Why is the insistence that no one should confess support for Palestine Action a matter of such urgency for the British government? The arrests of protestors, let alone this interference in the publishing of an author’s unrelated work, can only bring British law and government into disrepute. The proper purpose of law is to ensure justice in the relations between people and to regulate behaviour to ensure public safety. Law must also, if it has a moral foundation, take into account not only what it considers to be the public good but also the natural rights of the individual which must include freedom of opinion and expression of opinion. Whether it was right to ‘proscribe’ membership of Palestine Action some of whose members did carry out acts of violence, that is a very different thing to persecuting people for expressing support for that organisation. It is clear at this time much of the supposed support for Palestine Action has become support for the Palestinian people and for the principle of freedom of expression.

I would be interested in knowing who in government or politics advocates the arrest of people for expressing opinion and what is their moral justification for their position.

---

It increasingly looks like some entity is conducting a campaign of legal terror against opponents of the Israeli regime and its genocide of the Palestian people.