I am confident that over 2 million people in the UK have shared thoughts on the Genocide in Gaza that are stronger than anything Natalie Strecker has expressed.
I am quite certain that I am one of those 2 million.
Yet Natalie Strecker, an avowed pacifist and mother of young children, today faces up to ten years in prison under the Terrorism Act when the verdict in her case comes in.
Strecker is charged with eliciting support for Hamas and Hezbollah, based on 8 tweets, cherry picked by police and prosecutors from an astounding 51,000 tweets she sent, mainly from the Jersey Palestine Solidarity Committee account.
The tweets were rather rattled off in court and referred to occasionally again in whole and in part. There may be minor inaccuracies not affecting sense, but this is the best reconstruction of those tweets that I can make (they were not displayed to the public:
“People will be individually resisting: otherwise we would be asking them to submit to genocide on their knees”
“Solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah has the right to resist in international law, I remind you the occupier does not, and are legally obligated to try to prevent Genocide.”
“Solidarity with the resistance. In the same way that the reistance fought the Nazis in Europe, we must support the fight against the Nazis of our generation”.
“Resistance is their legal right under moral and international law. If you don’t want resistance, then don’t create the circumstances which require it. Solidarity with the Resistance.”
“This nonsense our nation has descended into, where one side is committing genocide, and the other is proscribed for fighting it. I believe Hezbollah may be Palestine’s last hope”.
“Hamas the resistance did not break out of their concentration camp to attack Jews as Jews. We can debate whether armed resistance is legitimate. Of course there should be no attacks on civilians.”
“I am sick of the MSM propaganda about “Hamas-run health ministry figures”. Hamas is the government in Gaza. Every health ministry in the world is run by its government.”
“Are you awake? So it is down to ordinary people like you an me to end it. We must take our power back. Join me in solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Palestine. Solidarity with the Resistance.”
That is it. The prosecution case is that these tweets, both collectively and individually, amount to an invitation of support for Hamas and Hezbollah resulting in up to ten years in jail in Jersey, or 14 years in jail on the UK mainland.
The prosecution explicitly stated, and the judge notably intervened to make sure that evrybody understood, that it is the offence of supporting terrorism to state that the Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.
Judge John Saunders interrupted the prosecution to ask whether they were saying that he would be guilty of support for terrorism if, in a lecture, he told an international law class that Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.
After some kerfuffle when faced with such an awkward question, the prosecution replied that yes, it could be the offence to tell law students that.
I should point out, at risk of dying in jail, that the Palestinians are beyond doubt an occupied people in international law, and equally beyond doubt an occupied people have the right of armed resistance.
To state that the Palestinians have the right of armed resistance in international law is not in the least controversial as a statement of law. A few zionist nutters would try to differ, but 95% of international lawyers on this planet would agree.
I assume by perfectly logical extension that this means the prosecution must believe it is a terrorist crime in UK law, for example, to quote UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43, which:
2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples
for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and
liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign
occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;3. Reaffirms the inalienable right of the Namibian
people, the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign
and colonial domination to self-determination, national
independence, territorial integrity, national unity and
sovereignty without outside interference;
It is also worth stating that on Friday the prosecution stated, in these precise words, that “Resistance is synonymous with Hamas and Hezbollah” and that any support for, or justification of, Palestinian resistance is support for a proscribed organisation.
To repeat, there are millions of people in the UK who have stated stronger things than the tweets above. Including me. And, as the defence pointed out repeatedly, just eight tweets had been found after hundreds of hours of police time, and found amidst tens of thousands of other tweets on the Middle East, hundreds of which specifically urge non-violence.
So why are the police doing this to Natalie? Why did six armed police storm her apartment and rouse her young family at 7am a year ago, seizing all her electronics and papers, arresting her before her children and not allowing her to have a pee without leaving the bathroom door open so she could be observed?
This is where the story gets very dark indeed.
This is not a local Jersey initiative.
The prosecution is directed from London and Alison Morgan KC, senior Treasury counsel (UK government lawyer) is seated beside the local prosecuting counsel, openly puppeteering him every step of the way.
