COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
British journalist Richard Medhurst is once again being persecuted by federal law enforcement in yet another Western nation for his reporting on the abuses of Israel and its Western backers, this time in Austria.
Austrian police and intelligence services reportedly detained Medhurst in Vienna last Monday, then searched his home and seized electronic devices, saying they did so on the suspicion that he is “affiliated with Hamas”.
In August, Medhurst was arrested by British counterterrorism police under Section 12 of the UK Terrorism Act of 2000 and detained for 24 hours, reportedly for expressing political opinions that were deemed too sympathetic toward a proscribed terrorist group.
In other words, a Western journalist has been targeted and persecuted by law enforcement in multiple Western nations for speech that is critical of Israel.
This comes days after journalist Ali Abunimah was jailed for two nights by Swiss police for expressing wrongthink about Israel, and continues a trend that’s been escalating since the Gaza holocaust began.
Really sit and contemplate how creepy and frightening it is that civil rights are being systematically dismantled throughout the Western world in the name of protecting the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state in the Middle East.
On orders of President Trump, a multi-agency task force has been launched in the US with the official purpose of combating antisemitism in schools and universities, and the unofficial purpose of targeting pro-Palestine activists.
It’s getting bad here in Australia as well. The other day a sports journalist was fired for retweeting factual information about Israel’s abuses and told that his termination was because his retweets had caused Jews in Melbourne to “feel unsafe” hearing his voice in their ears from the radio.
The head of Australia’s state broadcaster ABC just said it’s antisemitic to use the phrase “unlawful occupation of Palestine” as he argued to justify the corporation’s termination of journalist Antoinette Lattouf, who was also fired for retweeting facts about Israel’s criminality in Gaza.
I recently noticed that I myself am being followed/monitored on Twitter by the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, which has played a leading role in stomping out criticism of Israel and targeting journalists in my country. It’s an uncomfortable sensation realising these freaks are watching you.
Persecution of journalism. Video: Richard Medhurst
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Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has admitted to the already long-established fact that the IDF caused much of the death and destruction seen on October 7 when its forces began firing on Israelis to prevent them from being taken hostage in enactment of Israel’s notorious Hannibal Directive.
That’s right kids, never forget October 7, that terrible day when a thousand Israelis were massacred by Israeli bullets and Israeli tanks and Israeli helicopters, and also by Hamas a bit.
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Everything we’ve been seeing in Gaza and the West Bank has been the result of an agenda to remove all Palestinians from Palestine via death or displacement. Everything.
It was never about fighting terrorism. It’s not about rescuing the Palestinians from a ruined enclave. It’s never been about self-defence. It’s never been about hostages. It has always been about ending the existence of Palestinians in Palestine so that their territories can be fully owned by Jewish Israelis.
This has been true of all of Israel’s abusive actions since October 2023, and it was true of all of Israel’s abusive actions before October 2023.
This is what the Palestinians are resisting, and it’s why October 7 happened in the first place. We’re watching an indigenous population struggle against an agenda — an agenda which is backed by an entire globe-spanning empire — to end their existence as a people in their native homeland.
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It’s so obnoxious how Democrats are framing this ethnic cleansing plan as a push that emerged out of nowhere when Trump took office. Ethnic cleansing was ALWAYS the plan for the day after Gaza was demolished.
I myself wrote about this constantly during the Biden administration, as did many others. That Israel was using October 7 as an excuse for another colonialist land grab was transparently obvious from the very beginning, and became more and more obvious as Israel systematically turned Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland by deliberately destroying everything in it that’s necessary for human life.
This all happened while Biden was president. Biden committed the murder, Trump’s just the guy who showed up to help dispose of the body. It’s just different parts of the same crime.
You don’t commit a murder without a plan to dispose of the body, and you can’t dispose of a body without having first committed the murder. Democratic Party loyalists are pointing and shrieking at the mobster who’s sinking the body in the river saying “Look! He killed that guy, all by himself!” as though we didn’t all just watch the other mobster shoot the victim in the head.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.
