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British Legal System Vindicates Pro-Palestine Shia activist

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Pro Palestinian campaigners in Britain have won a major victory after the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to drop the proposed prosecution of a human rights activist by hard-line Zionists. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) had launched a private prosecution against Nazim Ali, a participant in the 2017 Al-Quds Day demonstration in London, alleging that comments he made during the protest last June had caused alarm or distress to Zionists who were taking part in a counter-demonstration.After the CPS twice dismissed complaints by the CAA, the organisation then embarked on a private prosecution. The CAA claimed that Mr Ali insulted Zionists, Zionist rabbis and those associated with the Jewish Board of deputies who felt alarmed by his anti-Zionist comments at an anti-Zionist rally.

Viewing the prosecution as an abuse of judicial process and an attempt to silence those who oppose Zionism, Nazim Ali petitioned the Crown Prosecution Service to take over the case and drop the prosecution. The Islamic Human Rights Commission, one of the organizers of the annual Al Quds Day in London, said they were “pleased at the outcome which now means that barring a successful judicial review of the decision, Mr Ali will be safe from a malicious prosecution by an organisation whose campaigns and activities seek to undermine Palestinian rights activists.”

The Campaign Against Antisemitism was formed in August 2014 during a major Israeli offensive against Gaza. Its purpose is to paint Palestine solidarity campaigning and opposition to Zionism, Israel’s state ideology, as anti-Semitic. The conflation of anti-Zionism, which is opposition to a political ideology, with anti-Semitism, which is defined as opposition to Jews as a race, is an oft-employed weapon designed to scare opponents of Zionism and Israel from voicing their criticism.

In recent years the Israeli lobby has upped the ante against all critics of the disputed State of Israel, and its human rights abuse against Palestinians, including politicians like Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and even the Leader of the Labour Party – Jeremy Corbyn, Their modus operandi seems to have been to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.  Activists say “Zionism, as with any political ideology, is not above criticism and for the Zionists to equate it with Jewishness is a quite ridiculous and outrageous attempt in terminology-hijack. This is the kind of cultural psyops that is now being conjured up by the likes of MOSSAD to suppress the voices speaking out against Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Fear and demoralization are the objectives of such strategies but the world is not blind to the manifest injustice against Palestinians who now occupy less than ten percent of their original territories with Zionist settlers gazumping more and more land daily with the encouragement and support of the Israeli government and its military apparatus.”

With most British based Muslim organizations too scared or too apathetic to stand up for the civil and religious rights of their community members it is left to the handful of human rights groups like IHRC to take on the Zionist lobbies who are now increasingly being supported by the British government and its Stasi State-style counter terrorism policies which have  manufactured terms like extremism which have no legal definition and are open to such a loose interpretation of extremism that they can virtually apprehend any Muslim they like and accuse them of hate-crimes. In this case anti-semitism has been used to bring Mr Nazim Ali to an unnecessary legal proceeding costing the British taxpayers valuable revenue that would be better spent on catching real criminals.  .     

IHRC chair Massoud Shadjareh said: “We are relieved and pleased that the CPS has seen the CAA’s prosecution attempt for what it is. This was a witch-hunt against Mr. Ali that demonstrated all the typical characteristics of the pro-Israel lobby’s tactics to undermine people’s right to defend the oppressed Palestinian people. We will stand by any pro-Palestinian activist who is maliciously prosecuted by CAA or its allies. This victory shows us that the pro-Israel lobby cannot use the British legal system to bully their critics into silence. Justice will prevail for the Palestinian cause.”

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