In The West, Anti-Genocide Activists Are Called Terrorists While Al-Qaeda Is Celebrated.

In the U.S. and U.K. Human Rights Advocates Are Labeled Terrorists While Sectarian Jihadist Groups Are Labeled Freedom Fighters.

Labeling Anti-Genocide Activists As Terrorists

The United States and the United Kingdom have completely lost their minds recently and have been labeling human rights defenders as terrorists in order to protect the genocidal government in Israel and its endless barrage of Western-backed war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.

Starting with the UK, since early on in the genocide, it has weaponized section 12 of the UK terrorism act, which makes it illegal to “express an opinion that is supportive of a proscribed (terrorist) organisation”.

The UK officially proscribes any resistance group against Israel, such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Hezbollah, as a terrorist organization.

Because of this, the UK has been able to weaponize this law to arrest anyone saying that Palestinians have a right to resist a genocide committed against them, and label them as terrorists.

The UK has conducted raids and arrests against a long list of people by weaponizing this law, including:

• The independent reporter Richard Medhurst, who was arrested and charged in August of 2024 in London with violating section 12 of the UK terrorism act due to his reporting and commentary critical of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon. Medhurst later had his home raided and all of his journalistic devices seized in Austria by police, seemingly in coordination with the UK government.

• The pro-Palestine journalist Sarah Wilkinson soon after had her house raided by UK “counter terrorism” police due to “content that she has posted online”. As part of the riad, “An urn in her attic was upturned, scattering her mother’s ashes”.

• Richard Barnard, the founder of the activist group Palestine Action, was also charged with “expressing an opinion that is supportive of a proscribed organisation contrary to section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000”.

• Investigative journalist Asa Winstanley had his home raided and devices seized by UK counterterrorism police due to “social media posts”. A UK court has since ruled that “the search warrant used by London’s Metropolitan Police to seize seven items from Winstanley’s home was unlawfully issued”.

• The Jewish anti-zionist activist Haim Bresheeth was arrested for saying that Israel “cannot win against Hamas” during a speech at a pro-Palestine event. At the event “a police officer informed him that he was being arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 for ‘making a hate speech’”.

• The activist Natalie Strecker was also arrested by British police for “inviting support of a proscribed organisation” after giving a speech at a pro-Palestine event.

• The anti Zionist activist Tony Greenstein was also charged under the UK terrorism act for giving a speech at a pro-Palestine event.

• The anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist academic David Miller was also detained at London’s Heathrow airport under terrorism act powers. Recently, the Israel lobby group “Campaign Against Antisemitism” took Miller to court in a private prosecution for “menacing” tweets, which it claimed were in violation of “the Communications Act 2003”.

The UK government has recently ramped up this campaign by proscribing the activist group Palestine Action as a “terrorist organization” and announcing that this “makes it a criminal offence to invite or express support for” Palestine Action “through chanting, wearing clothing or displaying articles such as flags, signs or logos”.

This came after a series of break ins Palestine Action activists did at the UK based facilities of the Isrseli arms manufacturing company Elbit Systems which the UN’s Francesca Albanese found “has cooperated closely on Israeli military operations, embedding key staff in the Ministry of Defense, and was awarded the 2024 Israeli Defense Prize”.

She also found that “Elbit Systems provides a critical domestic supply of weaponry, and reinforces Israeli military alliances through arms exports and joint development of military technology”.

She noted in her report that Elbit Systems has profited off of Israel's mass murder campaign in Gaza, writing, “For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 percent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide – generated a sharp surge in their annual profits.”

Palestine Action also spray-painted two planes at Britain’s RAF Brize Norton military base, which Britain used to allow Israeli planes to land after bombing civilians in Gaza.

During an appeal on the proscription, the UK government representative Ben Watson said, “We accept, of course, that it is Draconian, and deliberately so,” referring to the proscription of Palestine Action.

Since the passing of this self-described “draconian” law, over 70 activists have been arrested under terrorism laws in the UK simply for holding signs saying “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”.

Among those arrested have been “a priest, an Emeritus Professor and a number of health professionals”.

