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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

Some context:

> Craig John Murray is a Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist, and former diplomat [...] he became a political activist, campaigning for human rights and for transparency in global politics as well as for the independence of Scotland [...] Murray was one of few people granted access to Julian Assange's extradition hearing which started in the Old Bailey on 7 September 2020. He published detailed reports of each day's proceedings on his website.

Seems absolutely bananas that law enforcement can cite anti-terrorism laws in order to confiscate and detain an individual with absolutely zero ties to anything violent. What terrorism are they stopping here?

View on HN

In the UK there's the concept of a 'proscribed organisation', that is an organisation which is illegal and the promotion of that organisation is illegal.

Hamas is on the proscribed organisation list.

Here's the relevant legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/12

And the list of proscribed organisations and a more accessible explanation of the law: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror...

I think most people in the UK think of this law as being about the Troubles and banning the IRA, etc, but it looks like the list is mostly Islamic extremist groups now.

This law is very clearly being selectively enforced, as lots of people have "express[ed] an opinion or belief that is supportive of" Hamas in recent days, but the police aren't knocking at their doors. (Yet.)

>This law is very clearly being selectively enforced, as lots of people have "express[ed] an opinion or belief that is supportive of" Hamas in recent days, but the police aren't knocking at their doors. (Yet.)

Every law in the UK is selectively enforced. Except maybe laws regarding speeding if they have evidence.

The laws in this country are so vague that I am certain that every adult has broken some of them.

If the Police don't like you, they just pick something vaguely relevant which you have probably broken and hassle you for it.

> The laws in this country are so vague that I am certain that every adult has broken some of them.

Sounds like India learnt a thing or two from the British, here.

It's just always been the case, everywhere. The history of Law is effectively about the powerless (or rather the less-powerful) slowly carving out all circumstances in which they cannot be thrown in prison on a whim.

Well, not necessarily everywhere. In the lens of history, new countries with a new constitution don't have that problem. Over time, they create layers of new laws, then cruft when those laws make little sense to enforce, then they can crack down on the letter of that law when enforcement is socially acceptable.

The thing about these types of laws is that they can show up years later - so a positive opinion of Hamas gets prosecuted in 3-5 years later.

Thanks for posting the official position of the UK state. I was curious how many far right, non-Islamic organisations are listed as proscribed organisations so I counted them:

* Atomwaffen Division (AWD)

* Feuerkrieg Division (FKD)

* Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD)

* National Action

* The Base

Out of all these, I’d only heard of National Action.

It’s not clear (to me) that all the proscribed groups are actually active in the UK though, with the Internet, I guess they can be recruiting people to their cause.

I also wasn’t too surprised to see that the most recent addition to the list is the Wagner Group (proscribed in September 2023).

On the other hand, I was surprised to see that Basque separatists, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) are still listed – despite the fact that they renounced the armed struggle over a decade ago and dissolved their organisation five years ago.

Curiously, their “List of proscribed groups linked to Northern Ireland related terrorism” is even more out-of-date. Since the second-wave of feminism, Cumann na mBan is essentially an historical relic. Some of the organisations (e.g. Saor Éire) haven’t been active since the 70s. The IPLO were (violently) eliminated in the early 90s. The Irish Republican Army is listed but there’s no distinction made between the multiple different groups that refer to themselves as the “Irish Republican Army”; the largest of these (by far), the Provisional IRA abandoned the armed struggle two decades ago and committed themselves to constitutional means of achieving their political aims (as per the 1998 Belfast Agreement aka the Good Friday Agreement) – though splinter IRAs remain opposed to the Peace Process.

Isn't "The Base" == Al Qaeda?

According to this list, this particular group is described as:

> The Base is a predominantly US based militant white supremacist group, formed in 2018. It draws influence from a collection of essays by prominent National Socialist, James Mason, which advocate the use of violence to initiate the collapse of modern society through a ‘race war’ and the subsequent creation of a white ethno-state. This ideology is known as ‘accelerationism’.

Al Qa’ida (AQ) are listed separately:

> Inspired and led by Usama Bin Laden, its aims are the expulsion of Western forces from Saudi Arabia, the destruction of Israel and the end of Western influence in the Muslim world.

No, although the name was likely picked to cause exactly such confusion. 'Al Qaeda' is commonly translated as 'the base' but there's no connection between the two. AQ was a pretty elaborate and complex organization in its heyday though it seems mostly moribund now. The Base existed mostly virtually and was more focused on promoting stochastic terrorism by disseminating incitement and instructional materials, but without any real infrastructure/finance.

The UK is very worried about Scottish Independence. Mr Murray is a very vocal supporter of that, and an active figurehead in the independence movement.

I don't know, but I'm assuming that his support of Hamas is a nice pretext for the British Establishment to have another pop at him.

As we predicted when the UK proposed these monstrous laws: they are being abused to go after anyone who annoys the establishment. That's what they were always intended to do. The whole "terrorist" thing was a way of getting popular support for them, just like the popular fears of child abuse have been used to pass yet more police state surveillance laws.

How does this look in practice? I’m not saying you’re wrong but your formulation suggests that some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.

That’s the stuff of movies and dictatorships, right? Do random UK civil servants really abuse the system to this extent for personal or political gain?

>but your formulation suggests that some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.

Whole departments are set up to work on internal "enemies of the state". Pressure from foreign governments (cough) also points to their undesirables. People above a certain station can trivially tell what is the establishment political winds, short and long term, and which are the "annoying" people that go against them. They also know that furthering the cause against them looks good to their superiors. They can and do build organizational "vendettas" and keep tabs, harass, prosecute them, for years, or even decades.

This goes all the way. Judges and prosecutors making decisions on such cases know who can help their career and what can hurt it, and so on. No explicit coordination needed, though there's a lot of that too - e.g. some established enterpreneur calling their favorite politician and asking them to "do something about that person", special interest groups created ad hoc, and so on. Check a comment by someone called Scott in TFA.

