Palestine Action protests

Arrests at pro-Palestine Action protest rise to 890 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rvly00440o

Including a significant number of arrests after the protests turned violent.

It's a lot of well-off pensioners with nothing better to do. The same lot job Just Stop Oil etc, even though they give on lots of foreign holidays etc.

Most of them couldn't even point to Palestine on a map.

Yes,
I actually think if say Russia was actually invading the UK, then someone sabotaging a plane would meet a much harsher price (but even then I think that is different to terrorism -aiding an enemy). I agree sabotaging a plane isn't a free speech issue. However, by designating PA a terrorist organisation the government created a free speech issue out of thin air, since it then became an arrestable offence to support Palestine Action or even just hold a sign saying "Palestine Action". Which is only words. So of course people are going to do it - it's amazing the government couldn't have seen this would happen.

For what it's worth i dont like the rash of flag painting etc in roundabouts. I think the videos of people laughing while painting them above takeaways/shops are especially vile and no way is it just about "showing pride in the country". However, I would be outraged if "raise the colours" or whatever they call themselves were deemed a terrorist organisation. And it would be completely counterproductive because then you would have lots of people supporting them to prove a point. Likewise some of the more violent TRAs who have been allowed to get away with quite serious harrasment. We already have laws to deal with people like that without designating them terrorists

That's criminal damage. We have laws against criminal damage. The following things are criminal damage:

Someone painting a messy red cross on a roundabout
Someone putting red paint on a plane
Someone throwing orange powder on Stonehenge
Someone smashing a restaurant window because (allegedly) the owner hosted JKRowling

All done for political purposes. How you feel about each might depend on how you feel about political causes. You might support some even though they are illegal in principle. You could also argue some are worse than others because of cost (planes cost more to fix than roundabouts) or because of targeting (personally I think smashing the windows of someone's private business is worse because it's intimidating private individuals. Likewise people painting red crosses on people's houses/above takeaways.)

But none of them are terrorism.

If you start to change the definition for groups you don't like, what happens when a TRA argues that because someone scrawled "trans women are men" on a building, now anyone using that phrase is a terrorist? Or a pro-life government not only recriminalises abortion but decides that, since abortion is murder, denying the person good of unborn children is terrorist speech.

You're very, very mistaken in fact

Husseini spent most of World War II (1939–45) in Germany, where he issued broadcasts urging revolt in the Arab world and endeavored to halt Jewish emigration to Palestine from countries occupied by the Nazis. At the war’s end he fled to Egypt, where he directed an increasingly weak and fragmented Arab Higher Committee from exile.

Britannica.com

No evidence at all of your claims on Wikipedia either

Evidence of this?

Because whole books have been written about Nazis and the Middle East

^^

🤣🤣🤣

He recanted after being given a tour of the murder camps and seeing the reality of it. He lived his life out in obscurity, in Bosnia.

As others have pointed out, PA aren’t non-violent, and have in fact done some awful stuff, including additional actions that can’t be disclosed because of ongoing court cases. While it’s fair to be watchful of government over reach, it looks like they had justifiable reasons in this case.

What’s interesting as a comparison to the TRA movement is that the surface claims are very similar in proclaiming innocence (“This never happens/there’s never been any violence/if you’re a good person then you’ll support the underdog no matter what”).

Activists broadcast these claims (innocently or not), because they’re a very effective rallying cry for people who are unlikely to look deeper but have a strong empathic impulse for whichever party is cast as the “good guy” in the story.

It’s a very obvious lever activists anywhere on the political spectrum can use to rouse people’s feelings and get them on side for the cause, because many people are unable to separate the activist group from the often morally worthy cause. I imagine a full survey of the people getting arrested would reveal that most of them don’t know why PA was proscribed, and that they are supporting both Palestine and free speech by protesting.

Which trans rights organisations have been proscribed as terrorists making showing support for them an offence under the Terrorism Act?

That is your interpretation of what is going on on Gaza. Terrorism is the intention to influence government policy and have it implement your preferred solution through a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation.

Palestine Action met the definition of 'terrorism' with their campaign and they vowed to continue with acts of violence.

The people now supporting it know what the consequences will be. The police and the government has to act to enforce the law, otherwise the law is meaningless.

Free speech does not involve threats and acts of violence towards property and people. These activists have now moved on from throwing soup at works of art and gluing themselves to the road and blocking ambulances in the name of climate change, to breaking into facilities and damaging property in order to 'encourage' a boycott and alienation of Israel and its citizens.

None of this gets people on side. It is extremist, and its intention is to change government policy through intimidation and violence. I note they are mainly fielding older, retired people whose lives will not be totally destroyed through a criminal conviction.

It's a point of interest, but it's nothing to do with sex and gender discussions. You might as well have posted it in The Litter Tray.

I know the difference, @ProfoundlyPeculiarAndWeird sadly not so much

PA didn't prove anything, they just targeted civilian buildings, which is part of the criteria of terrorism

You, and they, are trying to defend terrorists

Shush shush women, don't talk about anything @ThisChicPinkRaven hasn't decided we're allowed to talk about.

On FWR, of all places.

You're the one that tried to dismiss antisemitism as just anti-Israeli sentiment, that's also a very vital distinction to make yet you failed. Instead you tried to justify the unjustifiable. PA are smashing up and vandalising Jewish owned businesses as if it's Kristallnacht and you don't seem to think it's terrorism. Nazis also made excuses for destroying Jewish businesses. PA 'alleged' the buildings housed landlords for Elbit, they've proved nothing. Would it be acceptable if I came over to yours, alleged you were a landlord for Elbit and smashed your house up?

Most relevantly I posted the definition of terrorism where PA most clearly meets the criteria

I'm afraid you are excusing modern day Nazis

I think you might be confusing anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

As @ProfoundlyPeculiarAndWeird so eloquently puts it, there is "a vital distinction to be made between attacking a business because it is Jewish-owned and attacking it because of its association with a weapons manufacturer facilitating the war in Gaza."

The current discussion on the table is government over-reach in its invocation of anti-terrorism legislation - legislation designed to proscribe groups like Al-Qaeda - against Palestine Action and the associated implication that it may have been done to try and shut down opposition to the government's stance on Israel and its continued and egregious sale of military supplies to a regime who are currently engaged in actual and real genocide.

People who are capable of critical thinking are generally GC and pro-Israel, so there is a big crossover in support between the two camps.

The stated justification was the presence of a business with relations to the weapons manufacturer. I am just pursuing the point that there is a vital distinction to be made between attacking a business because it is Jewish-owned and attacking it because of its association with a weapons manufacturer facilitating the war in Gaza.

Hopefully the police will do a good job of investigating the motive for the attack, and, as I have said, any criminal damage motivated by antisemitic hate should be punished more severely under hate crime laws.

Nothing you have posted establishes that a business has been attacked because it is Jewish-owned. You have simply assumed the group's stated motivation to be false.

And, more relevantly to the thread, nothing you have posted supports the need to invoke terrorism laws rather than laws relating to criminal damage and (if the antisemitic motivations established) hate crime laws.

The government cannot just decide to designate a group as terrorists. I assume a legal bar must be met.

This is just forced teaming normal non violent people with lets be honest a anti-semitic outfit thats attacked UK military assets and actual people.

Not buying it. Fuck em.