Is it illegal to call Hamas terrorists?

Is it now a crime to call Hamas a terrorist group? It may be a statement of fact to describe the Islamists responsible for 7 October – the deadliest day for Jewry since the Holocaust – as a terrorist outfit. It may also be the view of the UK government – Hamas is officially a proscribed terrorist organisation. And yet, incredibly, London’s Metropolitan Police have started cracking down on those who dare to apply the T-word to Hamas. On Saturday, officers wrestled a man to the ground, arrested him and seized the banner he was waving. On it were three words in large type: ‘Hamas is terrorist.’

Niyak Ghorbani, an exiled Iranian dissident, was in central London to counter-protest one of the now weekly ‘pro-Palestine’ marches. As anyone who has been paying attention will surely now know, for all that most marchers claim to be moved by humanitarian concern for civilians in Gaza, there is a significant pro-Hamas element on these demos. Indeed, many of the organisers have links to Hamas, have met with Hamas officials or have publicly praised Hamas’s terrorist atrocities. One group, the Muslim Association of Britain, was co-founded by Muhammad Kathem Sawalha, a former Hamas chief who now lives in London.

If there were any doubt as to whether these ‘peace’ marches were stuffed with Hamas fanboys, then the response to Ghorbani’s counter-protest has surely dispelled it. Videos show him holding his sign aloft and quickly being rounded on by protesters who object to his anti-Hamas message. The police then rush in to stop the disorder. But instead of coming to his defence, instead of holding back the baying mob, police decide to arrest him, remove him from the scene and take away his sign.

Read here