Fighting the proscription of Palestine Action has become more urgent as eight brave activists enter the crucial period of their hunger strike.

12 January has finally been set for the court hearing on holding a Scottish judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action.

I am frankly terrified for the hunger strikers.

Qesser Zuhrah
Amu Gib
Heba Muraisi
Jon Cink
Teuta Hoxha
Kamran Ahmed
Muhammad Umer Khalid
Lewie Chiaramello (a diabetic so on modified hunger strike or he would die very rapidly).

The Starmer government is quite prepared to let them die: to emphasise devotion to Israel, to show their zionist donors they are earning their money, and to reinforce the hardline macho image they believe appeals to Reform voters.

Indeed I have no doubt that Starmer, Mahmood, Lammy and Cooper hope for their deaths as a political positive; just as Thatcher thought she would win plaudits for facing down IRA hunger strikers.

It is important to state that none of the hunger striking prisoners has been convicted of anything – all are on remand – and none of them was in any way involved in the incident in which a policewoman was allegedly injured.

The coordiated response from government and other zionist troll farms and stenographers is that none of the hunger strikers deserve sympathy as “a policewoman was hit by a sledgehammer”.

It remains astonishing to me that this assertion is constantly and stridently made by the state and its myriad acolytes, despite the rules against prejudicing a jury trial. This stance ignores the detailed accounts of the trial itself which paint a far more complex picture.

As well as the real danger to the hunger strikers, there are thousands of entirely peaceful protestors facing terrorism charges simply for speech. These are life-changing, bringing not just jail sentences but loss of employment, debanking and travel restrictions

All this while the genocide of Palestinians continues, with appalling conditions in Gaza, stringent restrictions on aid which is still at less than half the required levels, and continued Israeli bombing despite the “ceasefire”.

The judicial review of Palestine Action in the High Court of England and Wales appears to have been “fixed”. The last minute change of judges – including the total removal of the original judge from the panel – and the conduct of the review have left little room for optimism.

My own most striking impression from that judicial review is the difference in how the judges treated the counsel for Huda Ammori and the counsel for the UK government.

Counsel for Huda Ammori, Raza Husain KC, was treated with impatience and at times disdain. That is difficult to quantify, but one thing that could indeed be measured was this:

Every time Raza Husain KC referred the judges to a passage in a past judgment or other quoted authority, they quickly skated over it and moved on, frequently with a phrase like “Yes, we have seen it” or “We are familiar with that”.

Every time James Eadie KC for the government referred the judges to a written authority, they ostentatiously physically found it in their bundle and took time to peruse it, on one occasion taking over a minute to demonstrate they were reading and absorbing at the government’s direction, before Eadie moved on.

The contrast was stark. Not just once, but over and over.

My favourite moment in the English judicial review was when Raza Hussain quoted the Proscription Advisory Committee’s recommendation to Yvette Cooper that Palestine Action should be proscribed because “Palestine Action kept hiring good lawyers” and defendants kept being acquitted as it was difficult to prove guilt to the criminal standard.

Yes, they really did say that. Palestine Action should be proscribed because it was being found by juries not be criminal.

By proscribing iPalestine Action, this makes it a criminal offence of strict liability to support it, whether or not you were doing anything that a jury would have found criminal before the proscription.

Raza Hussain KC described this as “Not the Proscription Advisory Committee’s finest hour”. I thought much more could have been made of it, but a feature of the English judicial review – and I think a mistake – is that there was no playing to the gallery of public opinion.

It was conducted as a legal conversation between the lawyers and the judges, often incomprehensible to the onlooker because it was based on documents to which the public do not have access. Yet there is an extremely concerned public looking on.

The demands of the hunger strikers largely refer to the appalling prison conditions in which they are kept, despite the fact that none of them have been convicted and none of them have previous convictions, or can reasonably be said to present a danger to the public, or be a particular flight risk.

• Immediate bail/release on bail for the remand prisoners (many held longer than standard limits).
• The right to a fair trial, including access to all relevant documents and an end to demonization or “terrorist connection” claims.
• An end to prison censorship/restrictions on communications (e.g., blocking letters, phone calls, and books).
• De-proscription (lifting the ban) on Palestine Action as a terrorist organization.
• Shutdown of Elbit Systems’ UK sites (Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, accused of supplying weapons used in Gaza).

On right to a fair trial, it is worth noting that there is huge evidence of outside influence on the prosecutions, and there are communications between the police and prosecutorial authorities on the one hand, and Elbit, the Israeli Embassy, and various zionist groups on the other, which have either not been released to the defence, or have only been released in very redacted form.

In the day of the Filton trial which I attended, I found the parts the jury was not allowed to know, when they were sent out, particularly interesting. I cannot tell you more than that until the trial is over.

We can help lift the proscription of Palestine Action if we win the judicial review in Scotland. We have finally been given a court date of 12 January at 9.30am in Edinburgh.

This hearing is to decide whether there will be a judicial review. It will look at only two points.

Firstly, whether I as an individual have sufficient connection to Palestine Action, or have my rights particularly infringed by the proscription, in order to have standing in the case.

The UK Government is arguing that I have no connection to Palestine Action. I wish they would tell their police that!!

We will however also be relying on the Supreme Court judgment in Walton vs Scottish ministers, which states that “is sufficient that the applicant has a genuine concern about the legality of the act or decision, and that the issues raised are of general public importance”.

The second ground to be heard is whether there can be a separate judicial review in Scotland when there is already one in the High Court of England and Wales.

Our view is that the principle has already been established in the Joanna Cherry and Gina Miller cases, where judicial reviews in London and Edinburgh came to opposing decisions on the legality of Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament.

I am resident in Scotland, where the High Court of England and Wales has no jurisdiction. If my rights are infringed I am entitled, even within the United Kingdom, to the protection of my own courts of my own nation in first instance.

Scots law is different. Its intellectual basis and maxims are different. There is a reason why lawyers legally qualified to plead in courts in England and Wales are not automatically qualified to appear in Scotland; and vice versa. The Court of Session is not inferior to the High Court.

We intend to submit substantive evidence of the oppression of numerous individuals in Scotland as a result of the proscription.

We will need the maximum public support inside and outside the court of session at Parliament House, Edinburgh on 12 January from 9am.

Unfortunately we will not be able to go ahead if we do not raise sufficient funds.  The crowdfunder has got us into court, but needs to supercharge to get us further. Please do help https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/

I know these are the most difficult of times. But that is why we have to keep fighting. The sums needed to mount a successful legal challenge to the power of the state can be eye-watering. But we are the many. Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship. You can contribute via the crowdfunder above or via these methods.

Alternatively by bank transfer:

Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address NatWest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB

Or crypto:

Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a