The text below was written in late April and was first announced by a story in Middle East Eye on Friday 1 May 2026. It has now also been published in full by the International State Crime Initiative, based at Queen Mary University of London. It was composed as an open letter to the UK’s Home Secretary, Attorney General and Chief Justice, and it was signed by several prominent UK-based Law professors. In it the signatories explain why they were among the hundreds of people who put their names to another and much shorter letter sent to the Court of Appeal on 24 April, that simply read: “We oppose genocide, we support Palestine Action.”

This further letter below (completed Wednesday 29 April but only published today 3 May), was drafted in the midst of a remarkable week in British politics, indeed a week that may prove to be something of a watershed in UK judicial history. The week was marked, among other things, by six significant developments.

First, the Court of Appeal met to hear the government’s case in favour of proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group. It is likely to issue its ruling in several weeks.

Second, another and rather more secretive court met, apparently, to consider the fate of the remarkable barrister Rajiv Menon KC, the lead defence counsel at the ongoing Filton trial. Menon has been prosecuted, apparently, for contempt of court, perhaps for insinuating that the judge (Jeremy Johnson) who is presiding over the Filton trial might have done something unlawful. Perhaps Menon has been prosecuted because he reminded the jury, in the speech he made on 8 January to close the first Filton trial, of the principle of jury equity or jury nullification — i.e. the principle, established in the UK by the landmark Bushel precedent of 1670, that affirms “the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions” and in particular “without fear of punishment from the trial judge.” Perhaps Menon has himself been punished for reminding the jury that “no judge in any criminal case is allowed to direct a jury to convict any defendant of any criminal charge, whatever the evidence might be.”

Third, a number of activists organised by the civil liberties group Defend Our Juries were again arrested, outside the Filton trial courthouse, for holding (perfectly lawful) placards that reassert the principle of jury equity, placards with “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience” and “Jurors deserve to hear the whole truth” written on them.

Fourth, the second Filton trial itself came to an end, on 29 April, a day or two after this same presiding judge apparently issued some additional instructions to Rajiv Menon and his fellow defence barristers. The judge’s instructions may have prevented them from referring to this principle of jury equity, and conceivably also to some other matters that might otherwise have been considered pertinent to the case — e.g. the situation in Palestine and the Middle East, the purpose and products of the Elbit arms factory that was targeted by the Filton activists, their own reasons for targeting it, etc. On 28 April five of the six Filton defence barristers, now effectively deprived of any capacity to do their jobs, felt compelled to walk out of the trial, leaving the defendants to make their own closing speeches. Perhaps one day these speeches may be remembered and celebrated as some of the most extraordinary orations ever made in a British court. The jury will reconvene on Tuesday 5 May.

Fifth, the latest Sumud flotilla was intercepted in international waters by Israeli warships, followed by the now-familiar consequences and dénouement.

Sixth, and again on 29 April, a man with a history of mental illness was arrested after allegedly stabbing three people in London: one of his Muslim neighbours and two Jewish strangers in Golders Green. In the British media and in British political circles two of these stabbings received extensive coverage, one of them rather less; coincidentally the stabbing on 22 April of a person of Iranian descent, as he attended a rally outside Downing Street protesting the illegal US-led assault on his country, received virtually no attention at all.

The trials continue.

 

We oppose genocide, so we support Palestine Action

Written 29 April 2026, published 3 May 2026

An open letter addressed to:

 

• The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, mahmood.mp@parliament.uk
• The Attorney General, Richard Hermer, correspondence@attorneygeneral.gov.uk
• The Lady Chief Justice of England & Wales, Lady Justice Carr, office@judiciary.uk

 

 

We are among the several UK-based Law professors who last Friday, 24 April, signed a short letter addressed to the court of appeal. The letter reads: “We oppose genocide, we support Palestine Action.” Along with 130 initial co-signatories we sent it to the court as it prepared to meet to discuss the proscription of the nonviolent campaigning group Palestine Action, on 28 and 29 April. More than a thousand other people added their names to an online version of this letter within a day of our sending it to the court. By the time a hand-delivered version was read out in court by the Chief Justice on 28 April (if only to be “ignored completely”) more than 1700 people had signed it.

