Greenstein escapes prison despite being found guilty of plotting to damage Israeli firm’s factory
Judge at Wolverhampton Crown Court sentences Tony Greenstein to nine months, suspended for two years, for his involvement in a planned Palestine Action activity against a factory used by Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Notorious anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein has escaped being sent to prison – despite being found guilty of planning to damage a drone factory he believed was supplying arms to Israel.
High Honour Judge Michael Chambers KC sentenced Greenstein to nine months, suspended for two years on Wednesday for his involvement in an action with five members of the Palestine Action group, who aim was to to shut down Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.
Setting out the basis for sentencing the judge said that Greenstein, and three others who was found guilty “intended to cause serious criminal damage with sledgehammers and crowbars” which could have cost the factory at least £30,000 to repair, reporter Jo Wadsworth, who covered the trial, tweeted.
Judge Chambers said Greenstein, and the others hold an “unswerving blinkered commitment to their cause” and that each of the four found guilty were “unrepentant.”
He also said that Greenstein’s persistent blogging and behaviour in court almost landed him with a prison sentence.
Greenstein,69, Ibrahim Samadi, 26, Alex Waters, 26, and Jeremy Parker, 55, were all given suspended sentences.
Brighton and Hove News reported that the judge told Greenstein, “Are you going to do it again? I don’t accept that there is a low risk of you reoffending.You have assured the author of the pre sentence report that you don’t intent to reoffend in this way.
“Despite my concern I am prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt.
“There is a realistic prospect of rehabilitation, you are genuine carer for your autistic son and you have no relevant convictions. I am persuaded in your case that the sentence should be suspended.”
Greenstein’s defence counsel had earlier argued that when arrested he had failed to take his daily medication, and this his ill health and age meant there was a “low risk” of him reoffending, Wadsworth tweeted.
Outside the court, ahead of sentencing, Greenstein told supporters:”We knew what we were getting into. The price is a price worth paying”
He condemned “British imperialism and Zionism” which he said were once again “standing together.”
Tony Greenstein speaks outside Wolverhampton Crown Court, moments before he and 4 others will be sentenced for taking action against Israel’s weapons trade #ShutElbitDown pic.twitter.com/FNBGVanY3D
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) September 6, 2023
Confirmation that Greenstein had escaped prison immediately prompted anger in the community, with his obsessive record of anti-Israel activity repeatedly raised.
In December 2021, Greenstein was given a restraining order forbidding him from contacting the Labour party’s disputes team.
The order was passed after an agreement with the CPS, which offered no evidence on two counts of harassment, one against the party’s disputes team and the other against one of its employees.
The previous year, he lost a libel case against the Campaign Against Antisemitism who had described him as a “notorious antisemite”.
The High Court judge said that given his public statements, this was a reasonable opinion for the CAAS to hold.
Greenstein was one of four defendants found guilty at Wolverhampton Crown Court when the trial took place in May.
Reports told how the jury heard Greenstein hired a van on March 8, 2021, from Choices Vehicle Rentals in Beaconsfield Road, where the manager said he seemed frantic.
The van was then loaded up in Brighton with sledgehammers, smoke bombs, ladders, superglue, a crowbar and fire extinguishers adapted to spray red paint.
He then drove it to Walsall in the West Midlands, where he picked up five other members of Palestine Action, a group whose stated aim is to shut down Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.
When police stopped the van in the early hours of the next morning, Greenstein and four others were wearing the group’s distinctive red boiler suits, which its protesters wear when ‘occupying’ targets.
Greenstein told police he was just going for a drive, but after he was released on bail, he posted on his blog that he had been arrested “whilst driving a van to Elbit Systems Shenstone factory.
“We were intent on redecorating the premises of Elbit in the blood red colour of their victims.”
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