Of One Thing We Can Be Certain –The Terrorism Act is NOT About Terrorism – Its Purpose is to Support Racist, Repressive Regimes Like Israel
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At 6.30 a.m. on 20 December 2023 I was awoken by the Counter-Terrorism Police SE. There were about a dozen in all. You could have been forgiven for thinking that they had foiled a dastardly plot to blow up a bus or railway station.
When I answered the door I was greeted by two dishevelled plain clothes Police who informed me that I was being arrested for a tweet I had posted a month before. Having posted over 60,000 tweets in all I didn’t have a clue what they were referring to. My only response was ‘this is Orwellian’.
My crime was responding to a Zionist who had dared me to say ‘I support Hamas’. My response was that I supported the Palestinians but in the fight against the IDF I supported Hamas. As I explained at a Police interview, I would have supported the devil himself if he was fighting Israel!
I clarified this by saying that I wouldn’t have supported the anti-Nazi Polish resistance politically given their anti-Semitism but in the fight against the Nazis I would have wholeheartedly supported them in the Warsaw Uprising 1944.
Most of my blogs have been critical of Hamas when they have acted against the interests of the Palestinians. However I’m not going to lie and call them ‘terrorists’ when they are a resistance group. Compared to the IDF Hamas are the equivalent of virginal choirboys
As a Jewish atheist I was hardly likely to support Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, politically but in the fight against Israel I would have supported them in just the same way I would have supported any anti-colonial movement.
The Terrorism Act Definition of Terrorism
The Terrorism Acts Are Not About Terrorism but Suppressing Pro-Palestinian Political Opinion
The Cambridge Dictionary definition of terrorism is ‘violent action or threats designed to cause fear among ordinary people, in order to achieve political aims.’
The Miriam Webster definition of terrorism is ‘the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion’
The Brittanica Dictionary definition of terrorism is ‘the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal’.
The dictionary.com definition of terrorism is ‘the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.’
The Oxford Reference Definition is ‘The calculated use of violence or threat of violence to inculcate fear.
Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur for the protection of human rights defined Terrorism as ‘the instrumental terrorization of the public or compulsion of Government’.
Common to these definitions is creating fear or terror in a civilian population in order to achieve a political goal. The definition in the Terrorism Act does none of these things.
The irony of Israel’s war against Hamas is that Israel played a key part in its creation!
It doesn’t even mention the terrorisation of the public. It talks about intimidation of people or a threat designed to influence the government, which could include direct action groups.
It says that action falls within the remit of the definition if it involves serious violence against the person, endangers a person’s life, creates a serious risk to health and safety (no company endangering the health of its workers has ever been prosecuted as a terrorist) or threatens or disrupts an electronic system. All of these are existing criminal offences.
14 years in prison as a TERRORIST for a quote – DDN
This definition is so wide that virtually any group could be accused of terrorism if the government dislikes them. Any group that the government considers hostile can be proscribed as a terrorist group. As a definition it is meaningless.
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I am charged under s.12(1)(a) inviting support for a proscribed organisation
It also means that any group that friendly dictators don’t like can be proscribed. For example Turkey’s Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) is proscribed because we are friends with Turkey’s semi-fascist dictator, Recip Erdogan. As David Anderson, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism wrote in his 2012 Report on Terrorism Legislation:
the current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict, however great the provocation and however odious the regime which they have attacked.
In other words if you oppose a dictatorship like that in Myanamar you can be proscribed as a terrorist. Because Britain isn’t friends with the Myanamar regime its separatist opponents such as the People’s Defence Force (PDF) are not proscribed. However there is no difference in principle between the PDF, Hezbollah and Hamas. They are all fighting foreign occupations or military regimes.
One of the tweets that forms part of the prosecution case
People only started waking up to the dangers posed by the Terrorism Act when Palestine Action [PA] was proscribed.
What this definition does not do is brand Israel’s government or any dictatorship, for example the UAE or Saudi Arabia as terrorists. Israel has deliberately caused fear amongst the Palestinians of Gaza with its genocide, yet it is not proscribed.
It is only those who fight against dictatorship who can be proscribed. Terrorist states aren’t recognised as such.
So although Israel is widely recognised as a terrorist state guilty of genocide and ethnic cleaning it is not proscribed because it is a state friendly to and sponsored by Western imperialism. The same is true of Turkey. See Israeli strike on Gaza school kills more than 100 people
Video shows moment of Israeli strike on packed Gaza school shelter
When an Israeli fighter launched a missile at children playing football in a school yard killing 30 that was an act of terrorism as were many other similar atrocities. Yet Israel justified it by saying that it was targeting a Hamas fighter.
Imagine that Hamas had targeted Israeli school children playing football killing 30, there would have been a massive outcry. It would have been seen as a terrorist act.
