that is enough. And I support Hamas against the Israeli army.’

If anyone should have been charged with inviting support for Hamas it is James!

The Prosecution will say that it is a crime to support the resistance of Palestinians to the genocidal Israeli army because Hamas is a terrorist organisation. Using this ‘logic’ it would have been a crime to support the French Resistance, whom the Nazis also termed terrorists. My response at 6.30 a.m. was just 3 words ‘this is Orwellian’.  Perhaps rape and burglary had gone out of fashion? The Police were therefore left with no choice but to go into the business of thought crime.

In fact rape has effectively been decriminalised because the police say they don’t have the resources to deal with it. However they do have dozens of police available at a moment’s notice to go arresting supporters of the Palestinians as ‘terrorists’. Indeed the Metropolitan Police seem to do nothing else these days.

But perhaps, given the Met have a rape and misgyny problem, with officers such as Wayne Couzens, the murderer of Sarah Everard and David Carrick, it is safer to concentrate on ‘terrorism’.

Earlier today we were made aware of plans for a pro-Palestine protest outside St John’s Wood Synagogue this afternoon.

We understand why the group's decision to protest at this location will cause concern to some communities.

There is no legal mechanism to ban the protest from… pic.twitter.com/sg58LqLna9

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) November 23, 2025

This begs the question - why would the Met want to ban a demonstration?  The Police have now become the judges of what is an acceptable protest

What the Met are doing is supporting British foreign policy which is giving support to the genocide in Gaza. Having received no less than 9 complaints from Zionists like @Heidi Bachram, they decided to spare no expense in arresting me. Ms Bachram was operating in the best traditions of Jews who had betrayed fellow Jews to the Nazis.

I was arrested initially under s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 which makes it an offence to ‘express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed (i.e. terrorist) organisation.’

My Police interviewers did not understand when I told them that I would have supported the Devil himself against the IDF.  I gave them the example of how, in 1944, over 200 Jews deserted from the Polish Home Army (AK) because they had been told by their officers that they would be shot in the back when they went into action.

A saying common in AK was that ‘‘Every Pole has two bullets—the first for a Jew and the second for a German,'” It caused a major scandal when Tom Driberg MP raised it in the House of Commons, against the wishes of the Board of Deputies. Anti-Semitism was rife in AK so it is unlikely that I would have supported it.

However when AK led the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 against the Nazis then of course I would have supported it. The same with Hamas. I support it against a genocidal army but not against its own people.

Hamas was elected by the Palestinians in free elections in 2006.  What proscription effectively is is a racist definition of all Palestinians as terrorists. Britain has no business defining a group fighting the occupation of their own country as ‘terrorist’ whereas the Israeli state, which is illegally occupying that land and committing genocide is certainly a terrorist state but one acceptable to the British state. 

What is being embedded in British law is its foreign policy. It is political opinion which is cemented into the law, which is a complete abuse of the law which is there to regulate behaviour not opinion.

As John Stuart Mill argued in ‘On Liberty’ [Chapter 1, 2003 ed.] that

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

In the eyes of the law and prosecution Hamas are ‘terrorists’ when it is abundantly clear that it is the Israeli state which is a terrorist state. By comparison Hamas are akin to virginal choir boys.

As Lord Carrington, Thatcher’s first Foreign Secretary said, ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.’ All resistance organisations are termed ‘terrorists’ by those they oppose. The Czech and Yugoslav resistance were called ‘terrorists’ by the Nazis.

We live in authoritarian times when protest and opposition to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza is equated with terrorism and dissent is equated with subversion. The latest outrage is a senior government lawyer declaring, at the trial of Natalie Strecker on charges of ‘terrorism’ in Jersey, that international law should be disregarded.

The Genocide Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights, both passed in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, are effectively dead in the water, murdered by the new imperialism of which Trump and Starmer are such excellent representatives.

Starmer's hypocrisy over genocide - he argued there was genocide in Vukovar but no genocide in Gaza

Starmer, the ‘human rights lawyer’ argued that the massacre in Vukovar in November 1991, when 1,200 civilians were murdered, was a genocide but the possibly hundreds of thousands killed in Gaza are not a genocide despite the clear statements of Israeli government ministers of their desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

We caught up with former Labour MP Chris Williamson at the Your Party conference

Last week we had the spectacle of the Government’s ‘Justice’ Ministry blatantly trying to fix the outcome of Palestine Action’s Judicial Review by having the judge hearing it, Martin Chamberlain, removed and 3 pro-Israeli, security judges replace him.