>That’s the stuff of movies and dictatorships, right?

Oh, sweet summer child.

> faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club

That's roughly it.

The British Establishment (leaders of the main parties, intelligence officials, senior judges, senior police) wanted to make an example of him, because of his persistent exposure of their arbitary persecution of Assange. He was charged with contempt of court, for "jigsaw identification" of a witness in another case, that of Alex Salmond. That charge was prosecuted before a single judge, who was very much a member of "The Establishment", and he got 6 months in the slammer.

It's still not clear which remarks he made on his blog that contributed to jigsaw identification. Maybe it was a commenter on his blog that made the troublesome remark. But apparently other, more-mainstream journalists had been much more explicit, and most of the Scottish political class knew who the witness was from those sources, not from Craig's blog.

Basically, he was fitted-up for loudly espousing Scottish independence.

> charged with contempt of court, for "jigsaw identification" of a witness in another case, that of Alex Salmond

Worth mentioning a couple of details about that case.

Alex Salmond was the leader of the Scottish independentist party.

Arrested in 2019 with the accusation of 14 instances of sexual abuses from 8 anonymous women.

The subsequent trial cleared him of all charges.

And there's evidence (as Mr Murray documents, which was obviously his "real" crime) that this was all a fit-up by the current SNP leadership to discredit Mr Salmond so that they would be free from criticism from him about the lack of movement on independence and the SNP pivot from independence to culture war issues.

Also, probably, the reason that the SNP leadership are now pushing for jury-less trials for sexual abuse cases.

If true, it's a staggeringly cynical abuse of the Me Too movement, feminism and the wave of popular support for sexual abuse victims.

I am struck by the fact that you can be publicly disgraced while your accusers remain anonymous, and remain such (and I bet suffer no consequence) even after their accusations against you are proven false or irrelevant.

I don't know the details, but when 8 separate individuals accuse you, all without cause, it's hard to believe it's a coincidence.

It wasn't a coincidence, it was a carefully co-ordinated campaign (as Mr Murray documented).

Yes, but you can strip "UK" away from that. People habitually and casually abuse their power in almost any instance they have it. If this sounds outlandish to you, that's really nice and you probably shouldn't take that naivete away from yourself. It won't improve your life to know otherwise.

> some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.

I don't mean to go off-topic, but the last few years have shown that this is how power and influence really works in our world. There is no other way to explain (for example) why no clients of Jeff Epstein's brothels have as yet been named and prosecuted. Conveniently, a few have identified themselves through their actions. But they are all free men still, with no signs of any pending comeuppance, or really even an investigation into their involvement.

It's the same as any other large organisation. Someone at the top says "oi, so-and-so has been a real pain lately huh". Someone one level down says "is there anything we can do about so-and-so?". Someone the next level down says "well, let's start a file on so-and-so, see if he's up to anything, no harm in that". And then since UK antiterrorism law is terribly written (or brilliantly written, depending on your perspective) such that essentially everyone with even a vague interest in politics breaks it all the time, and the surveillance state means the proof will be a couple of keystrokes away, once you look for a reason to go after someone you find one.

Probably no-one sat down and designed the system to work like this. But it works well for everyone involved, so...

I wonder if something for just this scenario exists in the archives of the political comedy Yes [Prime] Minister. It feels like there should be.

See also Private Eye. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it's not true.

Can you give an example of him supporting hammas?

I could not find any.

https://x.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1713335006121140511

What did it say? Tweet seemingly was removed.

Not sure how formatting will go, from desktop twitter:

Craig Murray - @CraigMurrayOrg To be entirely plain. I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation. But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support. If that is a crime, send me back to jail. 7:24 PM · Oct 14, 2023 · 167.9K Views

Dang, he forgot to mention that one in the article…

Section 1 extends the offence of inviting support for a proscribed organisation in section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to cover expressions of support that are reckless as to whether they will encourage others to support the organisation;

according to https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/terrorism

So the question is whether "I will support Hammas" constitutes "inviting support". That's not clear-cut to me. Probably be able to get him on section 12 though, "reckless" is a movable feast.

A bit dishonest from him, right? Given his background, he should know better and probably did.

I'm from the UK, and my instant reaction is that this is an evidence-free conspiracy-theory. If you have anything to back it up, other than vibes, feel free to say so.

Well, it's also possible they read his Tweet and looked at his background and said "this dangerous person really is going to conduct violent acts in this country, we have no choice but to thwart him by seizing all his electronic devices using the most powerful law in the land, even if it de-legitimizes our use of this law for more serious matters." But since that hypothesis is so obviously cartoonish, it's hard to blame folks who look for more rational explanations like "the government is harassing a political opponent" (whether they're right or wrong.)

> it's hard to blame folks who look for more rational explanations like "the government is harassing a political opponent" (whether they're right or wrong.)

No, it's not, because he's clearly being investigated for supporting Hamas' actions (which classified as a terrorist organization by the UK).

I don't know anything about this person other than what's on his Wikipedia. And what that says is: he's a 65-year old former diplomat and noted human rights activist with (as far as I can tell) zero history of violence or terrorist acts.

If the government seriously thinks he's capable of following through on violent acts because he wrote a Tweet saying "I support Hamas", I suspect the government is badly mismanaging its anti-terrorism resources. If the government doesn't think he's going to follow up that Tweet with action and is "merely doing it because the law says they can", that's pretty much the definition of harassment.

You can’t be that naive, can you? It’s obviously not the Tweet they’re worried about. They think the Tweet is indication that he supports Hamas enough to aid or promote them secretly. “If this guy is this outspoken publicly for his support of Hamas, what must he be doing to support them behind closed doors? Does he donate to them? Organize for them?”

Whether or not that’s enough to search him is another debate, but that’s what their thought process was when they decided to detain him.

