UK Labour Party Purges Have Mutated Into the Arrest of Palestine Supporters
Britain's authoritarian new prime minister is
expanding the scope of already draconian laws to redefine his critics as
'supporters' of terrorism
Posted on September 02, 2024
The arrest yesterday of Palestine solidarity activist
Sarah Wilkinson, following the arrest of journalist Richard Medhurst last week – both
based on an improbable claim they have violated Section 12 of the Terrorism Act
– is definitive proof that Keir Starmer’s authoritarian purges of the Labour
left are being rolled out against critics on a nationwide basis.
Now safely ensconced in No 10, Starmer can crush the
basic rights of British citizens with as much relish as he earlier pummeled the
remnants of democracy inside the Labour party – and for much the same reason.
The British prime minister is determined to terrorize
into silence critics highlighting his, and now his government’s, complicity
with Israel and its genocide in Gaza.
Starmer would rather dramatically expand the scope of
already draconian “counter-terrorism” laws than act against the wishes of the
United States, either by stopping arms sales to a fascist Israeli government
led by Benjamin Netanyahu or by joining South Africa’s case against Israel at
the International Court of Justice.
There, judges have already ruled that the slaughter of
tens of thousands of Palestinians over the past 11 months is a “plausible
genocide”. The next step is for South Africa and the many states backing it to
persuade the World Court that the genocide is proven beyond doubt.
The usual Israel lobby ghouls, such as David Collier,
have been salivating over Wilkinson’s arrest. She faces up to 14
years in jail for supposedly “supporting” a proscribed organization – namely,
Hamas.
According to reports, she was told she was being
arrested over “content that she has posted online”. Police seized all her
electronic devices. According to her daughter, she has been released on bail on
condition she “never” uses those devices.
Let’s be clear: the police are using the Terrorism Act
in this way only because they have received political direction to do so.
Wilkinson’s arrest is only possible because the police and Starmer, supposedly
a human rights lawyer, are rewriting the meaning of the term “support for
terrorism”.
This is political repression in its clearest form.
Traditionally, making it a crime to “support” a terror
group was about giving the authorities the power to punish anyone who offered
material assistance, such as sending money or weapons, hiding armed fighters,
providing information useful in an attack, and so on.
Even standard criminal laws against speech usually
require evidence that someone has credibly incited direct violence or put other
people’s lives in danger, such as the charges against those involved in recent
far-right riots that included attempted pogroms against Muslims and immigrants.
That is entirely different from criminalizing as
“support for terror” any positive assertion about something done by a
proscribed organization – all the more so if we remember that Hamas has not
just a military wing, but also a political section and a welfare arm.
The need for careful distinctions should be obvious.
Would praising Hamas leaders, even its military leaders, for agreeing to sit
down in peace talks amount to “support” for a terror organization? Should it
lead to arrest and jail time?
It was never a crime to “support” Sinn Fein – the
political wing of the IRA – in the sense of having complimentary things to say
about its long-time leader, Gerry Adams, or backing its political positions.
It wasn’t even illegal to “support” actual IRA
“terrorists”. Back in the early 1980s, many people criticized the Ulster
authorities and the British government of Margaret Thatcher for their barbaric
treatment of IRA prisoners. It was not an arrestable offense, for example, to
“support” the hunger strike of the IRA’s Bobby Sands that led to his death in
the Maze prison.
The Jewish News sets out the apparent grounds for the raid on Wilkinson’s home by a dozen or
so police officers, and the decision to arrest and investigate her on terrorism
charges. Those reasons, if they are right, should send a terrifying chill down
all our spines. That doubtless was Starmer’s intent.
1. According to the Jewish News, Wilkinson
violated Section 12 by describing Hamas’ airborne assault into Israel on
October 7 as an “incredible infiltration”. Which it clearly was. By any
measure, it was an infiltration. And my dictionary gives as one of the main
definitions of “incredible”: “difficult to believe”, or “extraordinary” in the
sense of “very far from ordinary”.
Seeing Hamas use hang-gliders to get past one of the
most sophisticated military structures ever built to imprison millions of
people is the very definition of “incredible”. It was indeed hard to believe
Hamas managed technically to do what it did that day.
Even were the police to ignore this established
meaning of the word and instead assume that “great” or “wonderful” was intended
– as a description of Hamas breaking out from the cage in which the people of
Gaza had been imprisoned for decades and deprived of the essentials of life for
17 years – that would hardly constitute a crime, let alone “support” for
terrorism.
As is well-established in international law, occupied
people such as the Palestinians have a right to resist an army that occupies
their territory, including through the use of violence. Just ask Starmer about
that right in relation to the people of Ukraine.