The new judges are Dame Victoria Sharp, Dame Karen Steyn and Sir Jonathan Swift.  All right-wing and all pro-Israel. There is an excellent article on Electronic Intifada giving the background to these stooge judges. All are paid up members of the British Establishment.

As part of his authoritarian agenda Starmer is now trying to introduce ID cards, an essential part of the surveillance society that reduces us to mere numbers. And in order that juries don’t continue to acquit defendants whom the Establishment believe are guilty, Starmer and Lammy are proposing to abolish juries for all but the most serious cases of murder and manslaughter.

My Trial On 5 January 2026

The Crown Prosecution Service [CPS] then changed tack and charged me under s.12 of the TA with ‘inviting support for a proscribed organisation’ on the basis of a blog, Full Support for the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and four tweets. Of course I did no such thing and indeed I have long been a critic of Hamas’ conservative politics, see e.g. my condemnation of their use of torture, however I’m not prepared to demonise them either. In resisting genocide I have no hesitation in supporting them against the mass murderers of the IDF.

The CPS had to get the Attorney General, Richard Hermer’s approval for the prosecution to go ahead. Given that Hermer has “dear family members currently serving in the IDF” that was not too difficult.

The police have not once arrested supporters of Israel’s genocide despite aiding and supporting genocide being a criminal offence under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.  The CPS and Attorney General Hermer are selective about which laws they implement.

Although the issue of Palestine-Israel is always posed in the mainstream media in terms of Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’ it is the Palestinians’ rights of self defence which is at the heart of the issue of whether they were entitled to break out of Gaza on October 7.

Palestinians in Gaza had been under siege for 17 years They were subject to the Israeli policy of ‘mowing the lawn’, i.e. periodic massacres and bombing aimed at keeping the population quiet and submissive whilst they got on with their project of ethnically cleansing the West Bank before turning their attention to Gaza.

This was in conjunction with another policy of putting Palestinians in Israel ‘on a diet’. As Dov Weissglass, the lawyer and adviser to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon explained: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.’ The figure arrived at was 2279 calories a day, 8% less than previously calculated. It is reminiscent of Nazi calculations as to how much food they would allow into the ghettos. They too made calorific calculations.

How Israel is replicating Nazi starvation tactics | Soumaya Ghannoushi | MEE Opinion

The project Israel is embarked upon is that of a Greater Israel. This involves the occupation of land in all the neighbouring countries, the biblical Greater Israel or Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) which has always been the Zionist goal. That is why Israel is the only state in the world not to define its borders.

At the present moment Israel is in occupation of parts of Lebanon and Syria, without a squeak of protest from the ‘international community’ or the ‘rules based order.’

October 7 forced changes in the plan.  Gaza became the primary target although violence has increased massively in the West Bank where whole villages have had to be abandoned as a result of violence from settlers and the army. Over one thousand Palestinian civilians in the West Bank have been killed by the Israeli military or settlers since October 7.

October 7 was intended by the Palestinian resistance to be a short operation aimed at capturing Israeli hostages and exchanging them for the thousands of Palestinian hostages who had been convicted of the ‘crime’ of opposing an illegal occupation.  Israel’s military courts have a 99.74% rate of conviction and one-third of Palestinian prisoners, hundreds of whom are children aged 12 and upwards.  They are held in Administrative Detention without any trial. Palestinian prisoners are as much hostages as the Israeli hostages were.

oh my god. One of the three authors of the New York Times' "mass rape" atrocity propaganda hoax is Anat Schwartz. She liked posts calling for Gaza to be turned into a "slaughterhouse". This the person the NYT hired to write about Palestinians and frame them as sub-human monsters pic.twitter.com/vlaKLVxwil

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) February 24, 2024

Israel used October 7 to create a genocidal narrative. Instead of a well planned military operation it was alleged to be an orgy of atrocities – mass rapes and the wanton killing of babies. The original story of ‘40 beheaded babies’ has been completely discredited but almost a dozen British newspapers — including The Times, Metro, The i, Daily Express, The Scotsman, and Financial Times ran stories on their front pages citing Israel’s i24 claims. None have retracted.

In fact only one baby, Mila Cohen, died on October 7 and that accidentally. This is confirmed by Israel’s own social security statistics.