So why has the UK government chosen Jersey to prosecute a local pacificst mother whose statements provide possibly the weakest case of support for terrorism that has ever been heard in any court in the western world?
The answer is that here in Jersey there is no jury.
Facing this charge on the UK mainland Natalie would have a jury, and there is not a jury in the UK that would not throw this self-evidently vindictive nonsense out in 5 minutes.
Why is it worth the time and expense for Whitehall to send Alison Morgan KC here to direct a weak case against somebody who is obviously not a terrorist?
The plain answer is that this is a pilot for what they can get away with on the mainland when they abolish juries in such trials, as “Justice Secretary” David Lammy has announced that they will indeed do.
In Jersey the system is inherited from the Normans. The judge sits with two “jurats” or lay magistrates. They determine innocence or guilt. These come from a pool of 12 permanent jurats. In practice these are retired professionals and frequently have strong connections to the financial services industry.
What the jurats emphatically are not is Natalie Strecker’s working class peers of a kind who would be represented on a jury. I strongly recommend this brief article on the corruption of Jersey society by a man who was for 11 years the government of Jersey’s economic adviser.
The judge, Sir John Saunders, seems a decent old stick in a headmasterly sort of way. He has told the court that “Mrs Strecker’s good character is not in doubt”. On Friday he stated that this was “A very difficult and in many ways a very sad case for the court to deal with. But I have to construe it according to strict legal principles”.
In the Palestine Action proscription case, as I reported, counsel for the UK government openly stated “We do not deny that the law is draconian. It is supposed to be”. In the mass arrests of decent people over Palestine Action, people have understood what a dreadfully authoritarian law the proscription regime is.
An intelligent observer cannot sit in Judge Saunders’ courtroom without realising that he thinks this is a dreadful law, but accepts that it is his job to enforce it. He reminds me of the caricature of the lugubrious headmaster stating “This is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you”.
In effect, Alison Morgan and the UK government are attempting through this prosecution to make even the most basic expression of support for Palestine a serious criminal offence. Remember that a terrorism conviction destroys your life – it almost certainly brings loss of employment, debanking and severe travel restrictions.
The International Court of Justice has decided that Israel has a real case to answer on Genocide, and most experts believe that Israel is committing Genocide. In Natalie’s correct image, the UK government is trying to make it a terrorist offence to say anything other than that the Palestinians should quietly submit to Genocide on their knees.
The danger is that the hubris of lay magistrates will lead the jurats to try cleverly to construe Natalie’s comments into support for terrorism in line with the government’s wishes. Natalie has however one defence in Jersey not available in mainland UK – here in Jersey the prosecution has to show intent, that she intended to cause support for terrorist organisations.
The prosecution has also relied on the extremely wide definition of support adopted in UK terrorist cases, that “support of” merely means “expression of agreement with”.
In defending the tweet about Hamas run health ministry figures, Natalie Strecker’s counsel Luke Sette countered this rather well when he said: “there is no offence of causing people to think less badly of Hamas”
I confess however I am slightly puzzled that I have not heard the defence argue that the prosecution positions are grossly disproportionate violations of freedom of expression in terms of Article X of the European Convention of Human Rights.
I would have thought, for example, that was the natural thing to say in response to the prosecution’s contention that it would be a crime for a law lecturer to tell his class that the Palestinian people had the right of armed resistance in international law.
The verdict was decided yesterday afternoon between the judge and jurats. It will be presented in full written judgment in an hour’s time.
This is a truly horrifying case for Natalie, who cannot afford to lose her job with a Jersey government agency and most certainly does not wish to be jailed away from her children. I pinch myself to be sure that this is all really happening.
It is a truly horrifying case in terms of what the Starmer government intend to do on the mainland in further criminalising support for Palestine.
I do not support Hamas nor Hezbollah, being opposed to theocracy. But for it to be illegal to discuss the Genocide in Gaza and the role of these two organisations, unless you do it absolutely without either context or nuance, is Orwellian.
Western dissent is also a victim of the Zionist Genocide.
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