A Jewish anti-Zionist activist has been cleared of inviting support for Hamas after the October 7 attacks.
Tony Greenstein, 72, of Brighton, was charged with one count of inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation relating to three posts he made on October 7 2023, after the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Greenstein described Gaza as a “human prison” and told Kingston Crown Court that while he believed the attack was “justified”, he does not support Hamas.
He said: “When a colonial power holds another people down, they have the right to resist.”
On Friday afternoon, a jury of five women and seven men found Greenstein not guilty after two hours 11 minutes of deliberation.
Greenstein grinned and looked visibly emotional as the verdict was read out, and supporters in the public gallery gasped excitedly.
Giving evidence to the court on Thursday, Greenstein said Palestinians had been “locked up” for 57 years and accused the judge of “turning a blind eye to genocide”.
He said: “It was a cage in which people lived.
“Imagine you could not escape 25 miles north of here and five miles wide, and imagine having to live there and not being allowed out.”
On multiple occasions during his evidence, Judge Sarah Plaschkes KC halted proceedings to ask Greenstein to stop talking about the history of Israel and Palestine.
Greenstein said to the judge: “That’s the problem with the ruling class in this country, they turn a blind eye to genocide.”
Judge Plaschkes warned Greenstein about treating the trial as a “political forum” and said the jury was “not concerned with events in the Middle East”.
In the social media posts, Greenstein wrote the line: “Please share. Full support for the Gaza ghetto uprising,” the court heard.
Jurors were told the posts had links to a blog, which included the line: “The time to fight is now. Whatever criticisms one can make of Hamas, we should congratulate them on this well planned and audacious attack on the Zionist enemy.”
Greenstein, whose father was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, argued “congratulating” Hamas was a figure of speech, and called the prosecution’s assertion “absurd”.
He had also written extensively about disagreeing with Hamas in his blog which has more than 3,500 posts, the court heard.
Titles of pieces Greenstein had published included “Hamas does its best to make Palestinian lives a misery”, and encouraged those who had “illusions” in Hamas to “think again”.
Before the jury returned their verdicts, Judge Plaschkes indicated that she had considered contempt of court against Greenstein, who gave a closing speech to the jury earlier on Friday.
The judge said that “on calm reflection” she had concluded that it was “a rambling speech delivered by an old man” and would not have impacted the jury’s decision.
In a speech outside court, Greenstein said he wanted to see David Lammy, Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper on trial for “having helped Israel perpetrate a genocide”.
“Opposing genocide is not a crime, supplying arms to Israel to perpetrate a genocide is a crime.
“That’s the nature of our judicial system, they prosecute the wrong people,” he said.
Greenstein continued: “They (the jury) knew very well I wasn’t supporting Hamas; I was supporting the Palestinian people in their just struggle against the Zionist occupation.
“So let us take heart from what’s happened today, and let’s go forward, and never forget: unity is strength, and that is what has made us strong.
“The jury saw, throughout, a full public gallery, and we have to give the same support to all the defendants who are going through trials at the moment, they are guilty of nothing more than opposing genocide.”
Oh dear me. He doesn’t exactly come across as running on all cylinders does he. Probably because he talks nonsense.
In 2000, Arafat rejected a state on 95% of the West Bank with equivalent land swaps for the other 5%, 100% of Gaza and a capital in East Jerusalem. In 2008, Abbas rejected a state on even better terms and on October 7th 2023, Hamas demonstrated that separate statehood would not stop their violence. As Bill Clinton said “I offered them all of Gaza and 97% of the West Bank, but they never really wanted a homeland for themselves. They just wanted to kill the Jews”. So Israel has no option but to try to keep them contained – they have not offered an alternative.
As for the ‘genocide’ accusation, based on Hamas figures, assume that all women are civilian casualties. Assume that there are as many male as female civilian casualties. Then the ratio of combatants to civilians among the casualties is 1:1.5. The world’s largest database on such situations is from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. It gives an average of 1:2 for conflicts in large urban areas. So a higher percentage of civilian casualties than in Gaza. Israel moves civilians out of the way – if you are attempting to kill an entire population why would you tell them to move out of harms way first?
ICJ President Joan Donoghue already addressed the ‘genocide’ issue, stating: “The International Court of Justice did not find the genocide claim plausible, nor did it rule that a plausible case of genocide exists.”
No court has determined that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The legal threshold is high, specific. and unmet under the 1948 Genocide Convention rules. The frequent improper use of the term as a propaganda slogan has both diminished its legitimacy and helped highlight the excessive propaganda used by terrorist groups, antisemites and leftwing agitators.