Further, as even the Jewish News has
to quietly concede, Wilkinson wrote her tweet on October 7 – that is, the very
day Hamas’ attack happened. She could have had no idea at the time of writing
that civilians were being killed in large numbers.
(The extent of Hamas’ atrocities against civilians on
October 7 is far more disputed than the western media cares to admit. It
quickly became clear Hamas did not, as claimed, kill babies, let alone behead
them. No substantive evidence has been produced so far to show there were
rapes that day, let alone the use of rape as a systematic policy, as Israel and
its supporters allege. Some Israeli civilians, we now know, were killed by
Israel’s own security forces when the so-called Hannibal protocol was invoked. And other Israeli civilians may have been targeted
by some of the armed groups and individuals not allied to Hamas that poured out
of Gaza through breaches created in the electronic fence around the enclave.)
But even if we assume both that Wilkinson knew
civilians had been killed that day, and in large numbers, and that her use of
“incredible” was meant to signal her approval of the killings, it should still
not constitute a crime to note the extraordinary military feat of breaking out
of Gaza.
No one should be locked up for being impressed by
violence. If we wanted to make that some sort of principle, we would have to go
around arresting large numbers of Zionist Jews and non-Jews in Britain who have
been keen to voice their enthusiasm for Israel’s months of slaughter in Gaza.
2. The Jewish News also cites
Wilkinson’s praise for Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political bureau, shortly
after he was assassinated by Israel in Tehran. She referred to him as a “hero”.
As context, let us note that, before his murder,
Haniyeh was widely viewed as a moderate, even in Hamas’ political wing. Living
in exile from Gaza, he appears to have had no foreknowledge of the October 7
attack. He was also one of the main players in efforts to end the bloodletting
in Gaza and bring about a ceasefire through negotiations with Israel.
Killing Haniyeh was intended by Netanyahu to bolster
the hardliners in Hamas’ military and political wings. By sabotaging hopes of a
ceasefire, Israel’s government has been able to continue its genocide.
It is no more unreasonable to view Haniyeh as a “hero”
for conducting a political struggle to free the people of Gaza from what the
World Court has decried as an illegal occupation and a system of brutal
Israeli apartheid than it was to view Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams as a hero for his
political struggle to free Northern Ireland’s Catholic community from the
oppressive rule of Britain and Ulster loyalists.
You may disagree with Haniyeh or Adams’ politics. You
may denounce anyone who supports their positions. But you should most certainly
not be in a position to lock such supporters away – not if we want to continue
believing we live in a free society.
Adams spent many years as an elected member of the
British parliament, though he refused to take up his seat in Westminster in
protest. No one ever seriously suggested that those who supported him – either
by calling him a hero or by voting for him in elections – should be arrested
and jailed. Anyone who had done so would rightly have been called out as
monstrously authoritarian and deeply anti-democratic.
3. Finally, the Jewish News suggests
that Wilkinson made historic online posts – some eight years ago – amounting to
Holocaust denial. Wilkinson apparently disputes this and has argued that the
allegations were a smear campaign.
Even if we assume the worst – that Wilkinson did
actually cast doubt on the Holocaust, rather than being smeared as having done
so – that should not be a matter for the “terrorism” police. Having irrational,
unfounded, or immoral views are not the equivalent of “support” for terrorism.
Not even close.
Let us remember too that, if Britain’s terrorism laws
are going to be enforced so expansively, the first person who should be
arrested for “supporting” terrorism is Starmer himself. Months ago he insisted
numerous times that Israel had a right to block food, water and power to 2.3
million people in Gaza, a policy Israel has indeed pursued and has resulted in
a man-made famine that is starving Palestinians to death. The International
Criminal Court’s prosecutor is seeking Netanyahu’s arrest for that starvation
policy because it is a crime against humanity.
Starmer, the human rights lawyer, knew that the
starvation of Gaza was terrorism – or collective punishment, as it is known in
international law. And yet he gave that very act of terror his full-throated
backing. And his words had much more power to influence events than Wilkinson’s
could ever have.
As opposition leader, he was in a position to add
tangible pressure on Israel to stop its starvation policy by pointing out it
amounted to state terror. As prime minister, he is in a position to advance the
arrest of Israeli leaders for their terrorist acts under the principle of
universal jurisdiction. He can stop arming the genocide too.
If we had a functioning system of international law,
Starmer would undoubtedly be at serious risk of ending up in the dock of The
Hague, accused of complicity in war crimes.
We now face the terrifying, Orwellian reality that a
genocide-complicit prime minister can repurpose Britain’s “counter-terrorism”
laws to jail anyone who opposes Israel’s genocide and Starmer’s complicity in
it, charging them with “support” for terror.
Starmer wants to be judge, jury and executioner. We
must not let him get away with it.
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