Yet we have continued to supply parts for the F35 planes that killed the children. This makes the British state complicit in Israel’s genocide. Andy Burnham is going down the same path. Yet the Court of Appeal held that the supply of F35 parts was lawful. This renders international law and even British law null and void.
This marble plaque, which is in the entrance hall to the Old Bailey describes Britain’s most famous case, that of Edward Bushells when a Jury defied the instructions of the Judge to find the defendants guilty. Having been locked up for 2 days without food, water, fire or a chamber pot, the jury returned defiant. Those who refused to pay the judge’s fine were imprisoned until a write of habeus corpus was issued. Judges hate it, Jeremy Johnson forbade all mention of it, but it is the right of every jury member to acquit someone regardless of the law if that is the only way to do justice.
Israel can get away with committing a genocide and the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians because it is fighting ‘terrorism’. Terrorism according to the Terrorism Act only occurs when people defend themselves against the state not when the state kills its citizens. Thus only the Palestinians are deemed ‘terrorists’. This is the logic of the Nazis who also deemed violent opposition to themselves as ‘terrorism’.
Hamas won free and fair elections in 2006. Israel and the West didn’t like the results and in 2007 a failed coup was attempted in Gaza. Hamas fought back and took control. Israel promptly laid siege to the territory. The results have been devastating. It has reduced Gaza’s GDP by 50%:
Mass Unemployment. Severe limits on imports, exports, and movement caused high joblessness, over 50%. [1, 2, 3]
Decimated Industry: Manufacturing, local commerce, and agriculture shrank drastically. [1, 2, 3]
Aid Dependency: The majority of the population relied on international food distribution and humanitarian assistance. [1, 2]
Infrastructure and Basic Services
Water and Sanitation: Restrictions on building materials and “dual-use” equipment prevented upgrades to water treatment plants, leaving residents without clean drinking water. [1, 2, 3]
Power Crises: Chronic shortages of fuel for Gaza’s sole power plant resulted in rolling blackouts lasting many hours a day [1, 2]
Healthcare Deficits: Medical facilities suffered critical shortages of specialized equipment, spare parts, and drugs, forcing patients to seek rare exit permits for external treatment. [1, 2]
Restrictions on Movement
Isolated Population: The movement of students, professionals, and families in and out of the strip was heavily restricted to exceptional humanitarian cases. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Shrunken Livelihoods at Sea and Land: Israel restricted the fishing industry by shrinking access limits off the coast, and reduced access to fertile border farmlands. [1, 2, 3]
In 2001 Britain proscribed Hamas’ military wing as a ‘terrorist’ group and in 2021, one of the most corrupt and despicable politicians, Priti Patel, proscribed the political wing of Hamas. This was a license for genocide.
It meant that any doctor, nurse, teacher, lecturer, refuse worker etc., even if they had no connection with the military wing of Hamas, was a legitimate target. This enabled Israel to bomb and destroy virtually every hospital or health facility, which is a war crime.
On 29 November 1974 Britain proscribed the IRA. It did not proscribe Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, despite pressure to do so from the Unionists. Nor did it attack wounded IRA men in hospital in the way Israel attacks wounded Hamas members. Imagine that Britain had fired rockets at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. There would have been uproar. Yet Israel has attacked every single hospital in Gaza.
By any normal criteria, it is the IDF that is a terrorist not Hamas. Yet it is with the Israeli state that we have a military alliance. Britain’s foreign policy is amoral and unethical.
International law recognizes the right to resist the denial of self-determination, (General Assembly resolution 37/43, para. 2) as does the International Court of Justice. See Advisory Opinion, 19 July 2024, Judge Charlesworth, para. 23).
Rajiv Menon KC has been cited for contempt of court by Jeremy Johnson for informing the Jury of their Right to ignore MI5’s Representative on the Bench
In July 2025 PA was proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Over 3,000 people have been arrested as terrorists. The average profile of a terrorist in Britain today is a woman in her late 50s! This was criticised by UN human rights experts who warned against misusing terrorism laws to stifle legitimate social and political protest.
In the words of John Dugard, an international lawyer and ad-hoc judge of the International Court of Justice, the label ‘terrorist’ is a bid to discredit and silence opponents. The Myanmar military regime also has branded the winner of its most recent elections as “terrorists”
Article 33 of the 1957 Geneva Conventions Act specifically prohibits state terrorism yet the Terrorism Act 2000 excludes state terrorism from its ambit.
Those supporting proscribed groups face up to 14 years in prison simply for displaying the group’s signs, wearing its clothing, or organising meetings in support of its goals.