No, I think that the tweet is an excuse that allows them to hassle him more, because he's a prominent supporter of Scottish Independence. I don't think this has anything to do with Hamas itself.

> They think the Tweet is indication that he supports Hamas enough to aid or promote them secretly. “If this guy is this outspoken publicly for his support of Hamas, what must he be doing to support them behind closed doors? Does he donate to them? Organize for them?”

If they think that then why just him and not the thousands of other people tweeting similar things?

The thought process is evidently "oh, it's that bloody git again, have we got anything we can pin him for this time?"; if you don't see that it's you who's being naive. (I'm agnostic about whether it's specifically about Scottish independence, the Assange case, or something else; one way or another he's a thorn in the side of the powerful, and that's why the book is being thrown at him)

Probably if Mary-Sue from Idaho, a shop clerk tweets this it’s not exactly the same if a former diplomat with international connections and public influence does it?

You're grossly overselling his influence. He doesn't have the ear of the powerful or the mob. Even if he were to explicitly call his followers to take up arms - which is a long way past the quoted statement - I very much doubt any of them would.

your "instant reaction" is just as unhelpful as the proscribed "vibes"

> If you have anything to back it up, other than vibes, feel free to say so.

Just read the history of his recent legal hassles, which are a farcical misuse of legislation intended for other purposes. He went to jail for (basically) pointing out all the flaws in the prosecution's case against Alex Salmond.

As the old joke goes; It's not paranoia if they actually are out to get you ;)

> that his support of Hamas

say what now? is there any proof he supports those terrorists? in which case, it's pretty clear why he was detained.

edit: found it: https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...

yup, terrorism charges incoming. from the same guy that did this: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/former-ambas...

Looks more to me like he's a human rights activist that has been targeted by the security state as Naom Chomsky et. al comments in the just posted article.

His own comments are about desperate measures when carpet bombed.

That you want to swiftly send him to jail tells me totalitarianism is becoming fashionable again.

>That you want to swiftly send him to jail tells me totalitarianism is becoming fashionable again.

Every single human being alive has the capacity to manifest the totalitarian-authoritarian personality. We are not immune to it as individuals - our only safety from this viral meme is social. It is only when we have a social order that provides more motivation to eschew the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, at an individual level, that we are actually free of it. The irony is, this personality also arises when an individuals' own personality is challenged by society.

> That you want to swiftly send him to jail tells me totalitarianism is becoming fashionable again.

where did i write that? he'll have a fair trial according to the law. he can then convince the judge he doesn't actually support a terrorist organisation (as it's illegal to do that in the UK).

> he'll have a fair trial according to the law.

Yes, according to the law, his trial will be fair. The law doesn't around admitting it isn't fair.

But what do you know, I looked under the robe and wig of the law, and would you believe it was just a person! An ugly, naked, shameless person at that.

In reality, there will be no fairness if smirking people like you get your way.

> But what do you know, I looked under the robe and wig of the law, and would you believe it was just a person! An ugly, naked, shameless person at that.

you did what now?

He said every act by Hamas is justified, a week after Hamas murdered 1400 people. As terrorism support goes, you can't be any clearer. He's not "human rights activist", at least human rights of murdered Israelis don't concern him a single little bit. He's pro-terrorist activist who is open and brazen at calling on terrorists to murder more civilians right after they murdered 1400 of them. He's not some innocent bystander. He specifically thrust himself into this on the side of terrorists.

I am not sure I want to give the government the power to prosecute even such disgusting people, because I can't trust the government with such powers. But pretending like he is completely uninvolved and it's just random out of the blue thing when he specifically endorsed terrorists is bullshit.

Man, the more I looked into this guy and his co., the more I learnt what a piece of work this guy is.

If he goes to pro Hamas rallies days after Hamas started war with Israel it's kinda hard not to make this conclusion.

Is it? Most members of the Conservative Party would be overjoyed at Scottish independence - it would give them a permanent majority (or at least, would have done had they not had their ridiculous dalliance with Liz Truss).

The Conservative Party have always been against the breakup of the United Kingdom. I'm not a member so I don't know why, but I suspect any/all of the following: loss of North Sea Oil rights, history, weird effect on the monarchy, reunified Ireland immediately afterwards, Scotland rejoining the EU leaving England and Wales as this weird little bit of non-EU island.

I don't think there's any PM who wants to be the PM who allowed the UK to break up.

Luckily for them, as Mr Murray's blog details, the SNP is very comfortable being Westminster MPs and aren't that interested in actually doing anything about independence.

Pro Palestine doesn’t necessarily mean pro Hamas. It usually doesn’t, but of course some people (pro Israel usually) always manipulate/turn it that way. So please let us know where it shows he is pro Hamas vs pro Palestine (and actually against Hamas, which is what I would expect he is).

He explicitly stated his support for Hamas and Hezbollah in this tweet: https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...

Ah indeed he did. Jikes, he gets his wish then.

Somehow every time somebody goes out to prove "it doesn't mean pro Hamas" it turns out it does. Maybe there's some pattern in it - like if a guy goes to pro Hamas rallies just days after Hamas brutally murdered 1400 people, there's a tiny bit of suspicion he might be pro Hamas?

these days Murray is an embarassment to anyone he associates with

if anything the UK gov would want him freely associating with the SNP

not locked up where he's prevented from embarrassing them

He's pretty anti-SNP these days

> The UK is very worried about Scottish Independence. Mr Murray is a very vocal supporter of that, and an active figurehead in the independence movement. > >I don't know, but I'm assuming that his support of Hamas is a nice pretext for the British Establishment to have another pop at him.

Murray is also a crank and conspiracy theorist, who has been a vociferous supporter of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian regime.

Saying this is about Scottish independence is hilarious.

Take this however you will - I'm pretty far from Craig Murray politically but he seems sincere in his beliefs and doesn't seem to care who he upsets.

