UK urged to de-proscribe Hamas, Hezbollah to end Gaza genocide

Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) is urging the UK home secretary to immediately de-proscribe all pro-Palestine resistance groups to help end the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the intensified aggression against Lebanon.

“While Israel carries out this unconscionable slaughter of mainly civilians, the British government refuses to support the right of the victims to protect themselves and fight back,” IHRC sent a letter to the minister today. “Not only is the government failing in its duty to try and halt the genocide but it is also enabling the slaughter under the pretext of upholding Israel’s right to self-defence.”

This, it added, “is a shocking indictment of a western hegemonic world order that views the lives of Muslims and non-whites as less valuable.”

Proscribing Hamas and Hezbollah, resistance movements in the Middle East that have for decades fought against Israel’s settler-colonial policies, “are a key component of policies that weaponise anti-terrorism legislation to allow governments to wage illegal and unpopular wars, mainly against Muslims,” IHRC said.

“This has only been made possible by the manufacturing of dehumanising narratives against the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah to garner public support for what are essentially war crimes, allowing governments to carry out atrocities under the pretext of fighting terrorism.” Proscribing the groups “demonise popular resistance and the people they represent” and this “legitimise white supremacist violence”, the letter warned.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The full letter is available to read here.

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