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

Please Donate to the Crowdfunder

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

Muhammad Ali – the Death of a Black Revolutionary

Malcolm X taking a picture of Ali

I woke up today to the news that the great Muhammad Ali, who had suffered so terribly from Parkinson’s disease, had died aged 74.  This was before I set out for an anti-fascist demonstration that wasn’t in Brighton.

I felt a sadness that I haven’t felt since John Lennon was murdered in 1980.  Muhammad Ali was part of my life.  He was the greatest ever heavyweight boxer.  He was so quick and agile that he boxed without a guard, merely flicking his head back to avoid his opponent’s punch.  He was cocky, sure of himself and had a way with words that few others could match.  He literally floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

I first watched his second match against Sony Liston, which he won with a first round knock-out.  I watched many of his subsequent bouts, all of which he won.  Although politically he moved to the right as he got older, endorsing Ronald Reagan's reelection in 1984, in his youth Ali was the personification of the Black Power movement.  

In particular his refusal in 1967 to serve in Vietnam, which resulted in his being stripped of his heavyweight boxing title, was a courageous decision at a time when opposition to the war was still in its infancy.  Ali's comment that the Vietcong weren't his enemy and that no Vietcong had called him nigger or lynched Black people was  inspirational.  It cut through the nationalist crap that says it is a crime not to support your own ruling class and establishment and that the foreigner is your enemy.

Even whilst his body was still warm he has been adopted by the white establishment with his radicalism gutted.  The article below makes this point trenchantly

Tony Greenstein

Don’t Let Muhammad Ali’s Story Get Whitewashed

History says we’ll try and forget the boxing legend’s radicalism. We shouldn’t.

04/06/2016

Maxwell Strachan Senior Editor, The Huffington Post

Mere minutes after Muhammad Ali died on Friday at the age of 74, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called the boxing legend a “great champion” and “wonderful guy” in a Twitter post.

Harry Benson via Getty Images  Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, in 1964.

Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2016

The tweet provoked swift and justifiable anger. On its face, what made the remark so despicable was that it came from Trump, a man who has peddled Islamophobia consistently throughout his racially and religiously charged political campaign for personal gain. In December, Trump called on the U.S. to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. Around that same time, he implied that there were no Muslim sports heroes at all. And now, here he was, moments after the death of the most prominent Muslim athlete of all time, hoping you’d forget those two facts and let him take advantage of the moment.

It was, depending on what you think of the businessman, either willfully ignorant or shamelessly cynical, requiring the sort of unique disregard for the past that makes Trump Trump. But as I sat last night looking at the reality TV personality’s tweet, I found myself thinking that what made Trump’s sentiment so truly disturbing was that it actually wasn’t out of line at all. Rather, it was and is right in line with a long-running tradition in U.S. history: whitewashing the radicalism of black Americans.

Throughout U.S. history, white Americans have toned down the life stories of radical people of color so that they can celebrate them as they want them to be, not as they were. It is why we first think of “I Have A Dream“ when we hear the name Martin Luther King Jr., and not his opposition to the Vietnam War. Narratives are altered. Complex people simplified. Revolutionary ideas watered down, wrapped and packaged with a bow for mainstream America. 

Already, there are signs that people will waste no time trying to do the same with Ali. In the hours since his death, many people, most of them white, have taken to their various social media platforms to declare that Ali transcended race. The phrase is intended as a compliment, as a way of saying he was beloved by all, but comes across as odd to many people — funny, isn’t it, how you never hear about Steve Jobs or Peyton Manning transcending race? In truth, the phrase is naive, bathed in white privilege. And most importantly, it is an eraser. Saying Ali transcended race banishes his long history of being uncompromisingly, beautifully black to the footnotes, just as the anti-Muslim Trump’s celebration of Ali whitewashes the boxer’s history as a proud Muslim man.

Is it okay to say that Muhammad Ali “transcended his race” & erase his clear commitment to & embracing of blackness? pic.twitter.com/EsKB2rYBmt

— deray mckesson (@deray) June 4, 2016

You can have broad appeal without transcending race. Prince and Ali, for example, reveled in their blackness. You can’t erase that.

— roxane gay (@rgay) June 4, 2016

So today, before it is too late, let’s get one thing straight: Muhammad Ali was a revolutionary black man, and proud of it. He opposed the Vietnam War at a time when it was so unpopular and career-threatening to do so. He proposed reparations by another name, saying in the 1960s that the U.S. government should take $25 billion meant for the Vietnam War and instead use it to build black Americans homes in the South. Ali was so politically radical that Jackie Robinson once called him a “tragedy,” and the Nation of Islam eventually distanced itself from him. In the 20th century, former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chairman Stokely Carmichael said “the FBI viewed Ali as more of a threat“ than himself. In the 21st, it was revealed that the NSA had wiretapped his conversations. And still Ali never relented in his convictions — black until death, first and foremost.

“I was determined to be one nigger that the white man didn’t get,” Ali once said. “Go on and join something. If it isn’t the Muslims, at least join the Black Panthers. Join something bad.”

Ali didn’t transcend race, because he didn’t want to. History indicates we’ll try and forget all that, and one day after his death, there are clear signs that many people are already trying to do so. But we shouldn’t. We really shouldn’t.