And in terms of who he has upset, he has lots of recent run-ins with the SNP in Scotland. He is currently appealing a sentence he got for "jigsaw-identifying" the woman/women that accused Alex Salmond (previous head of SNP) of rape/sexual assault, on the basis that he believed that Alex Salmond was falsely accused on the basis of some SNP in-fighting.

Outside of what Craig is alleging, SNP the party seems to see themselves as synonymous with the Scottish government and several senior legal positions seem to be in their gift with constitutional implications.

He explicitly and unambiguously expressed his support for Hamas and Hezbollah here: https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...

He cites "support for Palestine" in his first paragraph. It's not "zero ties to anything violent" if you didn't sleep through the last month. I mean, he probably isn't a member of Hamas or anything like that, but he very well may have donated to Hamas-affiliated NGO, either knowingly or unknowingly. It'd be not a huge link but also not zero link. He also publicly endorsed Hamas and Hezbolah in his tweets and dared the security services to arrest him. Also not zero. Well, now he got his wish as if seems.

> I volunteered that I thought I understood the tweet that worried them and agreed it could have been more nuanced. This was the limitation of twitter. It was intended to refer only to the current situation within Gaza and the Palestinian people’s right of self-defence from genocide.

The only clue I see is the reference to a tweet. Anyone know which tweet this could refer to? Sounds like advocating violence, with a poorly stated context of self-defense.

Seems he has tweeted a lot about Israel/Palestine as of late, hard to know exactly which one is being referred to. https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg

But I couldn't find any tweet that openly calls for violence either way. Mostly seems to be reactions and criticism about Israel's ongoing killing of civilians in Gaza, which would hardly count as terrorism (edit: well, at least shouldn't).

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman is on the very-far-right-authoritarian side of the government, and she's been very vocal in her support for Israel. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that detentions like these are at her direct instruction. Perhaps not at a "lift this guy" level, but certainly at the level of directing the authorities to step up their harassment of people.

It is likely the following tweet: https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...

> I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation.

> But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.

What I don’t understand, how is it considered resistance? I was under the impression they were the aggressor, no? Why would the aggressor be in a position of resistance? Would this be akin to claiming Russia is in “armed resistance” after throwing the first punch? Aren’t those two things at odds with each other?

Edit: typo

Are you unfamiliar with the oppression Palestinians experience? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid

18% of Israelis are Muslim. How many Jews are allowed in Gaza?

Are you trying to suggest that it's the Jews who are oppressed?

I'm saying that it's ridiculous to say it's an apartheid state when Israel has Muslims with full citizenship, but if Jew crossed into Gaza unarmed he would be slaughtered on the spot.

Palestine is an apartheid state. Israel is not.

The better metric would be how many Arabs, including in the occupied territories, are Israelian citizens. By the way, apartheid doesn't depend on citizenship per se.

AFAICT, the West Bank could be called "an occupied territory", but Gaza definitely cannot. I don't know why people keep repeating this: Israel pulled out of Gaza 17 years ago and let it govern itself. A place can't be "occupied" when you don't have soldiers there and you're not administering the place.

How much self government do you really have when you are under embargoe by all neighbouring states, are not recognized as sovereign nation and depend dor basix essentials (water, fuel...) on the former occupier? It is an occupation by all measures but name.

How is it Israel's fault that they're embargoed by other neighboring states? And what's been keeping all the other states from supplying those basic essentials? Last I heard, they got a lot of humanitarian supplies from many other countries worldwide, even as far away as Japan.

AFAICT, Israel would rather just not deal with them at all. Countries shouldn't be forced to annex their neighbors and administer them. Didn't they even try to get Egypt to take Gaza back, and Egypt refused?

I'm sorry, this doesn't fit the definition of "occupation" at all.

Gaza is described, by Amnesty International and the Norwegian Refugee Council, as the world largest open air prison. It depends for all life necessities on Israel and has all of two neighbours, Israel and Egypt. The former being also the former occupier which refuses to lift the embargoe and prevents Gazans from participating in normal life in Israel, incl. working there. All Israel did to technically not make it an occupation is to withdraw troops, getting rid of that cost and risk. They did not so get rid of accountability and responsibility.

That situation is the perfect breeding ground for extremism. Israel is not at all innocent in the FUBAR that is the middle east and Gaza in particular, regardless of the excuses Israel finds.

Why should they be obligated to allow Gazans to participate in normal life in Israel? They're de-facto two separate countries. Why isn't Egypt getting the same criticism? They could do the same, but they don't. And there are many other Arab nations in the region that, while not directly bordering Gaza, could help out if they wanted. Iran does (though not Arab), but they provide them with weapons.

Before the attack, Israel was issuing work permits to Gazans to let them work and earn badly-needed money in Israel; so much for that.

I can see why Israel doesn't want Gazans participating in normal life there: they keep shooting rockets at them. And after the latest atrocity, they'll probably never entertain the idea of good relations with them.

Is Korea an "apartheid state" because North and South Korea refuse to let each other's citizens "participate in normal life" on the other side of the DMZ?

>Israel is not at all innocent in the FUBAR that is the middle east and Gaza in particular

It seems like the reverse to me: their actions in the West Bank continue to be wrong and cause problems (illegal settlements). But I don't see how they've done anything wrong in Gaza in 17 years: they simply don't want that group of people in their country, and they have that right.

Also, why is it that people like you never criticize Egypt for not taking in the Gazans? There's really nothing stopping Egypt from annexing Gaza.

Egypt isn't getting the same crticism because:

a) they never occupied Gaza to begin with

b) they have yet to bomb Gaza

Egypt gets the same criticism when it comes to the embargoe so.

