[News] Richie Medhurst & the Right to Armed Resistance

[Anti-Imperialist News]

consortiumnews.com
<https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/21/craig-murray-medhurst-the-right-to-armed-resistance/>
Craig Murray: Medhurst & the Right to Armed Resistance
August 21, 2024
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*It is legal in U.K. law to support Israel’s genocidal and illegal acts of
colonial occupation, but illegal in U.K. law to support Palestine’s legal
acts of armed resistance to colonial and racist occupation.*

Richie Medhurst on his X feed on Aug. 19, 2024, announcing details of his
arrest. (X)

*By **Craig Murray*
<https://consortiumnews.com/tag/craig-murray/>*CraigMurray.org.uk
<https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/08/we-are-the-bad-guys/>*

*W*e were waiting for Richard Medhurst to arrive and join our panel at
the Beautiful
Days festival <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautiful_Days_(festival)#>,
when he was arrested and imprisoned for 23.5 hours last Thursday. Obviously
we were all worried sick about him.

It is now becoming easier to list the truly dissident U.K. journalists who
have not been arrested for terrorism than those who have! This fascist ploy
of labeling journalists as terrorists is incredible.

Richard’s case is slightly different to that of other journalists including
myself, John Laughland, Vanessa Beeley, Johanna Ross, Kit Klarenberg and
many more to suffer the same treatment, in that Richard was specifically
held under Section 12
<https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/12> of the Terrorism
Act — which outlaws support for a proscribed organisation.

Yes, you are reading that right. You can go to jail for 14 years for
*e**xpressing
an opinion* in support of a proscribed organisation.

<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Terror-Act-terms.png>

*UK v. International Law*

We now have an extraordinary conflict between U.K. domestic law and
international law.

The International Court of Justice has just last month stated definitively
<https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf>
to the U.N. General Assembly that the Israeli occupation is illegal and it
is the duty of states not to support it.

“Moreover, the Court considers that, in view of the character and
importance of the rights and obligations involved, all States are under an
obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the
unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They are
also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the
situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory.

It is for all States, while respecting the Charter of the United Nations
and international law, to ensure that any impediment resulting from the
illegal presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the
exercise of the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is
brought to an end. In addition, all the States parties to the Fourth Geneva
Convention have the obligation, while respecting the Charter of the United
Nations and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with
international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention*.”*

Members of the International Court of Justice on July 19, the day they
delivered they opinion on the legality of Israeli policies and practices in
the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. (ICJ)

Yet it is perfectly legal in U.K. domestic law for Zionists to state that
they support the Israeli Defence Force and they hope that the IDF kill
every Palestinian in Gaza.

Indeed Zionists state this all the time, supporting an action that is
entirely illegal in international law, and no action is ever taken against
these Zionists by the U.K. state.

Members of the IDF who have actually participated in the genocide are able
to come and live in the U.K. unmolested.

In stark contrast to the illegal acts of the occupying power, the
Palestinian people do have the right of armed resistance in international
law.

This right is founded on the right of self-determination in the U.N.
Charter and is encapsulated in the First Protocol of the Geneva Convention
(1977) Article 1 Para 4:

“The situations referred to in the preceding paragraph include armed
conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and
alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right
of self-determination, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations
and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly
Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of
the United Nations.”

Yet under U.K. law it is legal to express support for the completely
illegal operations of the IDF (illegal even without considering the
question of Genocide!) while it is illegal to express support for
completely legal acts of resistance by certain Palestinian groups.

Let me spell this out again.

It is legal in U.K. law to support Israel’s genocidal and illegal acts of
colonial occupation, but illegal in U.K. law to support Palestine’s legal
acts of armed resistance to colonial and racist occupation.

The Protocol to the Geneva Convention makes clear that those engaged in
armed resistance against occupation are both entitled to the same
humanitarian protections, and obliged to respect the same humanitarian law,
as other combatants.

There is a fascinating twist here from the days when Robin Cook was foreign
secretary and I was deputy head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s
Africa Department. In 1998 the First Protocol of the Geneva Convention was
incorporated into U.K. law, and the United Kingdom made a very telling
reservation.

British law stipulates that the First Protocol’s recognition that a person
not wearing uniform may still be a lawful combatant, and entitled to the
full protections of the Geneva Convention provided he carries his arms
openly, applies it only in occupied territory or when engaged in fighting
colonial or racist occupation.

Let us look at that more closely.

Schedule H of the U.K. Geneva Conventions Act (First Protocol) Order 1998
<https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/1754/made> states that

*“*ARTICLE 44, paragraph 3

It is the understanding of the United Kingdom that:

the situation in the second sentence of paragraph 3 can only exist in
occupied territory or in armed conflicts covered by paragraph 4 of Article
1;”

Which means that this provision of the First Protocol:

“Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where,
owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so
distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided
that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly:

(a) During each military engagement, and

(b) During such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged
in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he
is to participate.