We oppose genocide because we are human beings. We oppose genocide because as academics who came of age in the decades that followed the second world war we know that “never again” must mean what it says. We oppose genocide because as legal scholars we understand the world-historical importance of the 1948 Convention that obliges states “to prevent and punish genocide.”

We opposed the first stages of the ongoing genocide in Palestine because we understood the significance and urgency of the rulings made in 2024 by the International Court of Justice – rulings brazenly flouted by Israel and its allies, including the British government. We oppose the continuing assault on Gaza today, over seven months after the so-called cease fire, and the ongoing annexations and killings in the West Bank and Lebanon, because we wholeheartedly agree with UN officials and human rights groups like Amnesty International, International State Crime Initiative, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, and B’Tselem when they condemn Israel’s demolition of Gaza as genocidal.

Since we oppose genocide we also oppose our government’s increasingly authoritarian response to Palestinian solidarity. Like so many of our co-workers and academic colleagues, we oppose the Home Secretary’s unlawful proscription of Palestine Action as a so-called “terrorist” organisation. Like so many others concerned with human rights and civil liberties we oppose the notoriously expansive articles of the Terrorism Act of 2000 that were evoked, in July 2025, to justify this proscription.

Since we oppose genocide we oppose the harsh treatment of the prisoners for Palestine and of the courageous hunger strikers. We oppose the exceptionally cruel and unjustified periods of prolonged detention on remand – a full year longer than the usual limit of six months – that have kept the Filton and Brize Norton defendants in prison without a conviction. We oppose the government’s vengeful decision to re-try the Filton 6 defendants after a jury heard the prosecution’s full case and duly refused, in February, to condemn them on any counts. We oppose the recent punitive judgements against Stop the War’s Chris Nineham and Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Ben Jamal. Like our colleagues in BRISMES and UCU, we oppose the recent criminalisation of perfectly legitimate slogans like ‘globalise the intifada.’  Like the TUC and virtually every human rights group in the UK, we also oppose the government’s ominous new proposals to restrict so-called ‘cumulative’ or sustained protest.

Since we oppose genocide and teach Law, we oppose above all restrictions on one of the most fundamental principles of our entire judicial system and tradition – the hard-won principle that jurors have the right indeed the duty to hear and evaluate the whole truth of the case they are called upon to judge, and to acquit a defendant on the basis of their own independent judgment and conscience. Informed assessment of an actor’s motive and intention must remain a fundamental aspect of any judicial proceeding. In keeping with the epochal rights won in the landmark Bushel case of 1670 (and for reasons explained with unparalleled eloquence by our colleague Rajiv Menon KC in his brilliant closing speech at the first trial of the Filton 6 on 8 January 2026), we oppose any restriction on the right of defendants to explain the purpose and reasons for their actions. We oppose the way such restrictions have apparently been placed on defendants, and on the barristers representing them, in the ongoing Filton re-trial. We oppose, among many other recent violations of this principle, the arrest last week of a dozen further protestors, including the co-founder of Defend Our Juries Trudi Warner, outside Woolwich Crown Court, for holding perfectly lawful placards saying “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience” or “Jurors deserve to hear the whole truth.”

We oppose genocide, and like so many thousands of our fellow citizens, over the past couple of years we have expressed our opposition to it by writing to our MPs and professional bodies, by marching in the streets, and by engaging in a wide range of campaigning work. But the genocide continues, with the active collusion of our government – while we all remain solemnly obliged to prevent it.

We oppose genocide, and therefore we support whatever nonviolent action might be required to stop it and to shut down the UK-based weapons manufacturers that are helping to enable it. We oppose genocide, therefore we support Palestine Action.

We support Palestine Action, and we call on all people of conscience and goodwill to join us in doing so.

 

Signed

 

• Simon Behrman, Reader in Law, University of Warwick
• Neve Gordon FAcSS, Professor of International Law, Queen Mary University of London
• Penny Green FAcSS, Professor of Law and Globalisation, Queen Mary University of London
• Sarah Keenan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Law, Queen Mary University of London
• Yvette Russell, Professor of Law and Feminist Theory, University of Bristol
• David Whyte, Professor of Climate Justice, Queen Mary University of London

 

and signed in solidarity:

 

• Peter Hallward, Professor of Philosophy, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, London

 

Featured image: Defend Our Juries mass protest action, Parliament Square, London, 6 September 2026. Photo: Peter Hallward. Courtesy of the author.

A Collective Statement