Belfast and Palestine Action: hypocrisy and terrorism
JVL Introduction
George Monbiot is spot on in this devastating critique of government inconsistency and hypocrisy, as the Court of Appeal rules the government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terror organisation is lawful.
The government’s own definition of terrorism could have been coined to describe the rioting in Belfast: “the use or threat” of actions designed to “intimidate the public” for the purpose of “advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.
But it isn’t.
Instead over three thousand people have already been arrested for peacefully holding up slogans saying, “I support Palestine Action”.
Monbiot teases out the terrifying implications of the route the government has chosen to pursue, with a compliant judiciary seemingly willing to do its bidding.
As Amnesty International has pointed out, until recently the conscientious motivation of protesters was treated as a mitigating factor in sentencing. Now it is treated as an aggravating factor.
We have an authoritarian right-wing government, Labour in name only, and a judicial system treating far-right terrorism more leniently than left-wing dissent.
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Wed 17 Jun 2026. Read the original here.
The Belfast riots, Palestine Action protests. What is terrorism now – and why the hypocrisy?
The right is obsessed with ‘two-tier policing’. This is indeed a two-tier government – but the real victims are progressives
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This is a tyrannical regime to suppress the truth and oppress people in fear and lies. If Iran suffocates its peoples rights..what about the UK?
These people did not commit terror acts against the ‘Nation’.
Terrorism appears to be harming weapons used to kill indigenous people.
I’m not sure how fair and unbias the judges can be when the government is pushing for proscription.
They proscribed Hamas but has far as i am aware they have not targetted any other countries outside of Israel. Resistance groups are considered terrorists.
Echoes of South Africans fighting Apartheid, or the Civil Rights movements, Independence of India from the British..and yet they don’t learn from the pass and still cultivate that ‘them’ and ‘us’.
So long as people stay in their chains..tyrants will tyrannise. Voltaire was right.
As ever with the Starmer false ‘Labour’ government deep hypocrisy rules.
It could be an idea for JVL and George Monbiot to look at supporting Craig Murray in his dogged attempt to challenge the UK government through the separate Scottish jurisdiction.
I have already read this but, yes, it is very good.
Next time you hear a Labour MP talking about ‘Labour values’ just think about what they are really.