It’s also sometimes hard to believe that’s the best thing to do. From the Kinder Trespass to the anti-genocide ‘granarchists’, it’s hard to see what, if not organised rule-breaking, could win the case for humanity — but let’s give it a go.

I certainly believe the thing to do is to apply your best brain cells and, where there’s a legal way to justice, take it. For those who see #FreePalestine as a key part of what we need to do to counter the rampant militarism and destruction of bad governments, we have just got a good foothold thanks to the ruling in favour of David Miller.

The case set a legal precedent safeguarding employees from professional victimisation for opposing state-backed colonial ideologies. Specifically, the notion that political Zionism is inherently racist, colonial, and imperialistic is a protected philosophical belief under the UK Equality Act 2010.

That’s a good thing for the movement, although I find it puzzling in the same way the Forestater ruling was – Forestater established the precedent that believing there are two immutable sexes is worthy of respect in a democratic society or, as the women’s groups now write, ‘WORIADS’. In both cases, I have a bit of trouble treating those evidenced facts – that Israel is a racist, colonialist endeavour and that sex exists, and matters – as though they were some kind of religious belief. I also have a lot of trouble with Miller’s attitude to women, to a lot of those women’s attitudes to Palestine, and a lot of other things but that’s beside the point. We are legally allowed to recognise what Israel is, and what it is doing.

That has no bearing whatsoever on whatever we might think about Jews or Judaism, neither of which depend on the existence of a Jewish state but you’d never guess that, by looking at the build-up of comments on social media around this story:

Some of the press stories manage to mention that the venue was not done for antisemitism, but why did they have to state his religion? Or is ‘Jewish’ his race? Let’s ignore that confusion for the moment, and fix in our minds what the court decided. The venue discriminated against this comedian because he supported Israel in its colonialist, apartheid ambitions.

Here’s an example of the behaviour the venue were concerned about…

Those clips were gathered in an article by Chortle.co.uk

So all the rows around this appear to be caused by people who think being Jewish means supporting Israel, or even that supporting Israel is a religion. I suppose that ruling in this comedian’s favour is saying that that belief too is a WORIAD. He’re s a snip from the comments on one of today’s articles…

I don’t respect that belief. Sorry. The world did not bring South African apartheid to an end by respecting white supremacists’ beliefs and anyway, to carry it forward, its supporters have to use a whole passel of not-true assumptions, like Simon’s in the first panel up there that Palestinians = terrorists. But that’s the law, for now, and this commentator points out the law-abiding way to proceed

So for now, venues have to let racist, white supremacists perform, and hope that the crowd will come along and remove them? Which is what that Frankfurt venue did with Boy George, that led to the crowd booing him off the stage, and his own sound team (let’s say accidentally) sabotaging him.  

Bit dangerous that, isn’t it? And meanwhile, people who don’t believe sex exists, or that it matters, are still trying to boo the women’s movement off stage (and worse) everywhere it appears…

 …despite the fact that feminism and all it entails is WORIAD. It is, to say the least, hard on the venues. Here’s an example of Bash Back style activism in Brighton last year…

I think, if we are to be law-abiding citizens, we need another case or two to sort all this out but it worries me that our politics is being done almost entirely through the courts, whilst the government either does nothing, or does things that look suspiciously like dismantling our judicial system.

NB regarding ‘is it his religion or his race’? This is confusion number one. Confusion number two occurs when trying to unravel ‘Jewish’, ‘Judaism’, ‘Zionism’ and, as we should add these days (because most Zionists are not Jewish) ‘Israelism’. If you’d like a handbook to help you clarify those things when you find yourself in those debates, try this….

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