‘Rape atrocities’ were a well worn racist, colonial narrative in which the indigenous population and Black people were portrayed as savages with the men being portrayed as having uncontrolled sexual appetites and urges. This was not dissimilar to how Jewish men were portrayed in Nazi Germany.

The Israeli government constructed a similar narrative. Israel’s October 7 rape atrocity narrative was given legs by the New York Times in Screams Without Words. Anat Schwartz, an Israeli, was assigned to cover the allegations that Hamas systematically used sexual assault as a weapon of war during the October 7 attack.

The NYT article has long since been discredited. Schwartz was soon discovered to have liked a tweet supporting turning Gaza into a slaughterhouse. The Intercept demolished the NYT’s propaganda piece in “Between the Hammer and the Anvil” The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé.

The article’s prime example of a woman who had been raped and killed, Gail Abdush, was contradicted by her own family.  Even the NYT’s Daily podcast refused to run the story. Schwartz was dropped but the NYT refuses to admit that Screams Without Words was fiction rather than a serious piece of investigative journalism.

The final nail in the coffin of the rape atrocity story was the admission by Moran Gaz, who was in charge of Israel’s Southern Prosecutor's Office, that she had no rapes to investigate or people to charge. In December 2024 Ynet, the widest circulation Israeli newspaper, published an interview with Gaz, saying that

In the end, we have no complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will ultimately emerge will be completely different.

But the damage had been done. As the old saying goes, by the time the truth gets its boots on a lie has travelled half-way round the world.

The atrocity propaganda was carried by the mainstream media but when it was proven to be untrue, there was no admission of fault. This is how BBC style propaganda works.

The British first invented atrocity propaganda against the Germans in the first world war. Israel has perfected it to a fine art. The depiction of Hamas as ‘terrorists’ is of a piece with this atrocity propaganda.

The definition of ‘terrorism’ in the Terrorism Act 2000 is wide enough to allow the government to demonise anyone they want to. It gives the government of the day an arbitrary power to classify anyone they dislike as ‘terrorists’ regardless of who they are. Hamas military wing was proscribed in 2001 and Priti Patel, a crook who became Home Secretary, proscribed its political wing in 2021.

This decision was a warrant for genocide. Hamas was the elected government in Gaza and formed an administration. Civilians who were members of its political wing included doctors, teachers, nurses and academics. By branding the political wing a terrorist organisation this gave the green light to Israel to attack hospitals, schools and universities because ‘terrorists’ were working there.

 The ban on commenting on Hamas is a clear breach of Article 10 of the ECHR on freedom of speech, which our judges have done their best to negate.

Hamas is a resistance organisation, which Netanyahu did more than most to create and support in his effort to combat a Palestinian state.

Because my trial is imminent I am organising a webinar around not only my case but the attack on Palestine solidarity activists. Natalie Strecker is awaiting a verdict in a similar trial in Jersey and her charges are similar to those facing me. The trial of the first six of the Filton 24 has already begun. Richard Medhurst who is speaking also faces the prospect of being charged.  Despite being a journalist he is the ‘wrong type’ of journalist.

Please register and join us and also get involved in the campaign against the persecution of Palestine solidarity activists. I am calling for a demonstration outside Kingston Crown Court on January 5^th at 9.30 and for people to attend the trial which is estimated to last a week. It is important that the movement makes its presence felt.

Tony Greenstein

Please donate to 

Stopping the Police Persecuting Palestine Solidarity Activists

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

Last Thursday I was Charged With Exercising My Right to Freedom of Speech & Remanded to the Old Bailey for Supporting the Palestinian Resistance

In Starmer’s Brave New World It is a Crime to Hold or Express Opinions that Oppose Genocide or War Crimes – War really is Peace

Tony Greenstein speech outside Westminster magistrates court

Last Thursday 19^th December 2024 I was formally charged with inviting support for a proscribed organisation and expressing an opinion or belief that was ‘supportive’ of them.

Needless to say I have done neither and I pled not guilty to offences carrying a 14 year prison sentence. As I explained to the 100 or so demonstrators outside, in a wonderful expression of solidarity, if I had downloaded hard core child pornography and my name was Hugh Edwards, I could expect a 6 months suspended sentence.

My real ‘offence’ was opposing Israel’s 57 year old occupation of Gaza and its ethnic cleansing of Gaza. If the proscription of anti-colonial resistance groups had been in place 40 years ago then I could have been charged with supporting another ‘terrorist’ organisation – the ANC.  Because that is what Thatcher and Reagan called the ANC.