The UK group “Defend Our Juries” reported that some of the high-profile people arrested under terrorism charges include “four vicars, a lawyer, a civil servant, a social worker, a mechanical engineer, the daughter of a Polish resistance fighter, and veterans of the 1960s civil rights movement including Eamon McCann, political activist, former politician and journalist, and Kate Nash, whose brother was killed on Bloody Sunday”.

Another arrest was made against “Graham Bash, a Jewish anti-Zionist and former Labour activist with Jewish Voice for Labour.”

Police also raided a protester’s house because she held a sign that said “I oppose Genocide, I support Palestine Action” outside of the BBC’s headquarters.

Pictured Above: Pro Palestine Action protestors in the UK, labeled as “terrorists” by UK authorities.

Meanwhile, the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has placed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967.

One of the official excuses, given by Rubio, is that Albanese has “expressed support for terrorism”.

In reality, Albanese, an international law expert, has issued several detailed reports that expose Israeli war crimes and genocide in Gaza which have angered the Zionist lobby.

Her most recent report was one of her most impactful. Titled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”, the report proved that many American corporate giants, including Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar Inc., BlackRock, Vanguard, Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com, and Palantir, had profited directly from war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.

Because her report showed that America’s corporate giants were making money from the mass murder of civilians and were directly implicated in war crimes, the United States decided to label her a terrorism supporter and impose sanctions on her.

Rubio’s announcement of the sanctions stated “She has recently escalated this effort by writing threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations and recommending the ICC pursue investigations and prosecutions of these companies and their executives” to justify imposing the sanctions.

In reality, the report proved that the corporate entities listed were implicated in war crimes. For a few examples:

• The report showed that the Lockheed Martin-manufactured F-35 and F-16 fighter jets “have been integral to equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, much of it unguided, to kill and injure more than 179,411 Palestinians and obliterate Gaza”.

• The report showed that Caterpillar Inc. manufactured Caterpillar D9 bulldozers have been “used to carry out mass demolitions – including of homes, mosques, and life-sustaining infrastructure – raid hospitals and burying alive wounded Palestinians”.

• It also showed that Palantir, the Trump/Vance-connected tech firm is profiting off the genocide in Gaza, writing “In January 2024, Palantir announced a new strategic partnership with Israel and held a board meeting in Tel Aviv ‘in solidarity’; in April 2025, Palantir’s Chief Executive Officer responded to accusations that Palantir had killed Palestinians in Gaza by saying, ‘mostly terrorists, that’s true’ Both incidents are indicative of executive-level knowledge and purpose vis-à-vis the unlawful use of force by Israel, and failure to prevent such acts or withdraw involvement.”

Because she exposed these powerful corporate interests for committing war crimes, the U.S. labeled her a terrorist supporter and sanctioned her.

Praising Al-Qaeda

What makes the U.S. and UK labeling anti-genocide activists particularly ironic is that both states have been repeatedly praising the recently installed Al-Qaeda linked Israeli/UK/American puppet government in Syria.

Throughout the covert regime change war in Syria, the U.S., UK, and Israel supported and armed actual jihadist groups against the Syrian government.

In 2012, Jake Sullivan, who was serving as an advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrote an email stating, “Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria”.

The U.S. and the UK spent billions of dollars on weapons and training for the jihadist Syrian rebels.

The mainstream American think tank, Century Foundation, found that Western weapons sent to Syria “functioned as battlefield auxiliaries and weapons farms for larger Islamist and jihadist factions, including Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate”.

Now, because of this proxy war, Syria is ruled by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliate who previously went by Abu Mohammed al-Julani.

As the Financial Times reported in an in-depth report on Al Sharaa’s past in 2005, he went to Iraq “to join a Salafi jihadi organisation that eventually merged with al-Qaeda”.

After being imprisoned by America in Iraq, “Sharaa and six other al-Qaeda operatives stole across the border from Iraq to Syria” in 2011.

