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Comment by cassianoleal | Hacker News Reader

There is one thing that might be in his power: to stop censoring and arresting people protesting against genocide.

Edit: lol thanks HN for the usual downvote! :) I love this place!

I'm opposed too but there's little recognizance of the poor position the UK is in. Under the current decline of Britain's economic foundations, having enough diesel and gas to keep the lights on and the lorries running depends on imports from the US, which could well be banned overnight if the president - any president - feels they need to crack the whip.

Opposing the Oval Office means shortages in the supermarkets, gas power stations turning off and a bond crash that makes the DWP lack the liquidity to service all of the monthly state pension payments, besides a great many other problems.

Locking up placard-wavers is stupid, but so is intentionally waving a placard with the name of a proscribed group, when just about any other message supporting the cause would be fine.

If you do a million pounds in criminal damage and attack a police officer with a sledgehammer, you can't just write it off as 'direct action', you deserve a tough jail sentence whatever the cause.

> proscribed group

If the government is legitimately evil for proscribing a group they should be able to deal with their constituents calling them out for it. Materially hindering a genocide is by all currently accepted human standards a good thing.

You mean Palestine Action specifically, because the leadership of that group are violent terrorists.

It's weird how you people never notice that NOBODY else is "arrested"

Over 2,000 middle aged women have been arrested as terrorists on the basis of holding protest signs though, it's been widely reported.

They did that on purpose, though: Palestine Action has been banned on the basis of being a "terror organisation", this means that supporting them is a criminal offence. Knowing that, they purposedly propested by holding signs saying that they supported Palestine Action... and therefore they were arrested as expected (and really the police has no choice in such cases not to undermine the rule of law).

Note what the Court of Appeal said when ruling that the ban on terror grounds was legal:

[It was] "a fundamental mistake to overlook the fact that Palestine Action overtly promotes unlawful violence amounting to terrorism. It is not - as claimed - a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes, operating transparently in the open. It is a covert organisation which operates with secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy property and cause injury. " [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gy927jx88o

The suffragettes committed dozens of assaults and arsons and at least one deployment of an IED, which suggests bad faith in the interest of political orthodoxy by Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr.

Funny u/JumpCrisscross who was asking for sources has now deleted the post with the question.

> Since July last year, police have arrested at least 2,787 people across the UK for holding signs displaying statements such as “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, according to the civil liberties organisation Defend Our Juries.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/16/arrested-ret...

> An 83-year-old was arrested alongside 64 other people at a pro-Palestine protest in Liverpool city centre.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wg4e1nlrjo

> "The law does not have an age limit", the head of the Metropolitan Police said after an 83-year-old retired priest was arrested for supporting a banned protest group.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9vrjkev802o

And in the same above article there's an explanation about why this "violent terrorist group" has been banned:

> The move to ban the organisation was announced after two Voyager aircraft were sprayed with red paint at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on 20 June. It caused about £7m of damage, police said.

Their violence was against capital.

I agree with you generally but the RAF are part of the state and not meaningfully "capital". If you attack the military then yes obviously you are going to get the book thrown at you. That does _not_ justify going after the people with signs.

They painted the aircraft.

Not just that: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce950111xk7o

"Corner, a former student at the University of Oxford, was also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm after he fractured Sgt Kate Evans' spine with a sledgehammer in the raid."

But again, let's be clear: that justifies the conviction of the person with the hammer. Not the people with signs.

Ugh, thank you - I was not aware of this. I agree with you - this should have got that person prosecuted. People with signs is perhaps a tad exaggerated.

They actually hacked holes in the things with a crowbar too. That didn't do as much damage as expected though.

And they videoed themselves doing it and published that.

And the aircraft weren't usable in the Israel-Palestine conflict but were in the Ukraine one. You have to wonder considering the Russian connections of the principal sponsor of Palestine Action: Fergie Chambers. Worth reading up on him.

Vandalised military assets on a miltary site.

Actions of a traitor or enemy saboteur. Lucky they didn't get shot.

Some of these protesters seem to think they're invincible these days because they support a popular cause (Palestine or climate, usually). They need to get a grip on what reasonable 'direct action' is. Obstructive protests are generally OK, Destructive protests aren't.

Ah yes the lovely protesters who spat on me, called me a baby killer and pretended they were going to punch me when I got stuck in the middle of them and said "I don't have time for this - I need to get to my mother" while I was trying to get to my dying mother in hospital and walked right into them leaving a tube station.

Fuck 'em. Sympathy gone.

Also I vote on local policy. The Middle East is a big political distraction from what's actually going on here. 99.9% of us can do fuck all about the Middle East and I suspect 90% of the country couldn't give a flying fuck about it either. But you know the council spent time on a meeting so they have a gaza policy but can't collect the bins reliably.

...or any topic really. More people on the right than the left are being jailed for hurty words.

Getting constantly distracted by foreign-policy items 90% of voters barely care about is how the UK wound up in this mess.

Oh agreed. If anyone cares that much travel back to whichever country they support and enlist. Also renounce your British citizenship at the same time.

I practically beelined to Ukraine when the war broke out and dedicated a good 2 months to humanitarian work. I've probably achieved more independently than huge organised movements with probable nation state backing.

Huge amounts of funding, huge election talking points, hundreds of thousands of people, entire student bodies, propaganda networks, and what quantifiable achievements have been made? It all comes off as a preformative social occasion with 0 goals.

Have far more respect for those who put their money where their mouth is and actually joined ISIS than the professional protestor caste.

I always think of the example of my step-grandad (amongst others) who left the UK to join the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

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