Palestine Action protests

Palestine Action aren't a peaceful protest group, aswell as sabotaging military equipment they've attacked Jewish owned businesses and hospitalised a police officer after attacking them with a sledgehammer when they targeted Elbit Systems

If, say, a pro-Russia group damaged military planes or attacked the police would it be looked on as sympathetically by some here?

By your logic the Suffragettes were 'terrorists' too? See this IS connected to Feminism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette_bombing_and_arson_campaign

What I’m saying is I disagree with you when you suggested that damaging warplanes makes this terrorism.

Terrorism is about trying to terrorise people to get political change, and I don’t think damaging planes counts.

Also that we have very strict laws to prevent terrorism and those laws very severely restrict free speech. So we should all worry when those laws are used for different crimes like criminal damage, becuase it’s the rights of all of us that are being reduced.

I don’t understand what the parallel is with GC though I’d be interested for you to explain.

And the reason I dislike PA being subject to this terror law isn’t because I’m sympathetic to either their goals or their methods.

I'm concerned that what was about Palestine is now in sizable number (as reported), elderly people protesting in support of a proscribed terrorist organisation.

How did you decide that the protesters are "elderly"? Do you mean that they were people who were too young to have experienced the UK's, and its constituent countries' (especially Scotland's) pushback against earlier waves of antisemitism? That doesn't make it OK for YOU to be an antisemite.

Well said 👍

This keeps coming up on threads.

I am not sure where this influx of contributors have come from but find it really sad that anyone would think anything couldn't or shouldn't be discussed by women who have a common understanding of women's sex based rights because they are those whose opinions they value.

Also a reminder, (or is this being a bit gullible and not following a dictat) nobody want the FWR thread split. And it was only because some whiney lets be kind contributors didn't want to have to talk or even hear about the onslaught of TRAs. So they are safe in their little sand pit, in the mean time women who have a range of views and interest, but a common one of women's sex based rights continue to discuss.

Only MNHQ thought they could dictate the thread should be siloed into sex and gender.

No self respecting feminist would accept having their thoughts and beliefs restricted to a single issue.

The attack on women's sex based rights by TRAs may be the current manifestation of the patriarchy trying to under mine women's sex based rights, but that doesn't mean we dont know or dont care about how this is anti woman politics shows itlsef in other areas.

You have and continue to do so.

Criminal damage is not terrorism.

It is criminal damage.

I think the gullible people are those, and in fact it started with Suella Braverman, who think they can abuse their position as politicians to create laws to stop people who have different opinions to theirs, by saying they are terrorists.

I keep wondering how people like Trump get elected, and then you just have to understand that however wobbley our democratic system has been, we have never, and neither has the US lived through a period when Government decides it doesn't have to use the democratic process to try and get people to support their views, they can just create laws and say you must think like us, eitherwise you are a traitor or a terrorist.

I think this is why more older people respond so angrily to Starmer being dictatorial, because is so goes against the grain of how they grew up, and some of those demostrating are ex-service. So using the trash paper tactic of saying they are just lefty liberals again is just so uninformed.

It would be totaly different to say I think the Government can tell people how to think, and arrest them when they challenge that.

But a pathetic attempt to say only gullible people are doing this, when it has come from the very opposite ie principled conviction.

Also suggest that before bandying around words like terrorism you look up the definition of it.

Just another example of how those who are really gullible are being pushed by Government and the media into reactionary anti UK values.

It depends on what you mean by 'vulnerable'. Obviously the elderly are more like likely to suffer from health concerns, but I was comparing the life experience of people in their 70s, say, to people in their twenties.

I don't think, in general terms, that 'the elderly' are more gullible than the young. I don't think that's a stretch. Yes, it is a freedom of speech issue.

Who did they hurt?
Who did they intimidate?
Who did they kill, to have their way politically?

Being non violent saboteurs and a pain in the arse isn't terrorism, no more than Just Stop Oil, or Climate X.

The difference is that a foreign government hasn't intervened in the case of climate protestors, whereas they have with PA, to a Government terrified of being labelled anti-Semitic.

Think about that, a foreign government can influence ours, using emotional blackmail.

Not terrorist.

What is terrorism?

Seeking to effect political change by means of terrorising a population. Spraypainting jets isn’t that. Not becuase it’s trivial — it isn’t. It costs a fortune to fix and is a direct attack on our military — but because terrorism is a specific thing. Laws passed to curb terrorism are draconian, and we should all worry when they are applied to other things we don’t like. We have other laws for that.

What’s the parallel with GC debates that you see?

(I’m basically both GC and pro-Israel if we must flatten those issues into binaries).

So you can speak for yourself but the “elderly” people at the protests are just gullible and need you to speak for (and what, save) them?

I agree with the OP that there are parallels. At its basic level there's been a massive overreach on free speech in the UK for about a decade and we're seeing the results of that in many different areas.

I don't know why this is in FWR?

It is a free speech issue.

There are a lot of issues here, many beyond free speech. In the context of a growing national security threat I don't want UK groups to feel they have a right to attack our military capabilities.

I do think the government have overreached here, following their established tendency to panic when they feel there's a threat to public order.

But surely demonstrating in this way is going to be seen as supporting the group itself - which is the illegal bit.

You misunderstand as did OP.

The demonstrations are about the Government categorising PA as a terrorist group.

It is a free speech issue.

I totally understand those wishing to support Palestine but there is no need to support Palestine Action. From watching the protesters on the news it's the typical middle class lefty's akin to the Just Stop Oil brigade.

In fact, which I hadn't realised, so more consciousness raising thanks to Government over reach, is that the demos are organised by the group "Defend our Juries".

You can read more about them here https://defendourjuries.net/