Once entering Syria, Al Sharaa worked with the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. As the Financial Times wrote:

Encouraged by the contacts he made while in detention, Sharaa had sent a letter to Baghdadi, pitching his more radical vision for Syria. Despite some in Baghdadi’s inner circle disapproving of Sharaa, he was one of few Syrians in the organisation at the time. Sharaa asked for 100 men and enough money to begin spreading the movement. Only six of them joined him, including two Syrians, he has claimed, with Baghdadi providing $50,000 to $60,000 a month for six or seven months.

Soon after, in 2012, Sharaa founded Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.

Later on, Al Sharaa rebranded his group to HTS (Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham).

In 2017, the U.S. envoy Brett McGurk said that Syria’s Idlib province- then controlled by Ahmed al-Sharaa- was “the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11 tied directly to Ayman Al Zawahiri” and “an Al Qaeda safe haven right on the border with Turkey.”

In 2017, the United States put a 10 million dollar bounty on Mohammed al-Julani (Ahmed al-Sharaa’s) head and said he “has carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians,” and the UK to this day stated on their official list of proscribed terrorist organizations says that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, “should be treated as an alternative name for the organisation which is already proscribed under the name Al Qa’ida.”

Since gaining power in Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa and the new Syrian regime have carried out sectarian massacres in Syria.

An investigation by Reuters found that “nearly 1,500 Syrian Alawites (minority sect in Syria) were killed and dozens were missing” earlier this year and that there was “a chain of command leading from the attackers directly to men who serve alongside Syria’s new leaders in Damascus”.

The outlet found that “At least a dozen factions now under the new government’s command, including foreigners, took part in the March killings”.

Journalist Charles Glass compared Sharaa supporting the genocidal massacre of Alawites to Israelis supporting the genocide in Gaza, writing:

The jihadis, not unlike Israeli soldiers in Gaza, posted videos of themselves proudly committing war crimes. One sang that he was engaging in “ethnic cleansing.” Shara, whose followers took part, promised an investigation—much as the Israeli prime minister said the IDF would investigate itself for alleged criminal behavior.

Three hundred miles south along the Mediterranean shore from Syria’s Alawi heartland, another, larger genocide is underway in Gaza. The perpetrators are allowed to judge themselves, while a quiescent world ignores its obligation under the 1951 Genocide Convention “to prevent and to punish” actions calculated to cause any people’s “physical destruction in whole or in part.”

While slaughtering minorities at home, however, Sharaa has given in to U.S.-Israeli demands abroad.

He has signaled support for joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing with Israel while they are committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, has said he has “common enemies” with Israel, and said “we can play a major role in regional security”, allowed Israel to use Syrian air space for it’s attacks on Iran and has changed the status of Palestinian refugees in Syria from “Syrian Palestinian” to “Palestinian resident” which could “affect how Palestinian refugees are treated under Syrian law and their broader status within the country.”

Because of this, the U.S. and the UK no longer see him as a terrorist leader.

The Trump administration has now officially lifted HTS and Al Nusra Front off the “foreign terrorist organization designation”.

Donald Trump has also praised Ahmed Al Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy,” saying about him, “Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter. He's a real leader. He led a charge, and he's pretty amazing.”

Moving to the UK, the Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently flew to Syria to meet with Ahmed al-Sharaa and pledged a “£94.5 million package in support of Syria’s new government.”

In a video in Syria, Lammy said, “There is renewed hope for the Syrian people. It is in our interests to support the new government to deliver their commitment to build a stable, more secure, and prosperous future for all Syrians.”

An official UK government announcement said, “The Foreign Secretary emphasised that the UK will support the Syrian Government to deliver its commitments to build a more secure and prosperous future for Syrians, increasing security in the wider region and the UK.”

How The Word “Terrorism” Is Weaponized.

This example goes to show how meaningless the word terrorism is in the West. The U.S. and the UK are labeling human rights activists as terrorists for opposing the genocide in Gaza, but are praising and backing a jihadist-led dictatorship in Syria, responsible for the massacre of civilians on a sectarian basis, because they are willing to go along with U.S./Israeli demands.

In reality, anyone who goes along with U.S./UK/Israeli demands will be labeled as a freedom fighter or pro-democracy, no matter how extreme they are, whereas when one goes against their imperial goals, they are labeled as a terrorist, even if they are peaceful protestors or UN officials.

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