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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

You forgot to mention those people are holding placards in support of an illegal "terror" group whose objective is to protest the unnecessary human loss of life in Palestine by spray painting British military equipment.

Obligatory legal notice that I obviously do not support said group, but historically terrorists would actually need to commit acts that instil a sense terror in people to further their political objectives. N one I've spoken to feels even remotely terrorised by Palestine Action, and it wouldn't even make sense to be given what they stand for.

I say this as someone who neither supports Palestine Action or shares their concerns.

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Even more chilling when you find out that sentences for previous criminals are being commuted and reduced significantly for heinous crimes (theft, burglary, rape, assault, etc.), so as to clear space and make room in prisons to accommodate these "terrorists".

https://news.sky.com/story/prisoners-to-be-released-after-se...

The more dangerous people they can get on the street the more fear they can generate and the more they can whip the public to their bidding. Getting rid of the few people trying educate the public on these matters goes hand in hand.

> spray painting British military equipment.

Spraying paint down military jet engines rendering them inoperable until repaired, at a cos of millions of pounds.

> historically terrorists would actually need to commit acts that instil a sense terror in people to further their political objective

The legal definition of terrorism in the UK has for many years (at least all of the current century, I think a lot longer) included "serious damage to property":

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

and I think causing many millions of pounds worth of damage is clearly serious.

I do not entirely agree with the definition (I particularly oppose making collecting information and disseminating publications terrorism) but it is what has long been accepted.

Palestinian Action are a sanitised, Westernised front for Hamas fundraising. Their founders have praised the Oct 7th attacks and called for repeats. That by most measures counts as being an active part of terrorism. The spray painting was pretty small in the list of threats they pose.

Palestine Action broke into a British military base and sabotaged millions of pounds' worth of equipment. What did you expect the government to do exactly — shrug it off? What kind of message would that have sent?

The Terrorism Act 2000 gives "serious damage to property" as one definition of terrorism so I find it hard to argue that the government was doing anything more than neutrally applying the law here. Those protestors knew full well they were supporting a proscribed group and they were warned what the consequences would be. Protesting in support of Palestine remains entirely legal in the UK just as long as you don't use the name and branding of this one specific group.

I'll probably regret posting this but there are some extremely disingenuous half-truths in this thread and I think that readers should know the full context.

Personally I expected prosecutions for sabotage rather than for terrorism.

The UK has very broad terrorism legislation, but conventionally terrorism is something directed at civilians, and it's not something we usually tar, for example, resistance groups with.

I think you even have to be able to kill people in internal political conflict without being called a terrorist. There are many circumstances during which such things are necessary.

FWIW the specific activists who entered the base were charged with "conspiracy to commit criminal damage" and "conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK", not terrorism. [0]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3dp5158720o

Yes, but then the organization was proscribed as a terrorist organization.

There's no legal mechanism to ban/proscribe a group in the UK except under terrorism legislation: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/for-what-reasons-other-than...

If the government wants to shut this group down (which I think is a reasonable response to an attack on our military) then I'm not sure what other options were available to them. And like I said, what they did seems to meet the legal definition of terrorism (regardless of whether that definition is a good one.)

Of all the arguments we could be having about Palestine, I'm really not going to shed any tears for Palestine Action.

But I'm not here to get lost in the weeds, I just objected to the misleading half-truths that were being presented above. Most people reading this don't follow UK news closely and might come away with the impression that the government is banning pro-Palestine protest entirely, or is making it illegal to merely "hold placards". That's an outrageous distortion, and it hardly helps the pro-Palestine cause. I couldn't let it slide.

Here in Sweden what organizations are engaged in terrorism is up the courts and the government has no right to intervene at all to proscribe a group, with EU and other political terrorism designations being irrelevant.

Furthermore, I think that there is a duty, if one suspects that a capability is or may be used to aid genocide, to destroy that capability. Hopefully Palestine Action are incorrect, and targeting assets that have not been used to aid genocide or otherwise make it easier, but if they are right and the UK have actually aided genocide, then they have done too little violence.

> You forgot to mention those people are holding placards in support of an illegal "terror" group whose objective is to protest the unnecessary human loss of life in Palestine by spray painting British military equipment.

Yet more false equivalence.

You can be for Palestine.

You can be for Hamas.

You can be against ethnic cleansing.

You can be against genocide.

These are all different things. And note, this smearing of things like equating 'genocide to Hamas so they deserve it' doesn't make genocide better.

This smearing terms together is also being done by Israel as well, by trying to equate Israel with Judaism, and all Jews across the world. And that any denouncing of actions done in a genocide or ethnic cleansing is somehow antisemitic.

All of these false equivalence arguments are basically just motte-and-bailey fallacies.

You can be for Hamas?

I'm not, but I know those who are.

Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Last elections too. For quite many, Hamas are freedom fighters defending against invaders.

Hamas won that election in large part by throwing their opponents off the tops of buildings, and then, having secured power in Gaza, never allowed another election, to the point where a plurality of Gazan Palestinians are not old enough ever to have participated in an election. Anyone calling Hamas "freedom fighters" is telling on themselves. No, I don't think you can reasonably be for Hamas.

I don't have anything else to nitpick about your comment! Just that one thing you said stuck out, because, no; being for Hamas is like being for the Khmer Rouge. Like, yeah, western imperialism in Indochina was absolutely a thing at the time of the Khmer Rouge. But no, you don't get to be for the Khmer Rouge!

("Last elections too"? What did you mean by that?)

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