Remove Hamas and the other Resistance groups from the Home Office list of proscribed organisations

David Miller 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

David Miller exposes the UK’s use of counterterrorism laws to suppress pro-Palestinian speech and calls for de-proscribing Palestinian and Lebanese resistance groups.

The British government should de-proscribe all of the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance groups currently listed on the anachronistic list maintained by the Home Office. The first and most obvious reason for this is that banning these groups does not in any way prevent or disrupt political violence in the UK. This sounds like a dramatic claim.  So, let’s take a close look.

After a year and a half of genocide by the illegitimate Zionist entity, voices are beginning to be raised calling for the removal of Palestinian resistance groups from the government list of proscribed organisations. But what is the list and what offences are attached to it?

When I was detained by officers of SO15 or the Counter Terrorism Command (formerly the Special Branch) under Schedule 7 the other day, I was given a piece of paper with the legal basis of the detention which I was required to sign and was given a copy to keep. It states that the detention is to enable whether I appeared ‘to be a person who is or has been concerned in the commission of instigation of acts of terrorism.’

And yet, they asked me no questions about commissioning or instigating acts of “terrorism”.  Not a single one.

Instead, they asked about extremism, the Western way of life, and asked me to characterise specific views on political violence. If the Trades Description Act applied to the Terrorism Act 2000 and to the activities of SO15, I would be making a complaint to the Heathrow Trading Standards Officer.

But the reason for this is that Schedule 7 is not really intended to disrupt actual terrorism, but to surveill and repress political views and political speech which is critical of UK foreign policy, including of course support for the Palestinians' legitimate right to resist the Zionist occupation. Don’t believe me? Let’s look closely at the Home Office list of offences related to proscribed organisations.

As one can see from the offences below, none of them have anything to do with actual acts of violence. Let's take each in turn.

1. Obviously being a member of a proscribed group might have some relevance, but membership is not itself an act of terror. And certainly, professing to be a member of Hezbollah is not, in itself, an act of terror.

2.Inviting support for a proscribed group is an offence. How does one 'invite' support for a 'terrorist' organisation? The language is of course similar to the 'notice' issued to UK broadcasters on 19 October 1988. Otherwise known as the Broadcasting Ban, this was an attempt to suppress support for the Irish Republican movement and in particular its political wing Sinn Fein, which throughout the period remained a legal political party with many elected councillors in the north of Ireland. It made, as I argued at the time, no appreciable difference to the Irish Republican Army, the wing of the movement engaged in armed struggle. But what does it mean to ‘invite’ support? It’s not altogether clear and it is pretty plain that this particular provision has been of little use to the British state, resulting, as it has, in precious few convictions. As a result, the government added a wider and more vague clause to the act via the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, to which we turn next.

3. Express an 'opinion' or 'belief' that is supportive of a proscribed organisation. What does that mean? It obviously has the potential to be stretched quite far into opinions and beliefs that are shared by most people, even in the UK. Is saying that Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, the assassinated leader of Hezbollah, was widely respected and admired an opinion which is 'supportive' of a banned group?  Notice the language is 'will be' encouraged not 'is' encouraged. So, at best this is a conjectural crime which does not require that anyone is actually encouraged, only that the hypothetical ‘reasonable person’ might think that. Again, nothing here that relates to involvement in planning any 'act' of violence.

4. Arranging or managing a meeting is, manifestly, not an act of violence, whether or not it involves giving ‘support’ for a proscribed organisation and whether or not a representative of the organisation speaks, or whether the purpose of the address is to encourage support. In fact, the more we hear the voices of those (in proscribed organisations and legal ones alike) who are involved in resisting the menace of Zionism and genocide, the better it will be for the possibility of ending the genocide. 

5. Next is Clothing: It is an offence to ‘wear clothing or carry or display articles in public in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that the individual is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation’. Articles of clothing are also not in themselves acts of terror, no matter how they are displayed. Obviously, what they have in mind here is branding relating to specific organisations, such as a Hezbollah flag, a Qassam Brigades head band, or other perhaps less directly connected imagery or items.  Obviously, given the attemtps of the Zionists and their craven allies in the British security state, there is a push to widen the parameters so they can scoop up more and more supporters of the Palestinians. Thus the case of the young women found guilty under these powers of sporting parachute patches (below).

Or, the case of the young man found guilty of supporting Hamas for wearing a green headband with the Shahada (the Muslim profession of faith) on it (first below). This is of course not a ‘Hamas headband’. Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, do have a specific headband with a gun on it! As can be seen, it is not at all similar (right below).

6.        It is an offence to “publish an image of an item of clothing or other article, such as a flag or logo, in the                          same circumstances.” This is obviously intended to cover social media posts, which are manifestly not                           ‘acts’  or terrorism. This provision was inserted (12.4.2019) by Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act                        2019.

Overall, then, as we see these ‘proscription’ powers have nothing at all to do with interfering with material acts of political violence or armed struggle.

The proscription offences are not terrorism offences. It is an absurd nonsense, not to mention a colossal waste of resources, that SO15 are required to attempt to police thoughts, beliefs and speech as the vast majority of their activities at ports.

When the leading journalist Asa Winstanley was recently raided (but not arrested), he was told that it related to his alleged support for proscribed groups. A letter addressed to him ‘from the “Counter Terrorism Command” … indicates that the authorities are “aware of your profession” as a journalist but that “notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses” under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of “encouragement of terrorism.”’

And yet, if you look at the passage at the beginning of this article about commission or instigation of acts of terror, the implication is that to be of interest one would have to be involved in setting up a branch of Qassam Brigades in North London, or a version of Hezbllah’s Radwan Force in Reading.  There is nobody in the entire counter-terrorism apparatus who believes that that is what Asa, me, or anybody else, is doing. 

And when you put it like that, it’s also manifestly the case that neither Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP-GC or Palestinian Islamic Jihad are planning to set up branches in the UK, or - indeed - to carry out attacks here. Given the UK's role in directly participating in the genocide, that is generous of them, but it appears to be a fact.

But more than that, free speech about armed groups fighting an almost universally acknowledged genocide should not be criminalised and proscribed.

And the case for proscribing their welfare, health, education and other manifest functions of Hezbollah and Hamas is even weaker.

They should be de-proscribed now.