So this is what it's come to: arresting pensioners and priests

The Herald Scotland

4 days ago

That was made abundantly clear when we were treated to the sight of elderly women being bodily carried away by police, arrested under the Terrorism Act, and taken into custody.
Their crime was to hold placards reading: 'I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.'
Among the 29 arrested was 83-year-old Reverend Sue Parfitt, taken away by police while wearing her dog collar.
Palestine Action is now proscribed as a terror organisation. Members broke into RAF Brize Norton and sprayed two military planes red. For that, it is now on an equal footing with the IRA.
The terror label means that even showing support for Palestine Action can lead to 14 years in prison.
Our Government has gone through the looking glass when it comes to Gaza.
Read more from Neil Mackay
To stand in the street and protest what you believe to be genocide, to offer support to an organisation which has been labelled a terror gang itself for protesting what it believes to be genocide, is now enough to get you carted away by the police in Britain in 2025.
There's a craziness about this. Rather than discuss what is happening in Gaza, rather than debate how our Government is behaving regarding Gaza, rather than focus on the death, the bombing, the hunger, we're fixated on sideshows about singers causing outrage at Glastonbury, and arresting old ladies.
The wilful blindness is absurd. The silencing runs deep. The BBC refused to air one of the most important documentaries of recent years, the film Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.
Channel 4 stepped in after the BBC claimed the documentary could create 'a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect'.
Channel 4 said the film was 'meticulously reported' and 'deserves to be widely seen'. It was, according to the channel's head of news and current affairs, subject to 'rigorous fact-checking' and presented an 'impartial view'.
The channel had a 'duty to tell important journalistic stories – especially those that aren't being told elsewhere'.
The film was among the most harrowing and horrifying ever aired on British television. Yet our national broadcaster chose to keep it from public sight. Instead, Channel 4 assumed the mantle of national broadcaster.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy wants BBC staff fired over the decision to air a separate Gaza documentary narrated by the child of a Hamas official.
The Mail on Sunday ran a front page headline reading "Now arrest punk band who led 'Death to Israelis' chants at Glastonbury". The band in question is Bob Vylan.
It's important to note – in these days of silencing – that the band did not chant "death to Israelis", but "death to the IDF". Accuracy matters, as does the deliberate elision.
Perhaps musicians court controversy simply for controversy's sake, perhaps they speak out as they have deeply-held beliefs they wish to tell the world.
Either way, the thoughts, words and deeds of minor celebrities should not be given greater importance in our news agenda that the reality of what is happening in Gaza.
Reports about Bob Vylan jostled alongside reports of starving Palestinians shot at food distribution centres. There should be no such equivalence.
At times, the average citizen must doubt their sanity. Why are we talking about punk bands when Francesca Albanese – who holds the post of United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories – is talking about the need for global corporations to be held accountable for 'profiting from genocide' in Gaza?
Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, says Gaza is 'hell on Earth', and 'humanity is failing'. She added that 'the fact that we are watching a people entirely stripped of its human dignity, it should really shock our collective conscience.'
In Britain, though, it seems we wish either silence or distraction. Our Government and our media have lost all sense of reality when it comes to Gaza.
The public simply wants honest reporting, political and moral decency, and an open debate. These are not dangerous nor difficult requests.
There is an historic duty on humanity right now. If we cannot find a moral and peaceable solution to what's happening in Gaza then we open the door to a monstrous future for ourselves and our children.
If the rules of war can be rewritten in Gaza, they can be rewritten anywhere. If, in the future, some conflict should break out in Europe with Russia, or in the Pacific involving China, then what is happening now in Gaza becomes a template for the rules of engagement in years to come.
Our behaviour today shapes tomorrow. Indeed, we are reminded of that truth this week, as we mark the 20th anniversary of the 7-7 London terror attacks.
There have been calls for Bob Vylan to be arrested (Image: PA)
At the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, anyone with a brain was predicting that this illegal war would bring terror to British streets. The 2005 attacks proved those fears valid.
As the 20th anniversary rolled round, the former head of counter-terrorism with the Met Police, Neil Basu, said the Iraq war 'made extremists of people who might not have been radicalised'. Foreign policy and Iraq was a 'driver of the 7-7 attacks', he said.
The act of silencing is itself radicalising. Anger and fear are bottled up and become channelled in dangerous ways. By telling people not to speak – on an issue as deeply felt as Gaza – the Government risks creating a pressure cooker of rage.
It's notable that many now keen on silencing portrayed themselves as champions of free speech for years. They were never interested in the free speech of others, only themselves.
Gaza is the greatest test our Government and media face. Trust is on life support in this country. If the Government and media cannot deal honestly with Gaza then trust will die. Once all trust is gone, then we have nothing to hold us together.
Neil Mackay is The Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.