But you know who is stopping Egypt from annexing (interesting choice of words, by the way) Gaza? Israel. And you actually have not the slightest idea what apartheid is and how it works.

a) Egypt used to own Gaza (they lost it in a war they started, along with a big chunk of Sinai, which was later returned in a peace deal)

b) Gaza doesn't shoot rockets into Egypt regularly, so of course they don't bomb them

c) I've never seen it

d) Last I heard, Israel tried to get Egypt to take Gaza back. How is Israel preventing Egypt from taking them?

I do know what apartheid is: it's what happened in South Africa, when two groups of people lived in the very same place (i.e., in the same towns and cities) and were treated differently by the state. It's just like how Black people were treated in the US during the Jim Crow era. What's happening with Gaza is nothing like this.

What I said so far is not just an opinion:

>> The United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross, and many human rights organization however continue to consider the occupying power as Israel controls Gaza's borders, with the exception of the Egyptian border, airspace and access to the sea and exercises what they consider to be effective military control over the territory.[21][22][23]

>> In his statement on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur wrote that international humanitarian law applied to Israel "in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war."[181] Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, Oxfam, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Fact Finding Mission to Gaza, international human rights organizations, US government websites, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and a significant number of legal commentators (Geoffrey Aronson, Meron Benvenisti, Claude Bruderlein, Sari Bashi, Kenneth Mann, Shane Darcy, John Reynolds, Yoram Dinstein, John Dugard, Marc S. Kaliser, Mustafa Mari, and Iain Scobbie) maintain that Israel's extensive direct external control over Gaza, and indirect control over the lives of its internal population mean that Gaza remained occupied.[182][183] In spite of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Hamas government in Gaza considers Gaza as occupied territory.[184]

>> Several rights groups have characterized the situation in Gaza as an "open-air prison", including the United Nations,[193] Human Rights Watch,[194] and the Norwegian Refugee Council.[195] This characterization was often cited by a number of human rights activists, politicians, and media news outlets reporting on the Gaza-Israel conflict and the wider Palestinian-Israeli conflict.[196][197][198][199][200][201] Former British Prime Minister David Cameron,[202] US Senator Bernie Sanders,[203] former Israeli diplomat Gideon Levy,[204] and Israeli historian Ilan Pappe have endorsed this characterization as well.[205]

>> Human Rights Watch issued a report on the situation in the Gaza Strip, which it called an "open-air prison" due to the blockade and held Israel responsible as the occupying power, and to a lesser degree Egypt, which has restricted movement of Palestinians through its border.[194]

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

Seems we have a choice now, either we believe all the entities having prepared extensive reports (all cited in the wikipedia article) or we believe Israelian PR and legalese on the status of Gaza according to international law (which doesn't change the an iota when it comes to the humanitarian situation there). Your choice.

I am not saying Hamas actions are justified. And I am not saying Israel shouldn't get support. Ehat I am saying is, that we cannot ignore the humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people that is at the core of the conflict. And whatever support the West can give should aim at renewed, and serious, peace talks. That means that Israel has to give up something, too. After all, Israel has the right to exist as a state the same way Palestinians have the right to live freely, un-oppressed and peacefully.

> I do know what apartheid is: it's what happened in South Africa, when two groups of people lived in the very same place (i.e., in the same towns and cities) and were treated differently by the state.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan

> The Pretoria government established ten Bantustans in South Africa, and ten in neighbouring South West Africa (then under South African administration), for the purpose of concentrating the members of designated ethnic groups, thus making each of those territories ethnically homogeneous as the basis for creating autonomous nation states for South Africa's different black ethnic groups. Under the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, the government stripped black South Africans of their South African citizenship, depriving them of their few remaining political and civil rights in South Africa, and declared them to be citizens of these homelands.[3]

The Jim Crow era was very different from apartheid. There was redlining and segregation, but African Americans weren't stripped of citizenship and marshaled into enclaves the way South Africa did with the Bantustans and their Citizenship Act. Apartheid means "kept apart," South Africa, like Israel, sequestered its undesirables into enclaves.

> I do know what apartheid is: it's what happened in South Africa, when two groups of people lived in the very same place (i.e., in the same towns and cities) and were treated differently by the state. It's just like how Black people were treated in the US during the Jim Crow era.

Apartheid was different, it combined a version of the forced relocation and reservation system that the US used for Native Americans (only with the pretense -- with very little substance, but merely as an excuse for the central government to disclaim responsibility -- that the reservations ("bantustans") were independent states rather than territories of subordinate sovereigns) with the racial discrimination in services and facilities within the rest of the country proper that Black Americans faced in the Jim Crow era.

> Egypt used to own Gaza

Egypt occupied Gaza, the same as Israel later did, but did not claim it, establishing a separate protectorate (it was merged into the UAR with Egypt and Syria, and from which Syria later rebelled, but even then it was considered distinct from Egypt, and it was formally transferred to the authority of the PLO (though practical governance was exercised by Egypt) after 1964.

> Last I heard, Israel tried to get Egypt to take Gaza back.

Egypt can't take it back, because Egypt never claimed it.

The UAR can't take it back, because the UAR has been disbanded.

Egypt could reoccupy it, but why would they want to? (Especially given that the people there don't want Egypt to do so, and have been rather...prickly...about occupations imposed on them.)

> Especially given that the people there don't want Egypt to do so, and have been rather...prickly

I have worked closely with young educated Gazans on projects that outsourced to them. They claimed that they would love to get access to the Egyptian labor market, and get an Egyptian passport so that they could have a hope of working in other markets internationally. They’d leave Gaza for better opportunities elsewhere in a heartbeat. Yes, of course some other Gazans wouldn’t want to leave at all, and Hamas wouldn’t permit Egypt authority over the area. But Egypt’s refusal to open the borders to Gazans is about a series of security concerns of its own, and not so much about universal Gazan resistance to the idea.

> But Egypt’s refusal to open the borders to Gazans

Egypt's refusal to assist Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza via forced deportation is a different issue than the one raised upthread about Egypt’s earlier refusal reoccupy Gaza.

