Tony Greenstein has been cleared of inviting support for Hamas after the October 7 attacks, with the judge telling the court she had also considered a contempt of court charge against the veteran antizionist activist.
Greenstein, 72, of Brighton, was charged with one count of inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation relating to three posts he made on October 7, 2023.
Greenstein described Gaza as a “human prison” and told Kingston Crown Court that while he believed the attack was “justified”, he does not support Hamas.
He said: “When a colonial power holds another people down, they have the right to resist.”
On Friday afternoon, a jury of five women and seven men found Greenstein not guilty after two hours and 11 minutes of deliberation.
Greenstein grinned and looked visibly emotional as the verdict was read out, and supporters in the public gallery gasped excitedly.
Giving evidence to the court on Thursday, Greenstein said Palestinians had been “locked up” for 57 years and accused the judge of “turning a blind eye to genocide”.
“It was a cage in which people lived.
“Imagine you could not escape 25 miles north of here and five miles wide, and imagine having to live there and not being allowed out,” he said.
On multiple occasions during his evidence, Judge Sarah Plaschkes KC halted proceedings to ask Greenstein to stop talking about the history of Israel and Palestine.
Greenstein said to the judge: “That’s the problem with the ruling class in this country, they turn a blind eye to genocide.”
Plaschkes warned Greenstein about treating the trial as a “political forum” and said the jury was “not concerned with events in the Middle East”.
In the social media posts, Greenstein wrote the line: “Please share. Full support for the Gaza ghetto uprising,” the court heard.
Jurors were told the posts had links to a blog, which included the line: “The time to fight is now. Whatever criticisms one can make of Hamas, we should congratulate them on this well-planned and audacious attack on the Zionist enemy.”
Greenstein, whose father was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, argued “congratulating” Hamas was a figure of speech, and called the prosecution’s assertion “absurd”.
He had also written extensively about disagreeing with Hamas in his blog, which has more than 3,500 posts, the court heard.
Titles of pieces Greenstein had published included “Hamas does its best to make Palestinian lives a misery”, and he encouraged those who had “illusions” in Hamas to “think again”.
Before the jury returned their verdicts, Plaschkes indicated that she had considered contempt of court against Greenstein, who gave a closing speech to the jury earlier on Friday.
The judge said that “on calm reflection” she had concluded that it was “a rambling speech delivered by an old man” and would not have impacted the jury’s decision.
In a speech outside court, Greenstein said he wanted to see former Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, former Prime Minister Keir Starmer and former Foreign Secretary, now Health Secretary, Yvette Cooper on trial for “having helped Israel perpetrate a genocide”.
“Opposing genocide is not a crime, supplying arms to Israel to perpetrate a genocide is a crime,” he said.
“That’s the nature of our judicial system, they prosecute the wrong people.
“They [the jury] knew very well I wasn’t supporting Hamas; I was supporting the Palestinian people in their just struggle against the Zionist occupation.
“So let us take heart from what’s happened today, and let’s go forward, and never forget: unity is strength, and that is what has made us strong.
“The jury saw, throughout, a full public gallery, and we have to give the same support to all the defendants who are going through trials at the moment, they are guilty of nothing more than opposing genocide.”
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