Palestine Action protests

[BettyBooper]

I do realise that this is the FWR board, but there are some undercurrents of similarity, which is my interest.

Palestine Action has be proscribed as a terrorist organisation. This protest (to my understanding) was about that decision, not about the issue in Palestine itself.

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.

You can protest about Palestine without supporting this organisation. So what's happening here?

I think my concern is that bad actors are using well meaning people to push an ideology. Which is the similarity with gender ideology and hence me posting here.

Again, my concern is that the protest appears to be in support of a group rather than the cause.

My main issue is that the Labour Party celebrates movements in history (women's lib, miner strikes) that by their own standards today would have been proscribed as terrorist organisations. There's a terrible hypocrisy there that I cannot understand.

I personally agree with what UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said about it all:

Under "international standards" terrorist acts "should be confined to criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury or to the taking of hostages, for purpose of intimidating a population or to compel a government to take a certain action or not,"

"It misuses the gravity and impact of terrorism to expand it beyond those clear boundaries, to encompass further conduct that is already criminal under the law,"

If they had taken the police hostage and then attacked them with a sledge hammer, then that absolutely warrants a terrorist act. But the use of a sledgehammer as a response to evading attempted arrest falls under existing criminal law. Police are often unfortunately on the receiving end of similar actions all the time. It's not right but it doesn't equate to a terrorist act.

In response to another post, we saw similar destruction and attacks on police during the far right riots - many of which saw innocent people caught in the cross fire. Yet none of those imprisoned were tried as terrorists.

I don't want to go down the route of a police state where the public aren't told the full picture after the fact, under the banner of 'national security'. That is a very slippery slope...We can't hold our elected members to account if we can't fully scrutinise their decisions. (Never mind the fact that the vote on proscribing wasn't taken separately but lumped in with 2 other terrorist organisations).

The law could have been strong in response to what transpired through the actions of a small group. From what we have been told so far, it didn't 'need' to go down this path, but like you said, I suppose we'll find out more during the court hearing.

Oh you are absolutely allowed to protest the government's actions.

You're not, however, allowed to express support for a proscribed terrorist group.

Why are people expressing support for a proscribed terrorist group instead of e.g. holding up a banner that says 'the government have gone too far'?

I think the difference between the riots and Palestinian action is that PA is an organised group, with members that plan their attacks. The rioters were not an organised group with a name planning attacks. I do think it’s very serious to attack Uk military assets, it takes bloody ages to get weapons made and deployed. Most of us have no idea where these weapons were supposed to go. Allowing PA to continue destroying weapons that the UK uses to protect it’s own interests and the interest of allies seems bloody stupid to me. Impairing our ability to defend ourselves is domestic terrorism.

So, you know this how? 🙄 FFS!

Not to split hairs but there were planned attacks on hotels and mosques (albeit organised on FB and the like but still).

And like I said in my post, me disagreeing with the terrorist status isn't the same as me thinking nothing should have been done. There's a massive sliding scale inbetween... heck they could have been added to the list of active extremist groups and still be tackled under anti terrorism (as many of the far right groups are).

Did they have a manual and “cells” because PA do. This is what I mean about planned and organised.

Which is different from a bunch of morons on facebook convincing other morons to join them in doing something stupid and nasty.

I think if a group with Islamist links or a group with far right links had done the same thing (which is destroy British military equipment) people would be a bit clearer on where they stand on this,

I mean they are being investigated for getting funding from Iran, that may be a nothingburger but as I said previously theres a lot we don’t actually know and there was enough for the British legal system to think the government was being reasonable.

Not as moronic as you might think.

www.itv.com/news/2025-02-11/undercover-footage-shows-far-right-group-preparing-for-race-war

Neil Basu, former head of UK counterterrorism policing, who reviewed segments of the more than 100 hours of footage secretly recorded by ITV News, described Active Club England as the "successor to National Action", the banned far-right terror group that was outlawed after celebrating the murder of MP Jo Cox.

So the previous incarnation of this group was proscribed as terrorists? And this group has managed to stay on the right side of the law so far but could be proscribed as terrorists if they do not?

I'm not sure what your point is.

I've seen plenty of clips of people on marches in more recent times ( being interviewed or asked questions), and I know from personal observation and experience over the years of having been around Left wing circles.