Again, the Gazans I have known complained about being forced to stay; they saw it that way, and not being forced to leave if the border with Egypt opened. Some people want to fight for their ancestral homeland or whatever, but other people want money and opportunities. But yes, as I suggested in my post, Egypt’s behavior re: opening the border or annexing the Strip has always been significantly driven by how its own population and other Arab states would perceive things, and not necessarily what a young educated Gazan might want.

Are you referring to the refusal to open the border crossing that Israel has repeatedly bombed during the present crisis or the on-again-off-again status of the crossing in the years prior?

Because, yes, the closures prior to the crisis, between the openings, have been due to Egyptian security concerns (mostly breakdowns of various agreements between Egypt, Hamas, PIJ, and the Palestinian Authority on border management), COVID-19, and various other issues.

The only other neighboring state is Egypt and they get billions of dollars a year from the US as a condition of their peace with Israel.

Between that and the blockade of their coast, they're 100% sealed off from any trade, fishing or immigration that Israel doesn't choose to allow.

Maybe "occupation" isn't the right word but they don't get to act like an independent state.

I'm not arguing that Gaza has been occupied, but was there anything stopping from leaving by sea, besides access to boats and not having recognized passports?

Yes, there's a blockade administered by Israel for security reasons. They can't even fish their exclusive economic zone.

Full citizenship? https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/21/middleeast/arab-israeli-citiz...

Have you read the linked page?

> Adam and Moodley cite the marriage law as an example of how Arab Israelis "resemble in many ways 'Colored' and Indian South Africans".[237] They write: "Both Israeli Palestinians and Colored and Indian South Africans are restricted to second-class citizen status when another ethnic group monopolizes state power, treats the minorities as intrinsically suspect, and legally prohibits their access to land or allocates civil service positions or per capita expenditure on education differentially between dominant and minority citizens."

>What I don’t understand, how is it considered resistance

Imagine if Russia manages to annex most of Ukraine, and converts the rest of Ukraine into an open-air prison. If twenty years later the people in that part of Ukraine manage to gather weapons and launch a counter-attack on Russia, wouldn't that count as resistance?

You have to imagine very hard to consider gaza to have been annexed. You could make an argument for "occupied" (although that in itself is debatable post 2005), but "annexed" does not make sense.

For those not familiar with background context of why i say post-2005, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_G...

>You have to imagine very hard to consider gaza to have been annexed

Israel didn't annex Gaza, it (via the UK) annexed Palestine upon its creation, with Gaza and the West Bank being the land that remains un-annexed.

That makes even less sense.

To annex something means to add it to an existing state. Israel by definition can't annex something before it exists.

The UK controlled the area at the time, but they basically gave up and left. I don't understand how you could say they were annexing it at this point in time either.

Israel is closer to being a succesor state to mandatory palestine than anything else. Generally international law recognizes the right for ethnic groups to self-determination (Palestinians often rightly complain that they effectively have not had this in the modern period, but the right applies to both sides). It is not considered annexation for a group from one state to split off and form a new state via self-determination.

To give a comparison, i think your argument would be the equivalent of saying ukraine annexed russia because they unilaterally left soviet union.

> Israel by definition can't annex something before it exists.

That seems like a purely semantic argument. If a bunch of people from a particular political movement show up somewhere and seize a bunch of land and declare it's part of their nation, whether that nation is completely new or existing doesn't change the morality of that anywhere. E.g. the formation of South Ossetia on Georgian territory is widely recognised as either annexation or something morally equivalent to it.

> Generally international law recognizes the right for ethnic groups to self-determination (Palestinians often rightly complain that they effectively have not had this in the modern period, but the right applies to both sides). It is not considered annexation for a group from one state to split off and form a new state via self-determination.

That's arguably true for people who declare independence in the territory they're already living in. Not for people who settle on someone else's territory and then claim it as theirs.

> E.g. the formation of South Ossetia on Georgian territory is widely recognised as either annexation or something morally equivalent to it.

I'm under the impression it is seen as occupation (not annexation) by russia with a thin vaneer over top. You still have a separate state being involved, with russia arguably continuing to be in control.

> That's arguably true for people who declare independence in the territory they're already living in. Not for people who settle on someone else's territory and then claim it as theirs.

Well there was significant migration to the area in the lead up, its not like the jews just showed up in 1948 and declared independence. From what i understand there was a continous jewish presence in the region throughout history, albeit at various point as a much smaller minority.

> its not like the jews just showed up in 1948 and declared independence

AIUI it pretty much was; yes the zionist movement existed to a certain extent before WW2, but the overwhelming majority of jewish people living on the territory of Palestine in 1948 had moved there at most a few years before (with a huge increase in those who felt the desire or need to move there as persecution escalated in Europe in the 1930s and ultimately lead to the holocaust).

It seems like firm numbers are pretty hard to find, but wikipedia suggests there was significant jewish population concentrated in Jerusalem, even in the early 1500s (about 20% of the city) with conflicting reports of them becoming a plurality in the mid 1800s. (Arguably that's cherrypicking a single city)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusal...

There's certainly reasons one could doubt the number in absolute terms, there was certainly nothing like a modern census, but i think its more than enough to counter the narrative that there were no jews there right up until just before 1948.

To be clear not saying the jewish population didn't significantly expand in the 40's, it clearly did (at the same time many of those were basically forced from their previous homes, which i don't think fits with the "colonist" metaphor as that usually implies more choice), just that there were always jews in the region.

> at the same time many of those were basically forced from their previous homes, which i don't think fits with the "colonist" metaphor as that usually implies more choice

AIUI colonists usually tend to be at least partly fleeing bad situations at home - occasionally nothing more than a lack of opportunity, but often debts, criminal records and the like.

Weren't the Puritans persecuted in the UK ?

Australia was literally a penal colony.