Thatcher told a press conference at the Commonwealth summit in Vancouver, in 1987:

A considerable number of the ANC leaders are Communists… When the ANC says that they will target British companies, this shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is. I fought terrorism all my life… I will have nothing to do with any organisation that practises violence. I have never seen anyone from ANC or the PLO or the IRA and would not do so.

Presumably Thatcher kept her distance from the British army too! This is the hypocrisy that labels Hamas, Hezbollah and the PKK as ‘terrorist’. The massively greater violence of the Israeli and Turkish states simply does not exist for creatures like Thatcher or Starmer. State violence is fine, but violence against the state is ‘terrorism’ unless, as with Assad and Gaddafi, we oppose the state too.

Tony Greenstein speech outside Westminster magistrates court

Using the same ‘logic’ Thatcher should have condemned violence by the Yugoslav resistance under Tito against the Nazi occupation. Because the Special Operations Executive, which became the SAS, was aiding them, she would have made an exception for them. This demonstrates that those who define resistance organisations as ‘terrorist’ don’t have a single principle between them.

Outside Tony Greenstein's court hearing, end segment

If I’d been alive 80 years ago according to the same logic people could have been charged with supporting the French and Polish Resistance. The Nazis certainly called them ‘terrorists’.

The system of proscribing organisations in force today enables any support for any national liberation or resistance organisation to be classified as ‘terrorist’ thus making support for people seeking to overthrow colonialism or imperialism a criminal offence.

International law supports the right of resistance of those opposing colonialism and this includes the Palestinians but British law deems this irrelevant. Except in the case of Ukraine of course!

Tony Greenstein speech outside Westminster magistrates court

Suffice to say those who profess their support for freedom of speech also seek to outlaw anything that strays outside the overton window of what is and is not allowed to be discussed. It is a window that has been closing for the past half century.

Freedom of speech has limits and those limits are not confined to incitement to racial hatred or violence against another person but to support of organisations that the Establishment deem to be ‘extreme’ i.e. anti-colonial or anti-capitalist.

‘Extremism’ is the new buzzword. When I was remanded in custody I was asked at reception whether or not I was an extremist! When I asked the young Black woman if she knew what an extremist was she confessed she didn’t. I then explained that all those who fought for the freedoms we take for granted (and which we are losing) like the Suffragettes, were also called extremists in their time. The Jewish Chronicle then said that I compared myself to the Suffragettes!

It is no surprise that Attorney General Richard Hermer and his Zionist side-kick Sarah Sackman from the Jewish Labour Movement want to criminalise those who oppose British imperialism. They have lost the battle to tar us with the ‘anti-Semitism’ brush and have therefore sought the help of the Police to keep us silent.

Live: Outside Tony Greenstein's court hearing

It is untrue that I support Hamas as a political organisation. What I do is to recognise that it was elected by the Palestinians in 2006 in preference to Fateh. Instead of respecting the outcome of the elections, the Israeli state together with the US and Britain supported a coup attempt by Palestinian Quisling Mahmoud Abbas to overthrow the elected government of the Palestinians.

There are terrorist organisations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, both of which are the creations of US imperialism. We see today how Al Qaeda offshoot Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which was proscribed in May 2017 has quickly been taken to the bosom of the imperialists. At the time the justification for their proscription was that they:

 ‘should be treated as alternative names for the organisation which is already proscribed under the name Al Qa’ida.’

All sorts of people like MI6 former chief Sir John Sawers have called for the UK to deproscribe HTS. Sawers argued that the organisation has changed significantly in the last several years.

Sawers told Sky News that Jolani, the head of HTS "has made great efforts over the last 10 years to distance himself from those terrorist groups.

"Certainly, the actions we've seen of Tahrir al-Sham over the last two weeks have been those of a liberation movement, not of a terrorist organisation,"

"It would be rather ridiculous, actually, if we're unable to engage with the new leadership in Syria because of a proscription dating back 12 years."

For once the Telegraph got it right when Nina Shea wrote

That commander Al-Jolani has now changed into a Western suit and talks of moderation, they undoubtedly see, is purely tactical. When before has a holy warrior, at the very moment of triumph, pulled down his keffiyeh to reveal underneath a champion of religious pluralism and freedom? These militants are no more credible than the Taliban, who promised to respect women’s rights but who, three years after taking control of Afghanistan, have “erased” women from public life, as the UN reports.

