Palestine Action set to challenge UK ban

Palestine flag outside the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday – Reuters

For more on this see my two recent posts, First they came for Palestine Action and Dates for Brits against genocide – August 9.

The Reuters piece reads:

The co-founder of a pro-Palestinian campaign group on Wednesday won her bid to bring a legal challenge against the British government’s decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws.

Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, asked London’s High Court to give the go-ahead for a full challenge to the group’s proscription, which was made on the grounds it committed or participated in acts of terrorism.

Palestine Action has increasingly targeted Israel-linked companies in Britain, often spraying red paint, blocking entrances or damaging equipment. It accuses Britain’s government of complicity in what it says are Israeli war crimes in Gaza. ¹

Earlier this month, the High Court refused Ammori’s application to pause the ban and, following an unsuccessful last-ditch appeal, Palestine Action’s proscription came into effect just after midnight on July 5.

Proscription makes it a crime to be a member of the group, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison …

(It also makes it a crime to support the banned group. Ask retired headteacher of Leeds, busted for holding a placard replicating a front page of the satirical magazine, Private Eye. Ask 83 year old of Truro, her (dog) collar felt by Cornwall Constabulary, or the 81 year old former magistrate featured in yesterday’s Observer. They and 200+ others like them have yet to be charged.

… Judge Martin Chamberlain granted permission for Ammori to bring a judicial review, saying her case that proscription amounted to a disproportionate interference with her and others’ right to freedom of expression was “reasonably arguable”.

Dozens of people have been arrested for holding placards purportedly supporting the group since the ban, and Ammori’s lawyers say people expressing support for the Palestinian cause have also been subject to increased scrutiny from police.

However, Britain’s interior minister Yvette Cooper has said violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest ² and that Palestine Action’s activities – including breaking into a military base and damaging two planes – justify proscription.

Israel has repeatedly denied committing abuses in its war in Gaza, which began after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023.

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1. Note the “balance” and pseudo-objectivity of that Reuters phrasing: “… what Palestine Action says are Israeli war crimes in Gaza”. The planet and its grandma can see those war crimes while an army of genocide scholars, six of them Israeli, have called genocide in Gaza. For the umpteenth time: when one source says it’s raining, another that it isn’t, the job of journalists is not  to quote both in the interests of ‘balance’. It’s to stick their heads out the fucking window and find out what’s true.
2. “… Yvette Cooper has said violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest…”  The hypocrisy is award winning! A few years ago, on the centennial of (some) women getting the vote in Britain, she stood in the Commons sporting a Suffragette rosette the size of an IDF helmet while proudly declaring admiration and gratitude for those who broke unjust laws to pave the way for any such thing as a female member of parliament, let alone a Home Secretary to be. Did the suffragettes eschew violence? They threw bombs for God’s sake! Did they draw the line at criminal damage? Many Palestine Action deeds, like gluing hands to railings outside arms factories where Gaza’s ordeal is prepared, are a straight steal from the suffragette playbook. Bah!