{"id":52844,"date":"2025-05-04T12:15:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T20:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=52844"},"modified":"2025-05-04T12:15:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T20:15:55","slug":"why-i-wrote-an-expert-report-against-the-uk-classing-hamas-as-a-terror-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/04\/why-i-wrote-an-expert-report-against-the-uk-classing-hamas-as-a-terror-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Wrote an Expert Report Against the UK Classing Hamas as a Terror Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

[READERS\u2019 NOTE:<\/strong> Given the intentional chilling effect of Britain\u2019s Terrorism Act, and the expansive interpretation of it by British terror police in relation to reporting and commentary about Gaza, this article was subjected to two reviews by lawyers before it was okayed for publication by Middle East Eye. The lawyers insisted on several edits to remove any risk of prosecution. You can read the version approved for publication by <\/em>Middle East Eye here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I am myself publishing the unexpurgated version, with the text removed from the Middle East Eye article highlighted in bold. I am doing so to underscore both the climate of fear now rampant in newsrooms \u2013 a fear that is entirely skewing coverage of Gaza, aiding Israel\u2019s genocide \u2013 and the quite preposterous way the police, in a bid to please the government, are interpreting the law. Reporting publicly known facts, it seems, can now get you arrested.<\/em><\/p>\n

I ask you, plead with you \u2013 in the interests of keeping me out of jail \u2013 not to feel encouraged in any way while reading the text below to take a more sympathetic view of Hamas.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

\n

This is the first time I have had to begin an opinion column with both a journalistic disclosure and a legal disclaimer. But hey ho, these are dystopian times we live in.<\/p>\n

The disclosure: I was one of 20 people who contributed expert reports for a recent legal submission<\/a> to the British home secretary, Yvette Cooper, calling on her to end the proscription of Hamas as a terrorist organization.<\/p>\n

You can read my submission \u2013 on the significant damage done to journalism by Hamas\u2019 proscription \u2013 here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If, as widely expected, Cooper does not approve the application, prepared by the London-based Riverway Law firm<\/a> on behalf of Hamas, within the 90-day time limit, her decision will be referred to an appeal tribunal for judicial review.<\/p>\n

The disclaimer: Nothing that follows is intended in any way to encourage you to take a more favourable view of Hamas. It is not intended in any way to encourage you to support Hamas. It does not endorse opinions or beliefs that are supportive of Hamas, as set out in the submissions calling for the de-proscription of Hamas.<\/p>\n

The danger is this: under Section 12<\/a> of Britain\u2019s draconian Terrorism Act of 2000, if anything I write, however inadvertently, encourages you to think more favourably of a proscribed organisation like Hamas, I face up to 14 years in jail.<\/p>\n

The purpose of this article is to show how the law and the establishment operate together to stifle legitimate criticism of the Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n

The law is so loosely worded that the British government, supported by a counter-terrorism police seemingly only too eager to please, can potentially arrest anyone praising the work of Gaza\u2019s public hospitals in saving lives because Hamas is in charge of the enclave’s government, or prosecute anyone, including media outlets, giving a platform to Hamas politicians trying to advance a ceasefire.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If all this sounds crazy, given both that stating facts should not be illegal and that I cannot possibly know how anyone might receive and feel about any information regarding Hamas, then you are starting to understand why the application to the home secretary is so urgent and important.<\/p>\n

Secret meetings<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UK may have declared<\/a> Hamas\u2019 armed wing a terrorist organisation a quarter of a century ago, but its political and administrative wings were added to the proscribed list<\/a> much more recently \u2013 in 2021.<\/p>\n

Which is why Cooper, the current home secretary, was misleading in the way she dismissively responded to the de-proscription application submitted to her office. She told<\/a> LBC: \u201cHamas has long been a terrorist organization. We maintain our view about the barbaric nature of this organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Priti Patel who, as home secretary, added<\/a> Hamas in its entirety, including its political and administrative wings, to the proscription list shortly after she was rehabilitated and readmitted<\/a> to Boris Johnson\u2019s government in 2019.<\/p>\n

Two years earlier, she had been forced<\/a> to resign from her post as international development secretary in disgrace.<\/p>\n

Why? Because she was found to have held 12 secret meetings<\/a> with senior Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, without disclosing those meetings to her colleagues and while she was supposedly on a family holiday.<\/p>\n

