Starmer seeks to REDEFINE genocide!

Right, so the list of pro Palestine activists, peace campaigners and independent journalists arrested by the UK state under the opaque and unfit for purpose Terrorism Act has grown a little bit longer, as Jersey based human rights campaigner Natalie Strecker was arrested early on Friday morning, now thankfully having been released on bail. This is yet another abuse of anti-terrorism legislation under the Starmer regime in order to shut down pro Palestine voices and independent media, campaigners and activists opposed to Israel’s atrocities, which the UK state supports completely, every new arrest, every new censure becoming yet one more example of how far this government is prepared to go for Israel’s sake, even as international law condemns Israel’s acts, and Israel faces a day of reckoning at the Hague at some point, the plausible case for genocide having already been proven months ago in South Africa’s case against the blue and white state.
Yet here, Starmer’s regime remains so unmoved, they won’t even call it a genocide, deny any such thing is happening and are now set to double down on that even further and likely leave even more people open to potential arrest by redefining what constitutes a genocide in UK law, providing even more cover to Israel to continue what it is doing.
Right, so yet another attempt to silence yet another pro Palestine voice has come to pass with the arrest on Friday of the former West Bank human rights monitor for Hebron, Natalie Strecker at her home in Jersey. Strecker had recently returned from the Middle East where she had been protesting the atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon and come Friday morning, had the police at the door, arresting her after receiving a complaint that she was offering support for a proscribed organisation under Article 13.1 of the Terrorism (Jersey) Law of 2002, which is essentially a carbon copy of the Terrorism Act of 2000, under which we’ve seen several other arrests and seizures of equipment in recent news, such as those of Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley.
Strecker, a 49 year old peace activist is now apparently at the cutting edge of terrorism in the UK, to the point the police arrested her and held her for more than 12 hours, mostly sat on her tod in a cell, though included around 4 hours of questioning apparently, according to her interview on the Crispin Flintoff Show this morning, no doubt the full interview will be on Flintoff’s YouTube channel very soon for all to watch, I saw it myself this morning and a visibly still shaken Strecker was nonetheless incredulous at what had come to pass, what had happened to her. What kept her strong, what she found new insight into, sitting in that cell was thinking of the very people who’s lives she campaigns to protect, to highlight the plight of, to draw attention to the atrocities that have been meted out upon them for the last 13 months, more than 400 days, and who was doing that, as well as other figures, other political prisoners if you like, such as Julian Assange, yet standing up to that oppressor, the genocidal apartheid state of Israel, is now treated as a terrorist offence in the UK, such is the blatantly open to abuse manner in which the Terrorism Act can be implemented.
Once an organisation has been proscribed here in the UK, as for example Hamas have been, it is a very low bar to trigger an arrest under such terms. Merely the suspicion of support is sufficient grounds to warrant an arrest, though charges under that are a little different. Under international law, the people of Gaza are entitled to resist occupation in any way they see fit. Now we’ve seen Hamas take hostages, we’ve seen armed conflict for years and I don’t agree with such methods because violence never solves anything, all conflicts end with conversations around tables, but even that isn’t possible under the proscription of Hamas under UK law, because that proscription extends to the political wing of Hamas, not just the militarised wing. The UK, when it proscribed Hamas in 2021, tied it’s hands from ever being able to negotiate with them and you only need look at how peace was achieved in Northern Ireland, which included negotiations with Sinn Fein, who were broadly seen at the time as the political wing of the IRA, which led to achieving that. Therefore this proscription and these terrorism act arrests appear in no small part to demonstrate that this Starmer regime and the dreadful Tory administration before that under which Hamas were proscribed, have no interest in anything but helping Israel achieve it’s goals and reinforcing that thinking in my mind, is news that Starmer and Co are now looking at redefining what genocide is, because he absolutely will not call what is going on in the Middle East at Israel’s hands a genocide:
That comment reverberated around the world, not just the UK and should rightfully damn Starmer for ever and horrify and appal anyone who voted Labour at the General Election, not realising this is what this man was truly about, especially on matters where Israel is concerned, but what will concern them all the more is the news that Starmer isn’t finished yet and despite the definition of genocide being laid down already in international law and Keir Starmer basically saying in that piece of footage to Independent Alliance MP Ayoub Khan, lalala I’m not listening, he looks set to redefine genocide in UK law in defiance of international law, all effectively to excuse his current position of refusing to acknowledge a genocide happening at Israel’s hands, when even one of Israel’s own newspapers has stated that their own nation, their own Netanyahu led government are committing genocide in Gaza having met 4 of the 5 descriptors listed in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, a convention Starmer says there is well aware of what it says. He simply disagrees with international law and disagrees with a convention that has been international law for 73 years now. He knows better apparently and indeed better than a UN special committee report, a committee set up to monitor Israel’s occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which has existed since 1968, the year after Israel’s occupation began, which has also found Israel to be carrying our policies and practices consistent with the characteristics of genocide. That is how far gone and how in hock to Israeli interests this Starmer administration running the UK like a mafia in effect, truly are.
