British Police Arrest Hamas Supporters

So I turned myself in

The BBC reports:

A woman who was arrested on suspicion of supporting Hamas after a protest in Brighton has been charged. Hanin Barghouti, 22, of Eaton Grove, Hove, has been charged with supporting a proscribed organisation contrary to Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government. Sussex Police said the charge followed a speech made on 8 October after the attacks by Hamas against Israel. Ms Barghouti has been released on bail to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 17 November, the force said.

Since I have not been shy about supporting Hamas myself, notably in an article headlined “Why I Support Hamas, and You Should Too,” I thought it might be a good idea to check in with the British bobbies to see what they have in store for me next time I visit the UK. So I went to the UK Metropolitan Police’s “Report Possible Terrorist Activity” website.

The Metropolitan Police insist that you tell them about your case, even if you’re not sure about it or it seems trivial. So even though I’m not sure that posting a much-read article about the reasons I support Hamas is a serious offense in the UK, I figured I’d better turn myself in, just to be on the safe side.

I found it difficult to be specific about the time and place when I first realized that I supported Palestinian military resistance to Zionist genocide. As best I can recall, it was in early 1978, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

On the next webpage, the Metropolitan Police asked me to explain why my suspicions about myself had been raised. What had I seen or heard that made me think that I supported Hamas? Well, that’s an easy one. I know that I have supported the Palestinian resistance ever since I looked into the issue. So even though I’m not 100% sure of the exact date, I can easily summarize how and why I have come to strongly—very strongly—suspect myself to be a Hamas supporter.

I have visited the UK on numerous occasions since the late 1970s, when I first announced myself, by way of letters to editors and articles published in alternative newspapers, to be a supporter of the Palestinian resistance. Around 2009 or thereabouts I was invited to London to give a talk on 9/11. During that visit I was interviewed by various journalists and appeared on a couple of major TV networks. I was certainly not skulking around hiding from the Metropolitan Police!

Oddly, I was never arrested for being a supporter of Hamas, though I have never made any secret of my support for them and for other resistance groups. So I am wondering whether things have changed in the wake of Al-Aqsa Storm, the most successful military raid of this century. Is arresting people for saying that they support Hamas the new policy? Or did Hanin Barghouti, the only one arrested so far out of the millions of Hamas supporters in the UK, just get extremely unlucky?

The Metropolitan Police promised to get back to me “if necessary.” Well, I think it’s necessary! I need to know whether I’ll get locked in the Tower of London next time I touch down at Heathrow.

The good news is that they did get back to me. It was only minutes before I got an email from no-reply@service.police.uk.

The bad news is that all the email said was: “Thank you for completing the form, your reference is: ATH-6042-23-0100-000.”

That is quite a reference number. Three letters and thirteen digits! They must get a lot of people turning themselves in for supporting Hamas.