After October 7 Netanyahu chanted ‘Hamas=ISIS’ but the reality was that Hamas and ISIS were deadly enemies and that Israel is now arming and supporting ISIS gangs in Gaza
The banning of PA was part of a process that defines as ‘terrorist’ groups which oppose British foreign policy.
The irony of the Terrorism Act 2000 is that those proposing it, Blair and Jack Straw, did more to help create terrorism than anyone. If there had been no Iraq War there would have been no ISIS. It was the illegal invasion of Iraq and the sectarian policies which followed that created the ISIS.
There is nothing new about equating resistance or national liberation movements with terrorism. Both Thatcher and Reagan called Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
This danger was envisaged in the debate on the Terrorism Act in December 1999 when Douglas Hogg, a former Tory Foreign Affairs Minister raised the prospect that Kurds trying to oust Saddam Hussein might be deemed terrorist.
Kurdish representatives came to see the then Foreign Secretary, the then Prime Minister and me, to obtain our support for their campaign to drive Saddam Hussein and his army out of north Iraq. On the face of it, that falls within the scope of action capable of constituting terrorism under clause 1.
I understand the right hon. Gentleman to be saying not that I am wrong, but that no one would be prosecuted for encouraging the Kurds to take such action, because of the discretionary power of the prosecution authority. That, however, is a profoundly unattractive situation.
In response Jack Straw accused Hogg of having a ‘fevered imagination’ yet exactly this same scenario has played out in respect of Turkey. Tom King, the former Tory Defence Secretary then commented that
We then come up against exactly the problem that the hon. Member for Islington, North [Jeremy Corbyn] mentioned: one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
This phrase was first coined by British novelist Gerald Seymour in his thriller novel, Harry’s Game. Yesterday’s terrorist has a habit of becoming the future government. ‘Terrorism’ has become the government’s weapon of choice against those they dislike.
The misuse of the term ‘terrorist’ is part and parcel of the attack of the British state on democratic rights. Both Tory and Labour governments have introduced successive laws restricting the right of protest.
The Use of Terrorism & Public Order Laws to Suppress Political Dissent and the Right to Protest
There has been a raft of repressive legislation introduced recently. All with one objective. Restricting the right to protest. Direct action groups have been particularly affected.
Passed in April 2021, the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021 enabled courts to classify any non-terrorism offense carrying a sentence of more than two years as having a “terrorist connection”. This was used by Judge Jeremy Johnson to increase the sentences of the Filton 4.
Amnesty International argued that in cases of criminal damage committed during direct action this would invert the principle that the conscientious motivation of the defendants should be treated as a mitigating factor. Instead it would become an aggravating factor resulting in heavier sentences than normal. The Filton 4 are officially political prisoners.
One of the tweets which is party of the prosecution case
Passed in April 2022, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (PCSCA) introduced Noise-based restrictions, restrictions on one-person protests and a Statutory Public Nuisance offence of causing “serious annoyance” punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The Public Order Act 2023 criminalised specific direct-action protest tactics and targeting mechanisms:
Locking-on offences and the possession of items (like glue or bike locks) intended for this purpose.
Infrastructure protections which created harsh new criminal offenses for disrupting major transport works, blocking highways, or interfering with key national infrastructure.
Expanded Stop and Search and Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPOs) which created civil court orders that ban individuals with previous protest convictions from attending future demonstrations.
Starmer’s gift to repressive policing was the Crime and Policing Act 2026which targeted modern protest tactics and added localised restrictions including Cumulative disruption, Face-covering bans, Protected zones which introduced restrictions on holding demonstrations near places of worship and banned the act of climbing on war memorials.
Section 166 allowed senior commanders in off-site control rooms to impose operational conditions on ongoing protests.
These public order powers increasingly intersected with counter-terrorist powers such as the Expanded Use of Proscription (Terrorism Act 2000).
The statutory Prevent duty has conflated activism with extremism. Counter-terrorism policing guidance explicitly linked peaceful environmental and direct action groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace with neo-Nazi groups as ideologies to monitor.
Who is really behind IRCG ban and what will it mean?
The latest piece of repressive legislation is the National Security (States Threat) Act. Receiving information from a group which has been proscribed is now to be made an offence too. There is an excellent interview by Owen Jones with Paul Holden below which I suggest people watch.
The Terrifying New Law You Haven’t Heard Of
As Jonathan Cook pointed out Shabana Mahmood explained her vision of an all-powerful, all-seeing surveillance state of the kind that George Orwell depicted in his novel 1984 by comparing it to the “panopticon”, which philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s perfect prison: a central watchtower (the state) surrounded by a circle of cells where the inmates (the public) would be visible at all times.