Acts which comply with the requirements of this paragraph shall not be
considered *as perfidious within the meaning of Article 37, paragraph 1
(c).”*

Only applies *in U.K. law* where:

“The situations referred to in the preceding paragraph include armed
conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and
alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right
of self-determination, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations
and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly
Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of
the United Nations.”

So, and it is absolutely important this is understood, the right to fight
against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes
is not only an absolute right in international law, *it is also a specific
right in U.K. law.*

And U.K. law further specifically recognises that when fighting colonial
domination, alien occupations and a racist regime you do not have to wear
uniform.

Applying this to Oct. 7 means that those armed Palestinian combatants who
were not members of a proscribed organisation (see below) were engaged in
legal armed struggle in terms of U.K. law, provided they respected
international humanitarian law in so doing.

Hamas rocket attack from Gaza into Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. (Tasnim News
Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Which makes the recent clarifications that the majority of civilian
casualties were killed by the IDF and that the mass rapes and beheaded
babies stories were a total fabrication, still more important.

Every colonial or racist power that has ever faced armed resistance has
always characterised the native peoples resisting as “terrorists,”
“savages” or similar. Asymmetric warfare is by nature unconventional. The
systematic and often legalised atrocities of the coloniser will indeed
often spark uncontrolled acts of rage that rightly fall outside what
international humanitarian law will condone.

So we now have the situation that Richard Medhurst is arrested for
allegedly supporting armed resistance that is not only undeniably legal in
international law but is also specifically legal in British law.

The source of this conundrum is the extraordinarily arbitrary power of
proscribing an organisation.

Now to proscribe an organisation the government does not have to prove its
actions were illegal, either under international law or U.K. law. An
organisation is proscribed simply on the basis that the government says so.

If the government proscribed the Girl Guides, you could get up to 14 years
in jail for expressing support for the Girl Guides, and no amount of
argument in court that the Girl Guides is not in fact a terrorist
organisation would help you.

Hamas and Hezbollah are acting legally in U.K. law in terms of the Geneva
Convention First Protocol Order of 1998, but expressing support for them is
nevertheless illegal because the proscription of an organisation is an
entirely arbitrary power of the executive.

Nelson Mandela statue outside the Union Buildings in Pretoria. (South
African Tourism, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

When I ran the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices’s South Africa political
desk in 1985, it was the firm position of the Thatcher government that the
ANC was  a terrorist organisation and that Nelson Mandela was rightly and
correctly imprisoned as a terrorist.

The notion that governments can fairly and impartially designate
“terrorists” is very obviously nuts.

It is important to add that this analysis of the legal position in no way
implies that I do, or do not, approve of Hamas or Hezbollah. In general I
am not in favour of mixing the state and religion, so I come from a very
different place and have my criticisms.

But it is also important not to be scared to state that the proscription of
Hamas as a terrorist organisation does not align with the U.K. legal
position in the First Protocol Order that specifically recognises the right
of an occupied people to armed resistance.

It also causes great confusion. It is, for example, only the military wing
of Hamas that is a proscribed organisation. So far as I can tell, it would
not be illegal to state that Hamas did a very good job of running Gaza’s
schools and hospitals.

But it is very difficult to be sure — the law and its application are
arbitrary and not forseeable.

When I stood for election in Blackburn, I had the specific endorsement of
the Palestinian Foreign Ministry which had been engaged with the South
African delegation in the ICJ Genocide case against Israel at the Hague.

I was then also (unsolicited) offered the endorsement of Hamas. This caused
some head-scratching and I consulted an eminent lawyer. He advised that
while it would be illegal for me to endorse Hamas, it would not be illegal
for Hamas to endorse me.

Particularly so if it came from the political and not the military wing.

I thought this sounded great fun, but perhaps not great enough fun for me
to spend several years of my life fighting the case from inside a prison
cell. So I did not take up the offer.

Any law which states you can be jailed for 14 years simply for expressing
an opinion is a very bad law, no matter what that opinion may be.

To use such arbitrary power to seek to silence those who are opposing a
most dreadful genocide, is the action of an over-mighty state led by evil
people.

I think it is most important that we are not silenced. Hence this article.
Most of my friends are advising me I should travel abroad for a while once
again, and I am trying to make up my mind about this. I should be grateful
for your views.

The U.K. is plainly not a safe place for political dissidents.

The reason for this galloping authoritarianism is of course panic by the
political class that they have lost popular consent, particularly for
Zionism in view of the appalling genocide in plain view by the terrorist
settler state.

*Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was
British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and
rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is
entirely dependent on reader support. **Subscriptions to keep this blog
going are **gratefully received*
<https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/support-this-website/>*.*

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk <https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/>.

*The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not
reflect those of **Consortium News.*

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