Dana Abu Qamar’s victory is a strike against silencing of support for Palestinians
JVL Introduction
Dana Abu Qamar’s legal victory against the cancellation of her student visa for daring to support legitimate Palestinian resistance has been widely welcomed but excoriated by those who defend genocide. What has not been appreciated is its wider implications for rolling back ‘counter-terrorism’ overreach.
Legal means of resistance against occupation is a right enshrined in international law. Expressing support for that right cannot be construed to imply support for every act of resistance, no matter how it is carried out. The Government has been told to respect rights to free speech, hopefully the Labour Home Office will have heeded the lesson.
This article also draws attention to the multiplying government agencies trying to ‘protect us’. Who knew of the Special Cases Unit; the Research, Information and Communications Unit; and the National Community Tensions Team; let alone Homeland Security Analysis Insight? We are sure we will all sleep safer in our beds knowing so many are looking out for us, that is until they haul us from our beds at 3 a.m.
MC
This article was originally published by Council Estate Media on Fri 1 Nov 2024. Read the original here.
UK tribunal supports the Palestinian right to resistance
It confirmed that resistance and terrorism are not the same things
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Dictatorship and horrifying hypocrisy by our establishment politicians.
Under the ‘Labour’ hierarchy, the racism which matters is ‘antisemitism’. All else, inclusive of genocide, is being subverted and mention of it is shut out.
I am interested on that I, and all the other Jews who think like me regarding the relationship between Israel and Palestine, am an anti-Semitic terrorist. I didn’t know that. I just thought I was some-one who wanted to see an end to the victimisation of a whole people, and supported that people in its desire to seek out effective ways of ending that victimisation. This proves, if notheing else does, what a wonderfully varid and versatile language English is.
By establishing the state of Israel the “Great Powers” created a legal framework whereby Israel’s military actions could be legitimated as “self-defence” while the actions of those – both state and non-state actors – who refused to accept the dispossession implicit in this were defined as belligerant or terrorist.
Thus today Keir Starmer begins every statement on the current situation in which Israel commits genocide and attempts to widen the conflict with an insistence on Israel’s “right to self-defence”.
In this framework there is no right to resistence – even when peaceful, legal means of halting Israel’s continued plunder of Palestinian land have no effect. Congratulations to Dana Abu-Qamar in her defiant pursuit of tje case for the right to resist.
This is a very important victory because it establishes the distinction between resistance and terrorism.
Hamas was wrongfully proscribed, its political wing not just its military wing, as a terrorist organisation. In my view t his is unlawful even according to the definition in the Terrorism Act 2000. In essence the Police and government are treating Israel as the lawful government in Gaza and any resistance as terrorism despite the ICJ ruling that Israel’s occupation is illegal.
We have seen a raft of people – the latest Haim Bresheeth arrested for simple speech by the political police of the Met. If we don’t fight back against this then increasingly freedom of speech will be a thing of the past.
The fact that you have to look over your shoulder when you write something shows how far down the road we have come.