Two Green Party candidates arrested under Public Order Act over ‘antisemitism’

The Metropolitan Police have arrested two Green Party candidates over deleted social media posts.

Green Party candidates arrested

On Thursday, April 30, the Met detained Saiqa Ali, who is standing in Streatham, in the borough of Lambeth, and Sabine Mairey, the candidate for Clapham Town, also in Lambeth.

 

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The Met arrested both on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred for allegedly posting antisemitic comments online.

As LBC reported, the posts by Mairey include a:

picture of a man holding a placard that reads “ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism, it’s revenge” above a picture of two children that the post claims were “murdered by Israel”.

She also claimed 9/11 was an Israeli “false-flag attack”.

We, of course, do not condone her antisemitic comments.

However, some of her other points have merit behind them.

She claimed the government is over-represented with “Zionist Jews”.

It is, of course, important to state that not all Jewish people are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jewish people. However, around 180 British MPs have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals during their careers. This includes around 130 Conservative MPs and 41 Labour MPs. Why are foreign agents funding our government?

Some of Mairey’s other posts include mentioning that Nazi Germany had to “hide what they were doing”, and stating that Israel has not.

We cannot argue with that latter point.

The whole world has watched Israel livestream a genocide, blowing babies up and double-tapping health workers and journalists.

She also claimed that Israel uses the Holocaust to justify genocide in Gaza. Again, she has a point. It is well recorded among genocide scholars that Israelis use the Holocaust to justify mass violence against Palestinians.

Once again, we do not condone her antisemitic comments, but she has a fucking point.

As reported in the Telegraph, one of the social media posts by Ali depicts an image of an armed man in a Hamas headband. On the image, is the slogan “resistance is freedom”.

Ali has previously apologised for her social media comments.

Armed resistance

Of course, the UK government has proscribed Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

However, armed resistance is not illegal under international law.

Hamas was founded in Gaza in 1987, shortly after the start of the first Intifada, an uprising against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Hamas’s goal is to:

liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.

The group holds armed resistance to occupation as one of its founding principles, with its 2017 Document stating:

Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws.

And Hamas is correct in its interpretation of international law.

Armed resistance is not illegal under international law. A United Nations General Assembly resolution states:

The General Assembly,

Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;

Israel and the West have labelled Hamas as a ‘terrorist group’ and called for their disarmament, when they’re only defending the land they are native to.

Now, Westerners, like these Green Party candidates, are being labelled as antisemitic – purely for upholding the same standards as international law.

Permanent annexation of a territory, as Israel has done to Gaza, is illegal under international law. But armed resistance is not.

Antizionism ≠ antisemitism

Additionally, anti-Zionism – that is, opposing the Jewish ethnostate of Israel- is not the same as antisemitism, which is dangerous and totally incompatible with any movement for collective liberation.

Zionism is the equivalent of white supremacy. It has resulted in the expulsion of 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their land and homes. Being anti-Zionist means standing against a system of apartheid, in which one group of people have exclusive rights above another.

It is more important than ever that we stamp out actual antisemitism, while also remembering that Zionism is the equivalent of white supremacy and has no place in society.

But we can already see it playing out – Jeremy Corbyn 2.0.

As we head into local elections, where the Green Party could gain as many as 555 seats, of course, the media are mixing real antisemitic comments with anti-Zionist ones. They are muddying the waters on purpose, and it’s important that the Green Party and Zack Polanski stand firm. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing.

Feature image via Barold/The Canary