The Global Lawfare Campaign Against Pro-Palestine Reporters Continues.

Journalist Richard Medhurst Has Yet Again Faced Legal Consequences For Opposing The Genocide in Gaza.

The campaign to silence critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza through legal actions continues.

For those unfamiliar with this trend here is a brief recap.

The Recent History Of This Lawfare Campaign

In August of last year, British independent journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested and charged at London’s Heathrow Airport.

He was accused of violating section 12 of the UK’s terrorism act which makes it a criminal offense to say anything supportive of a “proscribed terrorist group”.

The UK authorities have been weaponizing this law to crack down on journalists opposed to the genocide in Gaza by claiming they are supporters of Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group that is officially labeled a “proscribed terrorist organization” in the UK.

Medhurst was the first of many victims in the UK of this lawfare campaign.

Richard Barnard an activist with the “Palestine Action” activist group was arrested for “expressing an opinion that is supportive of a proscribed organization contrary to section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000”.

Pro-Palestine journalist Sarah Wilkinson similarly had her house raided by UK authorities who “seized her phone, passport, and electronic equipment” for “content that she has posted online”.

UK “counterterrorism police” also raided the house of Asa Winstanley, a journalist who writes for the Electronic Intifada. The outlet reported the UK authorities “raided his home and seized several electronic devices”.

British “counterterrorism police” also launched an investigation into the Israeli-American pro-Palestine activist Miko Peled after he was accused of violating section 12 of the UK terrorism act by his Zionist opponents during an Oxford debate on Palestine he participated in.

Most recently Electronic Intifada’s founder Ali Abunimah was arrested over a weekend in the Swiss city of Zurich where he was denied entry after the city's rabidly Zionist Security Director, Mario Fehr labeled the secular reporter “an Islamist Jew-hater who called for violence in Switzerland” and ridiculously claimed he “endangers Switzerland's internal or external security.”

Austria Joins The Lawfare Campaign

In the most recent development in this lawfare campaign, Austria, the country of residence for British journalist Richard Medhurst has joined in on the lawfare campaign against him.

In a video he posted to social media he revealed that Austrian authorities on Monday of this week came to his house and “detained” him and “raided” his “home and studio”.

Austrian authorities also threatened to “revoke his residency” because of his “reporting on Palestine and Lebanon”.

Medhurst revealed that the “Austrian equivalent of the FBI or MI5” “detained” him and “took all” of his devices.

Their justification for this is perhaps the most absurd yet, as they justified this raid of Medhurst on the claim that he -a Christian British journalist- is a “member” of Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian resistance militia.

Based on this ludicrous allegation, Austrian authorities took all of Medhurst’s journalistic devices including his “phone” and devices at his home as well as all devices at his studio including “five or six different laptops, computers, Phones, USB sticks, hard drives and DVDs”.

They also took pictures of his home and studio, took “books, papers, and documents,” and even took a “book on cyber security” that Medhurst had been working on.

After this raid, Medhurst was taken to an interrogation center, and took his “fingerprints, palm prints, mugshots, and DNA” and finally allowed him to leave after “six or seven hours of this”.

This intimidation of Medhurst from Austrian authorities is clearly connected to the former case brought against him by Britain.

Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi reported in January of this year that British authorities were unable to crack Medhurst's devices due to the “particularly secure Graphene operating system” they had. As she wrote:

Richard Medhurst was carrying an iPhone and a Google Pixel with a Graphene operating system, which is privacy-focused and considered particularly secure. He refuses to hand over passwords because, like all reporters’ phones, they contain information that could identify his sources.

This points to the fact that British authorities directed the Austrian authorities to conduct this raid against Medhurst in order to seize all of his devices in Austria in hopes that they could be cracked.

Medhurst is now under investigation in the UK for “terrorism” which could land him 14 years in prison and could now be sentenced to “10 years of prison in Austria” or have his “residency revoked”.

A Fascist Intimidation Campaign

This campaign against Medhurst, as well as all the other instances listed in this article, is clearly an intimidation campaign to silence reporters from speaking out about Israel’s genocide in Gaza and refuting the propaganda campaign used to justify it.

Medhurst and all the other reporters who have faced this intimidation are not “terrorists” nor do they have any connection to Hamas.

What they have exposed is the fact that Israel has conducted a mass murder campaign in Gaza, which Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called a genocide.

They have exposed the fact that Israel’s mass murder campaign dispositionally has targeted civilians, as the Geneva-based human rights group Euro-Med Monitor found 9 out of every 10 people killed by Israel in Gaza was a civilian and as the UN found, “70% of verified victims” of Israel mass murder campaign “were women and children.”

They have exposed the fact that Israel’s mass murder campaign against civilians in Gaza was not actually done to “fight Hamas” but to ethnically cleanse and take over Gaza, as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are now openly calling for.

Finally, they have debunked the propaganda used to justify this genocidal campaign such as exposing the fact that Israel killed many of their own people on October 7th to prevent them from becoming hostages or the fact that claims of Hamas committing “mass rape” on October 7th were fabricated.

Because the establishments in the UK, Switzerland, and Austria do not want to acknowledge these inconvenient facts, they have instead conducted a lawfare campaign to silence reporters who report on them accurately.

The campaign is designed not just to silence the targeted reporters but to intimidate other reporters from speaking out in fear that the same thing will happen to them.

I do not like to use the word “fascist” lightly but when governments are labeling journalists as “terrorists” for accurately reporting on a genocidal Holocaust that they are backing, it seems to be the only accurate word to describe it.