Sawyer’s statements seem very supportive of an organisation that is still proscribed yet the anti-terrorist police have not conducted a dawn raid on his home in the early hours of the morning because he is in breach of s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act. Clearly the Police are making political decisions as to who is breaching the said Act.

If Sawers had said the same about a proscribed Palestinian organisation his feet wouldn’t have touched the floor before he was arrested by the Thought Police.

Proscription has nothing to do with terrorism. It is about preventing people supporting organisations that are fighting for the rights of their own people against regimes imposed by the West.

Terrorism contrary to the definition in the Terrorism Act 2000 has nothing to do with ‘serious damage against property’, ‘serious violence against a person’, the disruption of electronic systems or health and safety. All of the above are covered by other legislation.

Terrorism is the deliberate infliction of violence and terror on civilian populations. ISIS, with its attempted genocide of the Yazidis clearly fits into this as does Al Qaeda. ISIS violence in Paris, the Bataclan attack and the London Bridge knife attacks or the Manchester Arena bombing of Ariana Grande’s concert were for the sake of spreading terror without any discernible political motive.

It is usually because an organisation lacks a mass base that they resort to terrorism. Hamas (& Hezbollah) have both been elected and carry large popular support. Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel in support of Gaza was carefully calibrated and unlike Israel’s response did not target civilians but military infrastructure primarily.

The worst terrorist attack in Britain, the bombing of Ariana Grande’s concert in the Manchester Arena in May 2017 came about because of the collusion of MI5 with the bomber, Salman Abedi, who had been sent to Libya to fight in jihadist organisations trying to overthrow Col. Gaddafi.

The head of MI5 said he was "profoundly sorry" the security service did not prevent the Manchester Arena attack but not so sorry that he was prepared to reveal the truth about the bomber’s links with MI5.

An article Manchester Arena bombing inquiry delivers cover-up “in the national interest” on the World Socialist Web Site explains:

The final report by Sir John Saunders from the inquiry he led into the Manchester Arena terrorist bombing is a state cover-up. It conceals the role of MI5, MI6, the Ministry of Defence and successive British governments in the grooming and protection of far-right Islamists who were deployed to achieve imperialist foreign policy objectives in Libya and throughout the Middle East.

The 22-year-old Salman Abedi worked with Islamist fighters who were trained, armed, and financed by the British state and NATO to topple Libyan leader Muammar and install a puppet regime.

Abedi had been sent to fight in Libya with Jihadi groups by MI5 as part of a plot to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. British imperialism aligned itself with the very forces that they would later classify as terrorist. Again there was blowback and 22 people died as a result.

In order to ensure that the cover-up succeeded the families of the victims were prevent from suing MI5. Suffice to say the ever loyal Guardian went along with the cover up blaming it on Abedi’s ‘radicalisation’ - How Manchester bomber Salman Abedi was radicalised by his links to Libya without even a mention of MI5!

The duplicity and dishonesty of our war criminal leaders and the press means that Terrorism legislation is being deployed to suppress political debate and discussion not terrorism.

The next stage in my trial will be the Old Bailey on Friday 31 January at 10.00 am and there will be a demonstration outside the court because my prosecution is aimed at the Palestine solidarity movement as a whole, not just me as an individual.

The turnout last Thursday was impressive but it could have been better still. London PSC groups were not in evidence unlike groups such as Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewish Network for Palestine and the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. It is about time that PSC took the attacks on the solidarity movement seriously.

It is not enough to issue a statement condemning the repression of Palestine Action and then do nothing further. A statement on its own is useless. PSC has to realise that the British state is attacking the Palestine solidarity movement and that means it must defend those who are targeted by them. The problem with PSC is that it has no anti-Zionist or anti-imperialist politics. It has become just another NGO.

The attacks by the Police on the Palestine solidarity movement are only part of the picture. The Met have also been acting on behalf Recep Erdogan and Turkey’s genocidal repression of the Kurds. The PKK, which is fighting the Turkish army has a mass base amongst the Kurds. It is anything but a terrorist group.

Through proscription the British state is clamping down on support for the PKK in Britain. This has nothing to do with terrorism. Palestine solidarity and Kurdish supporters have to start working together.

Finally please also contribute to my Crowdfunder:  It is not just for me but for activists caught up in the ‘terrorist’ trap.

Stopping the Police Persecuting Palestine Solidarity Activists

Tony Greenstein