[Editor’s Note: See the second article below that most likely led to the raid on journalist Asa Winstanley. The empire can’t withstand the truth of their murderous deceit. — M. Taylor]

By Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada (10/17/24)

British counterterrorism police on Thursday raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley.

Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.

A letter addressed to Winstanley from the “Counter Terrorism Command” of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are “aware of your profession” as a journalist but that “notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses” under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of “encouragement of terrorism.”

An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.

Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.

Winstanley is active on several social media platforms, and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter/X, where he frequently shares articles, other peoples’ opinions and his own comments on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, British government support for these crimes, and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.

Draconian legislation

The draconian legislation “curtails a range of freedoms,” according to University of Edinburgh law professor Andrew Cornford, including “the freedoms to discuss controversial topics openly, and to share moral, political and religious opinions.”

Orwell was way wrong. His 1984 attacked the Soviet Union, but the real enemy was always at home, wrapped in the best propaganda history has ever seen. And mountains of hypocrisy. 

Human Rights Watch has called on the British government to repeal the repressive provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006), noting that “the definition of the encouragement of terrorism offense is overly broad, raising serious concerns about undue infringement on free speech.”

In August, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service issued a warning to the British public to “think before you post” and threatening that it would prosecute anyone it deemed guilty of what it calls “online violence.”

“Journalism is not a crime”

In December, Winstanley reported for The Electronic Intifada on how British counterrorism police arrested Mick Napier and Tony Greenstein, two prominent activists, for saying they support the Palestinian right to resist Israel – a rightenshrined in international law.

As part of his bail conditions, Greenstein, an author and contributor to The Electronic Intifada, was ordered “not to post on X (formerly Twitter) in regards to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.”

In mid-August, British journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested on arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport, detained under the Terrorism Act (2000), and had his phone and recording devices that he used for his journalism seized.

“Richard Medhurst’s arrest and detention for almost 24 hours using terrorism legislation is deeply concerning and will likely have a chilling effect on journalists in the UK and worldwide, in fear of arrest by UK authorities simply for carrying out their work,” Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the UK’s National Union of Journalists and Anthony Bellanger, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, said at the time in a joint statement.

“Both the NUJ and IFJ are shocked at the increased use of terrorism legislation by the British police in this manner,” Stanistreet and Bellanger added. “Journalism is not a crime. Powers contained in anti-terror legislation must be deployed proportionately – not wielded against journalists in ways that inevitably stifle press freedom.”

Nonetheless, later in August, British counterrorism police raided the home of Sarah Wilkinson, a Palestine solidarity activist with a large following, also reportedly in relation to content she posted online.

‘Operation Incessantness’

Winstanley’s most recent investigative article, “How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October,” brings together a year of The Electronic Intifada’s reporting, along with new information, detailing Israel’s use of the Hannibal Directive – a secret order that allows Israeli forces to kill their own citizens rather than allowing them to be taken captive.

Winstanley is the author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn, a book culminating from his years of reporting on Britain’s Labour Party while it was in opposition.

Asa with his outspoken book. Saying what needs to be said.

Since 2019, the Labour Party launched an investigation and has made legalthreats in apparent retaliation for Winstanley’s journalism.

Now that Labour is the UK’s ruling party, it has the potential to use the apparatus of the state against those it views as its own – or Israel’s – political enemies.

The raid on Winstanley’s home is clearly intended to intimidate and silence him, as well as other journalists and activists. …

Link to story

MORE DETAILS: How Israel Intentionally Slaughtered Hundreds Of Its Own People On October 7th

Although exchanging prisoners is a common element of conflict, Israeli leaders felt weakened and embarrassed by what they saw as compromises. So they secretly modified their policies, preparing to strike with lethal force against their own people in the event of future captures. …multiple Israeli press reports have now confirmed that Hannibal was not only reactivated on 7 October – if it ever truly went away – but was actually extended to captured Israeli civilians on their way to Gaza.

By Asa Winstanley
The Electronic Intifada (10/7/24)

One year ago today Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an unprecedented military offensive out of the Gaza Strip.