In an interview with Scottish newspaper The National, Edinburgh University lecturer on Islamic and Middle East Studies, Richard McNeil-Wilson has said what Labour under Starmer is doing is incredibly dangerous, not only because of their genocide denial, but by also attempting to redefine what genocide is. Here’s a short excerpt of his comments:
‘He told The National: “The point that is becoming increasingly clear is that not only is this genocide denial, which in itself incredibly serious, this is genocide revisionism.
“This is more serious than even genocide denial because what they [the Labour Government] are attempting to do is redefine the nature of what genocide is, ignoring international law, ignoring statements by the UN, ignoring statements by the ICJ and international courts.
“Under their definition, which focuses on numbers, it also means that Srebrenica cannot be seen as a genocide under this. It also means that there’s a denial when it comes to genocide historically that has occurred in Australia, Canada, the US, other genocides that occurred as a result of British colonialism.’
It's interesting he brought up Labour’s genocide by numbers approach and Srebrenica, since David Lammy the foreign secretary is the one who claimed not enough people had died in Gaza to constitute a genocide, yet he was happy to attend a Srebrenica memorial of what he called at that time, very much a genocide. How many deaths will now constitute a genocide in Starmer’s eyes, or is he waiting for Israel to let him know at this point?
This government will never agree that a genocide is happening in Gaza. For as long as they remain in power, or at least whilst Starmer leads them, that will be the case, and my God they’ve only just started. Those of us opposed to Israel’s genocide, are not by default supporting proscribed groups like Hamas and indeed their violent actions can be condemned as well and should be, the people in our thoughts are the innocent people of Gaza, 70% of those who have died in Gaza have been innocent women and children, or the innocent people of Lebanon, or wherever they may be because Israel isn’t being reined in. But if you aren’t condemning Israel’s atrocity, especially when Israel are clearly carrying it out on a much greater scale and have been doing so as occupiers for decades and decades, then you are complicit in it continuing, you care nothing for the innocent lives lost, so who does that really make the terrorist here? And when you tie your hands behind your back from meeting them at a negotiating table through that same proscription, then that is just irresponsible foreign policy. Sensible, appalled, horrified people who choose to speak out against what Israel is doing, in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and more face being criminalised in the UK for that and due to the vagueness of terrorism law in this country, it pretty much only takes a complaint to get you arrested now as a potential terrorist, as Natalie Strecker can now readily attest to and how many more will there be as this government seeks to silence people out of fear of arrest? That is not a government, that is a dictatorial regime, they might as well just criminalise free speech and be done with.
Of course whilst Starmer might like to see people dragged to court to face charges of supporting a proscribed organisation, a day in the dock for his government might come sooner and be more likely to demonstrate guilt by potentially slapping a ban on all arms sales to Israel from the UK on the basis of their international crimes and if that goes against the UK, well, Starmer is going to look all the more a genocide denier than he already does. Get the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.