(Of course this probably doesn't apply to all colonies, I wonder if those that started as trade depots fare differently ?)

> show up somewhere and seize a bunch of land and declare it's part of their nation

This is the root of your confusion. A bunch of people didn't just "show up somewhere and seize a bunch of land". This bunch of people were steadily migrating and acquiring land legally. The only real "seizure" happened within the context of war caused by their growing, legal presence on the land.

This is the crux of the issue, isn't it ?

If I am not mistaken, the first colonies in the USA also "legally" acquired land ? (In the sense that the natives agreed to their presence.)

> A bunch of people didn't just "show up somewhere and seize a bunch of land". This bunch of people were steadily migrating and acquiring land legally.

Really? My grandfather talked about having to intercept or shoot the boatloads that were arriving illegally, and not being able to catch them all, and a quick look into the history seems to back that up.

This analogy fails because it would require Poland to also close their border.

Gaza is essentially half controlled by Egypt.

I cannot believe I have to say this. No, beheading children and torturing them in front of their parents is not a "counter-attack", nor is it "resistance". This statement is actively evil.

>No, beheading children and torturing them in front of their parents

There's absolutely no evidence this happened.

> There's absolutely no evidence this happened.

There's evidence that Hamas beheaded children I haven't seen any evidence they tortured them infant of their parents.

Right and Israel bombing civilian dense Gaza is passively evil?

Bombs are brutal.

One does not preclude the other. This is not a Hollywood movie, the Resistance fighting against the Empire are more likely to commit atrocities, not less (because they are in a position of weakness).

I am reminded of the colonization of the USA : some of the Native American tribes were infamous for their atrocities (if I am not mistaken, ramped up against the colonists compared to what they usually did in war ?).

Of course in the long term the Resistance committing atrocities only hurts their own cause : it gives a justification for the Empire to commit genocide.

We will see whether Israel will take the opportunity, or will only leave genocide as a publicly made promise - note also that under the current situation, genocide is going to happen by sheer neglect if a significant fraction of the needed humanitarian aid is not let in.

Your analogy is wrong because Jews were there before Arabs.

It's like saying that Cherokee would be colonizers if they moved to North Carolina, which is their original homeland before they were forced to move to Oklahoma (the Trail of Tears).

That hasn't been true since Hadrian

Weren't the Philistines in the old testament the ancestors of the Palestinians? Meaning they were there first presumably, since the Israelites had to fight them to take the region in the first place

My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that this goes all the way back to Jacob and Esau, if one considers the Bible as purely a historical reference and not a religious text.

Of course not. Their ancestors are Egyptians and Algerians who came to work for the British between 1919-1947.

The Philistines settled in a small part of modern Israel at around 1175 BC, and disappeared (were assimilated) by the 5th century BC.

Roman Judea was renamed to Palestine in 135 AD (after the Philistines) by the Romans after numerous revolts by the Jews attempting to overthrow their colonizers.

It was freed from Roman colonialism in 634 AD... by being colonized by Arabs. Many empires colonized it afterwards, the last being the British.

Most of today's Israelis are from Muslim countries, some are from Europe, and the rest never left. But many of Arabs of the land (which have adopted the name Palestinians after the province, not the people) are from neighboring countries.

So we can go back to antiquity to make territorial claims? Hell, better not tell that the Persians, Romans and Mongols! Or the British... Maybe Macedonia wants another shot at conquering India so, who knows?

When you have to go back 1300 years to justify an apartheid regime, maybe you should ask yourself a few questions.

Or... when you have to go back 1300 years to shed light on a complex issue, naive people should consider that they might not fully grasp the basis of the conflict

That's a classic handwave to avoid going into the fundamental merit of the problem: which is that, based on claims that were last valid more than 1000 years before, a fundamentally-theological apartheid state was installed and then supported with brutal force, pursuing a slow but methodical ethnic cleansing of the land. Unlike similar efforts in previous centuries (i.e. the purge of Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, or pre-Colombian South Americans), the Israeli effort doesn't even have the excuse of philosophical immaturity of the mainstream: it was pursued well after the post-colonial fundamentals had already been established between WWI and WWII. These are hard facts, no matter how you spin who started what in which year.

The sad thing is, there is now, realistically, no way out of the current situation that involves reconciliation - that chance was missed in the last century. The animosity is now likely unsurmountable, the military disparity is entrenched for good, and a sustainable resolution can only involve the complete purge of Gaza and West Bank. Israeli citizens have chosen to belong to another nationalistic ethnostate, right when the Western mainstream started to move towards more modern and inclusive models of statehood - ironically, on the example of Israel's best ally. As such, they are busy repeating all the sins such states have been guilty of during less enlightened ages.

> a fundamentally-theological apartheid state was installed and then supported with brutal force

This is also a handwave.

Minor quibble over "theological" - I think "tribal" would fit better. Humans are a funny animal.

The chance for peace was extremely slim. It's been an existential conflict since before 1948, and Camp David's alternative required that the doves on both sides be stronger than the hawks. Unfortunately, there's an asymmetry there.

>> a fundamentally-theological apartheid state was installed and then supported with brutal force

> This is also a handwave.

No, that's a statement of fact. It's been almost 80 years since the founding of Israel, its overall historical trajectory is not really in question anymore. Election after election, these choices have been made for three generations; the ideological scenario is entrenched for good. It's sad but it is what it is.

> Minor quibble over "theological" - I think "tribal" would fit better.

I could agree there, but it's a fine line. There is a religious symbol on the very flag.

There's nothing wrong with "nationalistic ethnostates", that's just a weird way to say "nation" (ethnicity is fractal).

The problem is the countries that are empires : where non-national ethnicities are subjects. This includes Israel because of its control of Cisjordania and, yes, also the USA (though to be fair, there's hardly anything left of the Native Americans, and as you say, they get the excuse of immaturity).