The immediate goal was to inflict a shattering blow against Israel’s army bases and militarized settlements which have besieged Gaza’s inhabitants for decades – all of which are built on land that Palestinian families were expelled from in 1948.

The bigger goal was to shatter a status quo in which Israel, the United States and their accomplices believed they had effectively sidelined the Palestinian cause, and to bring that struggle for liberation back to the forefront of world attention.

“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas called it, was, by any objective military measure, a stunning success.

It was said at Israel’s military headquarters that day that “the Gaza Division was overpowered,” a high-level source present later recalled to Israeli journalists. “These words still give me the chills.”

Covered from the air by armed drones and a barrage of rockets – which opened the offensive at 6:26 am exactly – Palestinian fighters launched a lightning raid over the Gaza boundary line.

The army bases were conquered for hours. Some of the settlements still had an armed Palestinian presence two days later.

The military communications infrastructure was instantly smashed. Simultaneous attacks took place by land, air and sea.

Palestinian drones took out tanks, guard posts and watchtowers.

Caught completely unprepared, most of the soldiers manning the bases were either killed or captured and taken back to Gaza as prisoners of war.

A reported 255 Israelis were captured, including soldiers and civilians. Since then, 154 of them have been released, mostly by Hamas in November’s prisoner exchange.

However, the figure of those released also includes some bodies of dead captives, mostly killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza. Of the remaining 101 prisoners, 35 have been officially declared dead by Israel. The real number is likely much higher.

Many have been killed by Israeli carpet bombing, and three escaped prisoners were shot dead by Israeli ground troops in Gaza City in December.

Undisguised genocide

Israel’s response was also unprecedented, if not in its nature then undoubtedly in its scale – an undisguised genocide against the population of Gaza.

One “conservative” estimate published by the British medical journalThe Lancet in July stated that as many as 186,000 Palestinians are likely to have been killed by Israel so far – almost 10 percent of Gaza’s population.

The UN says that 90 percent of people in Gaza have been driven out of their homes by Israel and that about a quarter of all structures in the strip have been destroyed.

The Western press took its lead from official Israeli disinformation. It was soon awash with lurid atrocity propaganda.

These lies about rape and beheaded babies were swiftly debunked by The Electronic Intifada and a small group of other independent media – often at the cost of being smeared by mainstream media and banned or censored by social media giants like YouTube.

Trying to paper over the cracks of its military and intelligence defeat, Israel has also been desperate to cover up another major scandal.

That Israel killed hundreds of its own people between 7 and 9 October 2023.

The regime ideologically justified this within Israeli society using a well-established national murder-suicide pact known in Israel as the “Hannibal Directive.”

The Electronic Intifada today presents a full overview of how Israel killed so many of its own people during the Palestinian offensive.

This article is based on a year’s worth of The Electronic Intifada’s investigative reporting, extensive monitoring and translation of the Hebrew-language Israeli media, independent examination of hundreds of videos, a recent pro-Israel film broadcast by the BBC and Paramount+ about the Supernova rave, official Israeli figures of the dead and a little-read UN Human Rights Council report.

We can conclude that during the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive:

• Israel expanded the use of its murderous “Hannibal Directive” – designed to prevent soldiers from being taken alive as prisoners of war – by killing many of its own civilians.

• The use of such “Hannibal” strikes are confirmed in a UN report published in June.

• Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately undertaken in order to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who could be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

• At the initiative of the local Gaza Division, “Hannibal” was carried out right away: less than an hour after the Palestinian offensive began.

• “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza,” the division was ordered at 11:22 am.

• By midday, an unambiguous order was given from the high command of the Israeli military (the so-called “Pit” headquarters, deep under Israel’s Hakirya building in downtown Tel Aviv) to invoke the Hannibal Directive throughout the entire region, “even if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves.”

• This bombing of Israeli captives by Israel continues in Gaza even today.

• Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a December meeting with released captives and families of captives that they had been “under our bombardments” in Gaza.

• Hundreds of Israelis were likely killed by Israel itself in “Hannibal” targeting incidents as well as unintentional crossfire.

• Israel has been engaged in an aggressive cover-up of its crimes against its own people.

Killing their own people