Establishment uses ‘de-banking’ to attack anti-genocide activists – again

It appears that theeEstablishment is again targeting anti-genocide activists with ‘de-banking’ as a form of punishment for standing up for the survival and human rights of the Palestinian people. Again.

Last July, well-known Jewish anti-genocide campaigner Tony Greenstein came under a ‘financial terrorism’ attack from the British state, which appears to have ordered or intimidated banks to close his accounts one by one for his support of the Palestinian people.

‘De-banking’ abound

Greenstein first had his account with HSBC subsidiary First Direct. He’d banked with them for more than thirty years, but his account was frozen in March without explanation. Then, it was un-frozen a couple of weeks later, equally without explanation. Later, in July, he received an ‘urgent’ email telling him to sign in to his online banking and found a message telling him that – supposedly because of a ‘periodic review’ – the bank had decided it would no longer offer him banking facilities. Appeals to the bank’s senior management made no difference.

But that wasn’t all. First Direct’s parent bank HSBC also unilaterally withdrew Greenstein’s banking facility, for an account he used to send money to his wife for the care of their autistic son – again without explaining its reasons, and again using the same excuse of ‘periodic review’.

And the saga still wasn’t over. A completely separate bank, Santander, then also told him he was facing a periodic review, though his banking facility wasn’t withdrawn immediately – a shot across the bows, perhaps.

But the tactic has apparently been wheeled out again – and against supporters of Palestine. John Nicholson, a retired barrister, and retired nurse Norma Turner, who are members of Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine (GMFP) and signatories to its bank account with Virgin Money, say that their personal account with Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) has been hit in the same way.

‘Inexplicable’

A 27 September letter from YBS informed the couple that their account, which they have held for five years, would be closed three days later and the balance sent to them by cheque. Nicholson said:

Neither of us have never been in financial difficulties, never been in debt, [other than] mortgages, but paid those off. Never had any criminal record, fraud or anything of that sort of whatsoever.

This is just inexplicable [but] obviously it’s not inexplicable because it’s to do with Palestine. It’s as simple as that but it’s inexplicable in that this was an amount of money we’ve got from retirement, put into a savings account, rolled it forward in a fixed-term bond, when that finished, rolled it forward in another one.

They’d accepted it quite happily to be rolled forward (again) as little as a month or two ago, and there were no transactions, no link to any other accounts. This kind of behaviour has just never happened in our lifetime of activism before, and is suddenly happening to activists and to organisations and to people.

If it isn’t Palestine, then why doesn’t YBS say what reason it is?

The GMFP account was also hit – frozen without explanation on 10 July and still frozen now. That suspension happened five days after non-violent activist group Palestine Action (PA) was banned as a terrorist organisation, but GMFP is entirely unconnected to PA. Another GMFP banking signatory has also had their personal account withdrawn but did not wish to go public.

The Starmer government has been waging war on the rights of UK citizens ever since Israel began its genocide in Gaza – rights of free speech, protest and assembly – through an ever-escalating ‘lawfare’ campaign of raids, harassment, arrests, seizure of electronics and in some cases prosecution, for which it has been slammed by the United Nations and European Commission. Events this year strongly suggest that the war is also a financial one.

Featured image via Unsplash/Joshua Lawrence