Analysis, Commentary, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, War Crimes

Medhurst Case: Test of a Turning Tide on Gaza

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British police have given the Crown Prosecution Service the file on journalist Richard Medhurst in a test of how far Western governments will go to continue defending Israel’s monstrous atrocities in Gaza, writes Joe Lauria.

Richard Medhurst on his X feed. (Twitter/X)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

British journalist Richard Medhurst, who was arrested last year and questioned under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act, is facing a possible “terrorism” prosecution for journalism that is highly critical of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

The move comes amid indications that cracks are appearing in the wall of steadfast Western establishment backing for Israel no matter what outrages the Jewish state commits.

Whether Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service actually recommends a prosecution of Medhurst will be a test as to how far Western leaders are willing to go to violate their own so-called democratic principles to uphold a clearly corrupt relationship with Tel Aviv. 

The Financial Times, former European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Tory MP Mark Pritchard, various United Nations bodies, major human rights organizations and growing protests in Israel itself have all begun to openly call what Israel is doing in Gaza a massive crime against humanity, if not genocide. 

It always seemed there was a line across which even Western politicians dependent on Israel Lobby support would not cross if Israeli impunity went too far in murdering innocent Palestinians standing in the way of the Greater Israel project.

After all, it is the very humanity of these political figures that is being called into question by sections of their population who still retain theirs — mainstream media mostly excepted. 

Oct. 7 Foretold

And then came the full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza begun in October 2023, part of the final solution to Israel’s Palestinian “problem” begun in earnest in 1948.  It was clear from the start that the so-called “war against Hamas” was nothing but the frenzied fulfilment of Zionist plans long ago drawn up as a response to the warning that Moshe Dayan, an Israeli “founding father,” gave in 1956: 

“What reason do we have to complain about their terrible hatred for us? For eight years now, they have been living in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn to our national capital and the villages where they and their ancestors lived. … We are a generation of settlers, and without a helmet and a gun, we will not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who have been living around us and are waiting for the time when their hands will be able to reach our blood.”

The time came on Oct. 7, 2023 and it was the opportunity the extremists in the Netanyahu administration were waiting for:  Plan Dalet on steroids. 

The evidence of genocide and assorted Israeli depravity is now so overwhelming that weaselly Western leaders are worming out of the woodwork to salvage what little is left of their decency.

Borrell is accusing Israel of “carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since the end of the second world war in order to create a splendid holiday destination once all the millions of tonnes of rubble have been cleared from Gaza and the Palestinians have died or gone away.” 

The former Spanish foreign minister last Friday told an audience including the Spanish king:

“We all know what’s going on there, and we’ve all heard the objectives stated by Netanyau’s ministers?, which are clear declarations of genocidal intent. Seldom have I heard the leader of a state so clearly outline a plan that fits the legal definition of genocide.”

In a column also last Friday, Friedman narrowly focused his ire on Benjamin Netanyahu but saw enough of the big picture to use his space in the country’s most influential newspaper to declare:

“Netanyahu is preparing to re-invade Gaza with a plan to herd the Palestinian population there into a tiny corner, with the Mediterranean Sea one side and the Egyptian border on the other — while also advancing de facto annexation at ever greater speed and breadth in the West Bank. In doing so it will be courting more war crimes charges against Israel.”

In the House of Commons, Tory MP Pritchard said last Thursday: 

“I’ve been in this House 20 years. I have supported Israel pretty much at all costs quite frankly. But today I want to say that I got it wrong and I condemn Israel for what it is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza and indeed in the West Bank. And I’d like to withdraw my support right now for the actions of Israel.”

The Financial Times wrote last Wednesday in an editorial, “The West’s Shameful Silence on Gaza,” that Israel’s latest plan “would drive Gazans into ever-narrowing pockets of the shattered strip” with “more intensive bombing and Israeli forces clearing and holding territory, while destroying what few structures remain in Gaza.” 

The newspaper said what many independent media including this one has been saying since the start, that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land.”

The FT said that despite forced starvation and the deliberate destruction of hospitals, “The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.” 

The floodgates may be opening: similar editorials then appeared in The Independent, The Economist and The Guardian, which asked ““What is this, if not genocidal?”

Meanwhile, protests against the massacres are growing inside Israel itself. 

The Killing Is Not Enough

As if leaders like Joe Biden, Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Ursula von den Leyen and Friedrich Merz actively collaborating in the genocide with money and guns was not enough — with spare parts for Israel’s killing machine coming from as far away as Australia — Western governments, especially in the U.S., Germany and Britain, also insist on defiling their vaunted democracies by silencing critics of Israel’s madness. 

For the vast majority of people in democracies who are politically powerless, a full-throated condemnation of the butchers of Tel Aviv and their enablers in Western capitals is all they have to preserve their humanity and sanity. But these depraved leaders want that stopped too. 

In the U.S., the Biden administration supported the police crackdown on the freedom of university students to express their decency and courage in speaking out against the mass atrocities. Trump has outdone Biden, siccing immigration police on legal residents who’ve criticized Israel in protests or newspapers. 

In Germany, police have not only broken up anti-genocide student protests but also raided political meetings and barred speakers from entering the country to participate, including former Greek Finance Minister  Yanis Varoufakis. 

And in Britain politicians and police have unleashed an utterly authoritarian act perversely masquerading as a law to protect the population from terrorism but in reality to protect them from the truth about Israel. 

Among those stopped entering Britain to be questioned about their journalism were Asa Winstanley, an editor at Electronic Intifada, Craig Murray, a writer and former British diplomat, and Medhurst.

Medhurst is being made the greatest example of. The law criminalizes support for a “proscribed” organization. Hamas is a proscribed organization in the U.K.  Israel opposes Hamas. Therefore anyone who opposes Israel supports Hamas. It is amazing how this sophistry is gotten away with. Does this mean Borrell and the editors of the Financial Times are now also in breach of the Terrorism Act?

These are the absurd provisions in the Act that is being imposed on Medhurst:

Section 12 of the British Terrorism Act criminalizes holding certain opinions or beliefs. It reads: 

“12 Support.

(1) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he invites support for a proscribed organisation, and

(b) the support is not, or is not restricted to, the provision of money or other property (within the meaning of section 15).

[F1(1A) A person commits an offence if the person—

(a) expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and

(b ) in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.]”.

He was held for nearly 24 hours at Heathrow Airport for questioning on Aug. 15, 2024. In February he was detained by Austrian police and intelligence agents in Vienna and accused of encouraging terrorism, disseminating propaganda and being involved in organized crime — all for his reporting on Israel.

“I categorically deny all of these accusations by the Austrian and British governments, I’m a journalist, not a terrorist, and they bloody-well know it,” Medhurst said in a video at the time.  “This is insanity. This is an attack on the entire profession, on freedom of speech, on democracy itself.”

If the CPS decides to prosecute, Medhurst said he could face up to 14 years of prison in Britain, plus 2-5 years if he doesn’t give them the passwords to his devices.  On May 3, Medhurst said in the above video that “emails expose Israeli foreign influence in the U.K. legal system,” specifically in his case. He shows contact between the Israeli embassy in London and British law enforcement around the time of his arrest. 

If Britain and Israel want to make an example of him, then Medhurst must be made a symbol of the last stand to preserve the strands of free speech remaining, and the conscience to loudly oppose the atrocities of a criminal state protected by craven Western leaders and their authoritarian laws. 

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on X @unjoe.

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