The ‘Liberal’ Establishment – from the Guardian to Liberty – has averted its eyes as the Police Raid & Arrest Dissident Journalists & Palestine Solidarity Activists
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Natalie Strecker, a pacifist based in Jersey, is the latest activist to be arrested by the Police on their favourite pretext, supporting a proscribed organisation contrary to s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000. It’s called the ‘rule of law’.
The Jersey Post has more courage and integrity than the ‘liberal’ Guardian when it comes to Police attacks on activists
Since October 7 the Police have been very busy trying to take out key Palestine solidarity activists. Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley had his house raided and his electronic devices stolen by the Police a few weeks ago. Asa wasn’t actually arrested but this gives a clue to the Police’s motivation. Stopping the publication of alternative news. They prefer the ‘reliable’ media to be our sole source of news – from the BBC to the Guardian to the Daily Mail.
Sarah Wilkinson Interview
Sarah Wilkinson was also arrested recently by Police thugs in balaclavas, who stole her passport, without even telling her, whilst making it a condition of bail that she surrender it. They stole her money, overturned her grandmother’s urn of ashes, hid her bank cards and trashed her house. She was forbidden to even use a phone until the police were forced to withdraw the bail conditions.
Palestine Action, a direct action group committed to putting Elbit and other suppliers of arms to Israel have been the victim of extreme repression with the Filton 10 being held until their trial in a year’s time for doing what the Police should be doing, which is stopping the activities of those contributing towards genocide in Palestine.
Only today we hear that another 10 Palestine Action activists have been arrested.
But there is one law that the Police have ignored – the International Criminal Court Act 2001 – which makes being party to and aiding in the commission of war crimes and genocide a criminal act. We can’t imagine why they are not interested in enforcing this Act!
Sections 52 and 53 make it quite clear that genocide and acts ancilliary to genocide, whether committed in this country or abroad, will be treated as committed in this country.
Proceedings will only be initiated by the Attorney General but I’m sure Richard Hermer wouldn’t want to be seen to be endorsing acts ancilliary to genocide by his colleagues, such as supplying spare parts for aircraft that bomb civilians!
I’ve been arrested twice in the past 12 months. Firstly on December 20 2023 when my flat was raided and all my electronic devices were stolen. The second time was at the picket of notorious racist, Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli’s residence when I compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis. My ‘offence’ was ‘racially aggravated harassment’ of a Zionist, Richard Millett, the sole Zionist counter-demonstrator, who has called holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos ‘scum’ for opposing Israel’s genocide.
There are no known examples of the Police arresting Zionist demonstrators for violence, genocidal speech or racism. Police harassment is strictly in one direction only.
I was recently informed that I was not being charged, making my arrest and detention unlawful. A couple of weeks after my arrest 79 year-old Israeli Professor Haim Bresheeth, who is suffering from cancer, was arrested at the same spot and held all night in a cold cell in Holborn police station. He too has been told that he is not going to be charged. Another unlawful arrest and detention.
Richard Medhurst, another journalist, was stopped at an airport, detained, arrested and held in abysmal conditions and again all his electronic devices were stolen.
Others arrested under the same pretexts include Richard Barnard, an activist in Palestine Action.
Thomas Bingham, former Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord, was described as ‘the greatest jurist of our time’ by Lord Hope of Craighead. Bingham formulated 8 rules of law in his book The rule of law. A number of them are applicable to the present, cavalier disregard of the law by the Police in their attempt to ride roughshod over our rights and to suppress political dissent.
The most important for our purposes is the eighth rule – which states that
The rule of law requires compliance by the state with its obligations in international law as in national law.
Britain is party to the Genocide Convention which therefore makes it part of British law but for the police it is a no-go area. They are not interested in enforcing provisions of international law that have been incorporated in domestic law. Bear in mind the third of Bingham’s rules of law:
‘The laws of the land should apply equally to all’. It is clear that there is one law for activists and another for government politicians and war criminals like Starmer and Lammy.
Article 2 (a)-(d) of the Genocide Convention makes it crystal clear that Israel’s behaviour in Gaza is a classic example of genocide. Only the fifth provision, the forcible transfer of children out of the area is inapplicable, because Israel prefers to kill Palestinian children to transferring them out of harms way.
The fifth provision also makes it clear that genocide can take place without anyone being killed so our idiot of a Foreign Secretary, David Lammy’s assertion, that not enough people have been killed for it to be a genocide, is simply wrong. Starmer’s denial of a genocide is more sinister. He knows full well that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. Starmer is no different from a neo-Nazi holocaust denier.
It is no surprise that the Guardian has failed to cover the continued series of raids that have taken place. What is more surprising is that Liberty, the old National Council for Civil Liberties, has not responded to our invitation to provide a speaker. It is as if all the erstwhile liberals have hauled up the White Flag and surrendered to the security state.
Tony Greenstein
Lord Bingham’s 8 Rules of Law –
(1) The law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable.
(2) Questions of legal right and liability should ordinarily be resolved by application of the law and not the exercise of discretion.
(3) The laws of the land should apply equally to all, save to the extent that objective differences justify differentiation.
(4) Ministers and public officers at all levels must exercise the powers conferred on them in good faith, fairly, for the purpose for which the powers were conferred, without exceeding the limits of such powers and not unreasonably.
(5) The law must afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights.
(6) Means must be provided for resolving, without prohibitive cost or inordinate delay, bona fide civil disputes which the parties themselves are unable to resolve.
(7) The adjudicative procedures provided by the state should be fair.
(8) The rule of law requires compliance by the state with its obligations in international law as in national law.
In the parliamentary debate in the House of Lords’s Constitution Committee, former Attorney-General 2010-14, Dominic Grieve KC, said the rule of law encompasses:
“the system of rules that we have in our country to ensure that the decisions we make and the way the Executive and, ultimately, individuals, organisations and institutions behave are subject to the law—both our own domestic law and international law—and that the processes by which the law can be applied work.48
David Gauke, Lord Chancellor 2018–19 stated that the rule of law means:
“the … sense that the law applies equally to everyone, that no one is above the law and, in particular, that the Government must comply with the law.”49
Lord Keen of Elie KC, Advocate General for Scotland 2015–20 s said:
“that all institutions and parties should be equal before the law and subject to the law, that the law should be publicly available, and they should be capable of ascertaining what their rights and obligations are thereunder … It extends not just to domestic law but to the sphere of international law.”50
It is clear that the actions of the Police and the refusal of the present Attorney General Lord Richard Hermer KC to take any action in regard to the enforcement of Britain’s legal obligations to oppose genocide make a mockery of the Attorney General’s position as an independent legal adviser to the government.
This is not surprising since Hermer was appointed by Starmer to advise the government on compliance with the law. It’s not often that a poacher appoints the gamekeeper! The same contradictions occurred in 2003 when the then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, completely changed his position on the legality of the invasion of Iraq under political pressure.
Richard Hermer has also bucked under the pressure and is now openly condoning the refusal of the government to ban arms sales to Israel even though they are contributing to the ongoing genocide.
One thing is for sure. We are not going to be cowed by this Police State repression whilst genocide in going on in Gaza. We understand full well the role that the Police have in backing Starmer’s policy of giving 100% support to Genocide Joe Biden and Killer Kamala. That is why we are holding a meeting on the arrests this Friday. Please come along.
Tony Greenstein