I suppose you refer to the relatively short period that Israel existed almost 3000 years ago? And we're just conveniently forgetting about all the people who lived there before and after that?

It is never acceptable, under any circumstances, to wholesale slaughter, rape, torture, and desecrate innocent civilians.

Pick a fight with the government, not senior citizens at a bus stop.

What Hamas did on 7 October wasn’t a “counter-attack,” it was literal genocide.

Well people view israel as the aggressor because they have been pushing palestinians off their land by force (as for the truth of this claim, ive no clue, consult an expert)

It could be considered resistance to the ongoing occupation of Gaza and the war crimes that Israel commits there (according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem etc)?

Gaza isn't occupied, it's besieged. Has been for about 15 years; before that it was occupied (and settled). Before that it was under Egyptian administration, and before that it was under UN administration.

Nobody has ever annexed Gaza.

> Russia is in “armed resistance” after throwing the first punch?

I mean, russia did make that claim, in essence that they were resisting nato expansion.

In fact i would say its a pretty common thing across many conflicts. The side that starts the conflict usually tries to shift blame (whether legitly or not) to the other side because its bad PR to be seen as the side starting shit.

This particular conflict is complex as the sides have basically been in low levels of conflict (and somdtimes not so low) for about a century, however the oct 7 attack by hamas seems like a totally new level of violence and crime against humanity compared to what came before.

The Hamas attack was as despicable as they get. As far as terror attacks go, it is right up there with 9/11. As is Israels reaction.

In case its not clear, i agree. Actually i think it was much worse than 9/11.

If the international community cared about international law the ICC would be issuing warrants against hamas for crimes against humannity.

I guess we can put that on list of all those other crimes that never got prosecuted in Den Hague. Remind me so, who did ratify that court and refuses that their milotary falls under its jurisdiction?

> Remind me so, who did ratify that court and refuses that their milotary falls under its jurisdiction?

Brundi and the Philippines? Maybe i misunderstand your question as i don't know what you are getting at.

Israel has never ratified. However Palestine did ratify so the ICC does have juridsiction here.

The tweet refers to the "coming genocide" which seems to be a reference to Israel's plan to invade more of Palestine.

> Would this be akin to claiming Russia is in “armed resistance” after throwing the first punch?

If the Ukranian army starts entering internationally recognized Russian territory and killing civilians, then if the citizens of that territory were to fight back, that could accurately be called "armed resistance".

> I was under the impression they were the aggressor, no?

Israel has been illegally occupying and settling parts of Palestine for a long time. The most recent flare-up was trigger by reprehensible attacks from Hamas, but there is a long history of violence and aggression by both sides and lots of shared responsibility on both sides for the many needless civilian deaths. However I tend to hold Israel more responsible because of two factors: 1) Israel is wealthier and more powerful 2) Israelis consistently kill more Palestinians than vice versa.

> every act

Oof. I am very sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, but that's just too broad.

It's not like Israel was hiding that it was going for Gaza beforehand anyways.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/then-we-retake-gaza-hardline-m...

In other words, he opposes war except when he agrees with it.

Even the most hawkish person would probably say the same thing. "War is terrible except when i think one side is justified" is hardly a pacifist take.

Speaking of hawkish persons, you're reducing what Craig terms "genocide" to war.

He's claiming that it is justified because israel might commit genocide at some unspecified time in the future, despite that being unlikely. It seems like a rediculous argument to me. Nobody has a crystal ball - you can't justify actions based on things that haven't happened yet. It seems more an attempt to deflect the criticism that hamas has comitted genocide.

Was 9/11 justified because america might commit genocide in the future? Sure it hasn't happened yet but still might because time hasn't ended?

May be you're right. I'm no expert. And I'm certainly not Craig to tell you just what their thinking was/is.

> Nobody has a crystal ball - you can't justify actions based on things that haven't happened yet.

Speaking of experts, see this piece by an Isareli historian Raz Segal (who's also a controversial figure, because nothing about this conflict is without controversy): https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

Unlikely? The UN have already issued a warning:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/gaza-un-expe...

This article is headlined and leads with an accusation about the recent hospital tragedy being due to an Israeli air strike. I believe that the preponderance of sources (neutral or otherwise) have attributed that explosion to a malfunctioning PIJ/Hamas rocket or missile .

The press release is kind of undermined by using as its premise that israel targeted Al Ahli Arab Hospital despite there being significant evidence that it was actually a Palestinian group that did that.

The article doesn't seem to be using an evidence based approach.

Just for the record, there are also claims supported by evidence, that Israel did it.

No conclusions should be made about that incident, either way. Other than the fact that innocent people are being slaughtered because of hatred.

You fell for Qatari state and Hamas terrorist propaganda. All physical evidence points to a more minor event caused by a failed rocket within Gaza. Only the initial confusion caused the ridiculous claims of 500 dead and the entire hospital up in flames to spread. Do some light reading based on current understanding that isn’t Al Jazeera.

“Israel, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada said that their intelligence sources indicate the cause of the explosion was a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) from within Gaza, while the PIJ has denied any involvement. Hamas said that Israel carried out an airstrike on the hospital. Most experts speaking in the days after the strike agreed with the Israel Defense Forces' analysis that a misfired Palestinian rocket launched at Israel from within Gaza and captured on video was the likely cause of the explosion.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explos...

> Just for the record, there are also claims supported by evidence, that Israel did it.

I've seen no convincing evidence that shows that Israel did it, the creator and damage size is way too small for any Israeli bomb or missile even airburst does not match the features found at the explosion.

Even Gandhi allowed for armed conflict where there is no peaceful alternative, and Nelson Mandela was in a paramilitary group.

The difference between a pacifist and a hawk is the frequency of such appeals and the definition of its necessity.

I've always been a pacifist, but I struggle to condemn the actions of a populace that has now been subjected to brutal apartheid conditions for several generations.

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