Today the British judicial system clawed back a little bit of its legitimacy. Was it enough to reverse the UK’s democratic backsliding? Almost certainly not. But it offers clues regarding how, at this late hour, Britain might still come back from the abyss.
The case is one we’ve covered here before. In August 2024, six members of Palestine Action, a UK branch of the pro-Hamas activist industry, broke into an Israeli-owned defense-production factory and smashed up a million pounds’ worth of equipment. They also smashed—literally—the spine of a security officer; one of the activists hit her with a sledgehammer while her back was turned, breaking her spine and leaving her debilitated and facing a long recovery.
Since then, Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organization, but then a court overturned that designation, reasoning that not enough of the group’s activity constituted terrorism. (No one plausibly claims that the group conducts no terrorism at all.)
In February, the Palestine Action defendants’ trial concluded with a shock: Despite telling the court that they did, in fact, break in and destroy property and assault a security officer, the jury found them not guilty. The reason: a campaign by anti-Semitic activists to convince the public that juries could find someone not guilty if they agreed with the perpetrator’s motivating sentiment. In this case, that sentiment was hating Jews, and the jury decided that was a worthy cause. Not guilty.
The whole thing was a farce and a tragedy in one. It meant the British legal system was well into the process of disintegrating entirely. Jews would be the first on whom to experiment: What if democracies jettisoned the rule of law so mobs could harass hated minorities at will?
Officials were deeply embarrassed, though the atmosphere of anti-Zionism that portrays the Jews as especially evil is egged on by the political establishment right up to the prime minister himself. Keir Starmer could claim to be appalled all he wanted, but the jurors could easily come back with the line from the old anti-drugs commercial: “I learned it by watching you!”
On some charges, the jury was unable to reach a verdict. That meant prosecutors could still retry the defendants on those charges. And so they did.
And today, several of them were convicted of these lesser charges. Juror sympathy was still on display, of course: The sledgehammer assailant was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm but cleared of doing so with intent, which was a higher charge. The charges on which the other defendants were convicted were also lesser versions of those on which the first jury either acquitted them or failed to find a verdict.
So: are we feeling better about the future of Jewry in Britain? Don’t be naïve.
But if there’s any reason for hope, it lies in the possibility of the political establishment following the judge’s jury instructions. According to Sky News, the judge told the jurors “to put any views they may have about the Israel-Hamas war to one side” and, most important, that whether they “thought they had some moral justification is completely beside the point.”
Here we have the reasons for hope and despair in one sentence. On the one hand, apparently British society needs to be told that the rule of law applies even if you don’t like the victim of a crime. On the other, at least someone in the judicial system is willing to say as much.
The question, then, for politicians, the media, the police, the courts, and the rest is whether they can accept the equal standing of Jews before the law. As the judge said, can they set aside whether they personally like the targets of harassment, assault, and murder, or is that too much to ask? Thus far, the answer has been the latter.
Source:
www.commentary.org