Mahmood was the one Minister that Burnham did not move or sack. It clearly demonstrates that Burnham is a continuation of, not a break from, the legacy of Keir Starmer. See UK state threats bill could pull British journalists into terror prosecutions, experts say
The Police Identified Me as a Member of H@mas Fahad Ansari and the Deproscription Bid:
In April 2025, Fahad Ansari submitted a formal application to the UK Home Secretary to lift the total ban on Hamas. The legal team argued that the 2021 full proscription was politically motivated and unlawfully restricted political expression. The Home Office rejected the request in July 2025, leading to an active appeal before the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC).
This was politically unpopular. Senior political figures – including then-Shadow Home Secretary Robert Jenrick and the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism reported Ansari to the Solicitors Regulation Authority demanding he be struck off for “sympathy for terrorists” thus inciting violence against him.
The Police took their revenge. Coming back from a holiday with his family Ansar was subjected to a Schedule 7 Airport Stop in August 2025. He was detained for three hours at Holyhead Port. Police Officers fingerprinted him and forced him to hand over his passcode under threat of arrest.
Police downloaded and copied the contents of his work mobile. Ansari’s legal team argued that the phone’s contents are protected by legal professional privilege and that police targeted him specifically due to his representation of Hamas.
In March 2026, the High Court ruled that Ansari was not entitled to see national security evidence used by the police to justify the phone data inspection.
In May 2026, court submissions revealed that police documents had falsely listed Ansari as a “member” of Hamas rather than its legal representative. Ansari’s counsel stated this proved the stop was a targeted operation to access his files.
One of the tweets that is part of the prosecution case
Criticism of the Terrorism Act’s Definition of Terrorism
In April 2026, five UN human rights special rapporteurs issued a joint letter calling the UK government’s actions ‘harassment, intimidation and misuse of counterterrorism powers’, warning that the case sets a dangerous precedent threatening lawyer-client confidentiality worldwide writing:
The view of the United Nations Human Rights Committee that the predicate definition of terrorism in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is itself over-broad and “unduly restrictive of political expression”, and has been criticized also by the two Independent Reviewers of Terrorism Legislation and the UK Supreme Court in R v. Gul (2013).
This Blog Summarises my Position – I Support the Palestinians
The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism, David Anderson, in his 2012 Report on Terrorism suggested that there was
‘a case for shrinking the definition of terrorism… the definition is so broad as to criminalise certain acts carried out overseas that constitute lawful hostilities under international humanitarian law. Examples include UN-sanctioned use of force and acts of violent rebellion against oppressive governments, even where such acts target only military objectives and minimise civilian casualties.
The Supreme Court in Gul spoke of the ‘undesirable consequences of the combination of the very wide definition of “terrorism” and the provisions of section 117.
Anderson also observed that
the current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict, however great the provocation and however odious the regime which they have attacked
And that is the problem. The definition of terrorism is wide enough to let a coach and horses through it. It gives a massive discretion to the Home Secretary.
Most people, whatever their views of the NATO proxy war, would agree that the Ukrainian people have a right to resist Russian occupation, especially outside the Donbas area.
One of the main groups on the Ukrainian side is the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Nicholas Lazaredes reported that:
The first thing you notice as you walk through the corridors of the Azov battalion’s base in Mariupol are the swastikas. There are many — painted on doors, adorning the walls and chalked onto the blackboards of this former school, now temporary headquarters for the Azov troops…. When I point to another symbol of the Third Reich etched on the wall, that of Hitler’s “SS”, he simply shrugs and says: “We are nationalists, but we are not Nazis.”
Its founder Andrew Biletsky, declared in 2010 that the Ukrainian nation’s mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans]” Starmer, who was so dedicated to rooting out anti-Semitism, didn’t think of proscribing the Azov Battalion!
Sarah Sackman – Loyal to Israel and a Supporter of Israel’s Apartheid Jewish Supremacist State
The Supreme Court also spoke about s.117 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the fact that discretion as to whether to prosecute lay in the hands of the DPP and Attorney General.
The Crown’s reliance on prosecutorial discretion is intrinsically unattractive, as it amounts to saying that the legislature, … has in effect delegated to an appointee of the executive,… the decision whether an activity should be treated as criminal for the purposes of prosecution.
In my case the decision whether to prosecute was delegated to the Solicitor General as the Attorney General had concluded that having family members serving in the IDF disqualified him from making a decision.
Sarah Sackman attacked me by name in an article yet the Court of Appeal saw no problem in her obvious bias
Who was the Solicitor General? None other than Sarah Sackman, former Vice Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement who on 26 March 2016 attacked me by name in an article in the Jewish News calling me ‘problematic’. When this was appealed to the Court of Appeal the Judges found nothing wrong. See my previous blog on Sackman’s corruption
Tony Greenstein .Justice for Tony Greenstein Campaign