It later emerged<\/a> she had also secretly met other Israeli officials in New York and Westminster.<\/p>\n

Patel\u2019s political career, to put it politely, has been distinguished by an evident attentiveness to Israeli concerns.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly her decision to proscribe Hamas\u2019 political and administrative wings, treating them as identical to the armed section of the organisation, was high on Israel\u2019s wish list.<\/p>\n

It instantly degraded Britain\u2019s political discourse so that it became all but impossible to discuss Hamas\u2019 rule in Gaza or Israel\u2019s blockade of the enclave in a balanced or realistic way. It resulted in a simplistic black-and-white picture of life in the enclave in which everything Hamas was bad \u2013 and therefore, by contrast, everything Israeli was good.<\/p>\n

That would spectacularly serve Israeli interests two years later, when, following the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, Israel fed the western media entirely fabricated<\/a> stories of Hamas \u201cbeheading babies\u201d<\/a> and carrying out \u201cmass rapes\u201d.<\/p>\n

For months afterwards, as Israel set about murdering Palestinians in Gaza en masse and leveling their homes, the only question media interviewers directed at anyone criticizing Israel\u2019s actions was this: \u201cDo you condemn Hamas?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Even the ever-swelling death toll figures recorded<\/a> by Gaza\u2019s health ministry \u2013 proven to be so reliable in previous Israeli attacks that international bodies and the Israeli military itself relied on them \u2013 were suddenly treated as suspect and inflated. Independent research continues to suggest<\/a> otherwise.<\/p>\n

Western media outlets appended “Hamas-run” to the health ministry, and its casualty figures \u2013 almost certainly a massive undercount given Israel\u2019s systematic destruction of the health sector \u2013 were now reported only as a “claim”.<\/p>\n

In turn, these deceptions were implicitly used to justify Israel\u2019s own, far greater atrocities in killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, destroying the enclave\u2019s hospitals and supporting infrastructure, while at the same time starving the entire population.<\/p>\n

Eighteen months on, “evil Hamas” is still the story, not Israel\u2019s all-too-obvious genocide.<\/p>\n

Bullied into silence<\/strong><\/p>\n

Concerns about Hamas being proscribed in its entirety \u2013 not just its armed wing \u2013 are far from hypothetical, given the expansive wording of the UK\u2019s Terrorism Act since 2019, when it was amended.<\/p>\n

In particular, a revision to Section 12<\/a> means that anyone who \u201cexpresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization\u201d, and one that might \u201cencourage support\u201d for that organization, is liable to arrest by terrorism police, prosecution, and up to 14 years in jail.<\/p>\n

For expressing an opinion.<\/p>\n

The wording is so vague that, for example, simply criticizing Israel for committing greater and more numerous atrocities than Hamas could theoretically have the counter-terrorism police banging on your door.<\/p>\n

To avoid prosecution, Riverway Law\u2019s website dedicated<\/a> to its application to the home secretary carries a legal disclaimer: \u201cBy entering this website you acknowledge that none of the contents can be understood as supporting, or expressing support for, proscribed terrorist organizations under the Terrorism Act 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several independent British journalists <\/a>and commentators<\/a> \u2013 those whose careers are not dictated, and protected, by billionaires or the UK state broadcaster \u2013 have had their homes raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police or been arrested at the border as they return home.<\/p>\n

One political commentator, Tony Greenstein<\/a> \u2013 who also happens to be Jewish and a trained lawyer \u2013 is currently being prosecuted<\/a> under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act. Others<\/a> are under prolonged investigation. They have the threat of prosecution hanging over their heads like a sword.<\/p>\n

The rest of us are meant to take note, feeling the chilling effect. Do we want the police breaking down the door of our homes at dawn? Do we want to be arrested on return from holiday, our partners and children looking on in horror?<\/p>\n

The National Union of Journalists has called<\/a> the police actions against journalists \u201cabuse and mis-use of counter-terror legislation\u201d and warned that they risk \u201cthreatening the safety of journalists\u201d, as well as their sources.<\/p>\n

Understandably, you may be barely aware of these repressive police tactics, which have been accelerating since Keir Starmer<\/a> came to power. He, let us recall, personally approved<\/a>, as opposition leader, Israel\u2019s crime against humanity of blocking food, water and power to Gaza.<\/p>\n