On December 20, I was woken up at 7am by the ringing of my doorbell. At the door were two police officers.

I was told I was being arrested on suspicion of committing an offence under Section 12 (1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 of the United Kingdom.

The relevant section of the law states: “A person commits an offence if the person – (a) expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and (b) in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.”

The officers explained to me that my alleged offence was related to a single tweet I posted about Hamas on November 15.

Having only just gone to bed and being somewhat sleepy, the only response I could initially manage was to tell them that my arrest was “Orwellian” and that we are clearly now living in a dystopia. I was struggling to accept that in the 21st-century UK, I was being arrested, not for something I had done, but for expressing an opinion.

I had written the tweet in question in response to a Zionist, who was baiting people online to say they “support Hamas”, which has long been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in Britain, and thereby get arrested.

Identifying himself only as James, this person told me:

“Just tweet
I support Hamas!’
3 words is all you have to tweet and then we know where you stand.”

I refused to take the bait and responded “I support the Palestinians that is enough” before going on to say “and I support Hamas against the Israeli army”.

Looking back, I believe this was, especially for a social media platform like X, a carefully calibrated and accurate expression of my genuine opinion.

That day I did not say “I support Hamas politically” for the simple reason that such a statement would not be true.

As a Jewish atheist, socialist and secularist, I naturally do not support Hamas or any other Islamist or religious group. That does not mean, however, that I do not respect and admire the resistance Hamas has been conducting against Israel’s genocidal army.

I criticised Hamas often in the past. For example, in February 2011, in an article published on my personal blog titled “The lousy Hamas government”, I criticised the group for its initial refusal to support the Egyptian people’s uprising against Hosni Mubarak. Over........

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