Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.
After reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday, Middle East Eye is now able to report for the first time that the court will seek to add a “terrorism connection” to their charges at sentencing - a fact that was kept secret from the jury.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Prior to the initial trial, the judge had ruled to remove the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage, which meant the activists could not argue that the damage they caused was legally justified to prevent greater crimes being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza.
So many people can’t even change their shopping habits to make more ethical choices. There’s no way a sizeable population is going to forego passing on their DNA just to send a message.
As a teen, I figured I’d adopt kids when I got older. The amount of people who were dead-set on “b-b-but my genetic lineage!” was startling. As I’ve aged through my 20s and now my 30s, I’ve seen them stick true to their word and have their own babies, even with the world circling down the drain. The biological call to reproduce seems to override a lot of other matters.
Now consider how hard it is to get people to quit something without a biological imperative, like shopping on Amazon…
Anyway, I admire your initiative. I just can’t imagine people participating en masse in a protest that involves forfeiting something so dear and intimate to them as their choice to reproduce.