Much of it just cycles back to general anti semitic tropes and conspiracies about 'world domination', 'capitalism', 'the Rothschild's,' Imperialism' etc.

Long before October 7th.....Israel has always been a central rallying point for the Left......it started when British Leftists joined forces with the Baathists with their vision for International Socialism. Lefties have been wearing shemags forever. And many new recruits don't know the first thing about the long history of the conflict, or of Zionism, or of the terrorist activities of the PLO and so on.

Most of which you see is here is people striving for balance in the face of rabid Israel hatred which permits for no virtues, only evils; and which totally ignores the Hamas mission to totally destroy Israel and kill all jews.

Well, I'd agree, but I suspect at least some of the protestors are attempting to do the former by apparently doing the latter. It may not be very bright, but I'd also say that as a government trying to maintain the peace and avoid civil unrest, dragging off and arresting elderly people for wearing a T shirt is also not very bright.

For quite a few younger people it starts on university campuses. Here are a few flyers that were posted around my local university campus. Groups such as the SWP have stalls and give talks and teach about how evil Israel is. The language is always about 'fighting' and 'smashing'. At a young age people are inculcated into an ideological worldview in which israel can only be evil.

Some of the roots of this are far older, and go back to communist Russia and to communist narratives generally.

Some images of marchers against Israel, and an old Russian propoganda poster

A twelve year old boy interviews an anti Israel protestor:

I hear many anti-Zionists say that it’s not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel. That anti-semitism is being ‘weaponised’ etc. Obviously theoretically it’s true that criticism of the state of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic, but often these people are not seeing what they are part of. Anyone with a historic understanding of anti-semitism can see the same narratives rolling around: uniquely evil, killing innocents for pleasure, world domination, scheming, control of the media. Since time immemorial people have held these beliefs because they think that it’s not prejudice but the truth. Roald Dahl, who was notoriously anti-Semitic, said “Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

The clear relevance to being GC is the ability to question your own beliefs and the received wisdom. You might still come down against the Israeli actions in Gaza but you are likely to do so with less black and white thinking.

The point is not just to protest but to break the law en masse, making the prohibition of manifestations of support for PA prohibitively costly to to enforce. If the authorities were to turn a blind eye to the law-breaking it'd be more "two-tier policing"; continuing the arrests and proceeding to trials risks a backlash from not only from supporters of PA or freedom of speech, but from those who'd see it simply as a huge waste of police and court resources.

The Israeli State is evil.

Do you think any other states in the world are 'evil' or do you only apply that particular description to Israel?

I'm also curious whether Hamas are going to get called 'evil'.

And I find this post particularly unpleasant considering the shooting that has occurred today in Jerusalem...but Israel, boo hiss boo hey?

There you go. You cannot see past your own ideology, and that makes you part of the problem, not the solution.

Of course not. The poster has revealed all that is needed to know about her and her world view; which we already knew anyway.

No reasoned response to my post nor recognition of the trouble I'd taken to provide the evidence requested....just one liners, accusations and name calling.

I think it is both about the organisation not being a "violent" as has been made out - hardly Taliban level which we seem to be happy to ignore and let them subjugate women. Also the fact the genocide is being continued and the only voice pointing it out that gets reported in the media at all is when pensioners throw themselves under the bus. It's deliberate because our media are hiding the genocide and our govt is enabling it to continue. The only thing I can think is Starmer is being held over the fire by his wife or her family to keep it out of the press and keep it going until the IDF take over the land. No thought to where the refugees will go, of course. Get ready to welcome Farage into No 10 when they do arrive on the small boats.

My usual rule of thumb is to see if they know which two countries border Gaza and which two countries border the West Bank. Without Googling.

I don't believe the majority of people are saying this about the Israeli state because they are parroting antisemitic tropes; they are saying this because the state has pushed a narrative via media (state-funded ad campaigns); they have via the state conscripted IDF targeted innocents unlawfully, disproportionately, and deliberately (sources from various human rights groups); they are committing a genocide (source: various human rights organisations, international legal bodies, genocide scholars) which wouldn't unreasonably be described as "evil"... If it walks like a duck, etc etc.

I'm sure there will be some who are indeed both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, but especially looking at the growing Jewish opposition to the Israeli government's actions, it seems very clear that this is not a "Jewish" issue but a "State of Israel" one.