From: Louis Shawcross, Inns Court, Royal Hillsborough, Co. Down, N. Ireland.

We're not allowed to sit in a public place holding a cardboard sign claiming support for Palestine or march with others along public roads calling for a single state solution where all faiths and ethnicities can live together in harmony.

This is considered as support for terrorism and people can be arrested for doing so and they have been arrested. Scary, right? Take note that simultaneously jury trials are being phased out in the UK.

Juries would invariably act as a counter-measure to these changes in criminal law as juries would ordinarily see through the unfairness of these new laws and would invariably not convict someone for attending a pro-Palestinian march in London, for example.

Police remove a protester at a demonstration against the ban on Palestine Action, in Trafalgar Square. PIC: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

placeholder image — Police remove a protester at a demonstration against the ban on Palestine Action, in Trafalgar Square. PIC: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

‘From the river to the sea’ is an aspirational call for peaceful coexistence between all faiths and ethnicities living in Israel and the Palestinian territories. However the term has been maliciously weaponised against those seeking peace.

Similarly, those criticising Israel, in particular, for their actions in Gaza, have been labelled ‘anti-semitic’ in a similar distortion of reality. But that's the state we now live in - without a lot of help from mainstream media to try to put things into their proper context, or assistance from the mainstream political arena which seems scared to push against a political force that has the power to end careers.

If we see the criminalisation of protest juxtaposed against the phasing out of jury trials as non-coincidental, we do also see planning taking place beyond the public sphere in a secretive, sinister, and manipulative manner.