How can a judge who ‘liked’ an anti-Israel post decide the fate of three women who supported Hamas terrorists?

A CORNUCOPIA of craziness for Gary to get his teeth into today. Two of the stories involve seagulls, a regular feature of this column.

We’re used to gulls divebombing holidaymakers and nicking their fish’n’chips. Now it seems they’re after your vapes, too. There’s a video doing the rounds of a seagull puffing on a green vape pen while perched on top of a car in Dorchester.

Perhaps the bird has heard that Rishi Sunak is planning to ban vapes and is swooping now while stocks last.

Elsewhere, an outfit called NatureScot is advising people to wear protective headgear and carry umbrellas to fend off gull attacks. I have visions of people coming out of Nardini’s Cafe in Largs wearing crash helmets and raising umbrellas, like a modern version of that famous Renoir painting.

In other news, animal rights activists want to ban wooden horses at funfairs because they encourage ‘exploitation’. Nurse!

Oh, and as if the courts haven’t got enough on their plates and politicians haven’t got anything better to do, there are moves to make ‘Coaxing a cat’ a criminal offence. Who knew coaxing a cat was even a thing?

Here Kitty, Kitty.

WHAT was I saying this time last week about the courts going soft on woke demonstrators supporting everything from Just Stop Oil to hamas? that’s when the police can be bothered to enforce the law.

Look no further than Deputy Senior District Judge tan Ikram, who decided ‘ not to punish’ three women brandishing paraglider images on an anti-Israel march in the wake of the October 7 pogroms.

They were accused of glorifying terrorism, after being exposed by the Mail on Sunday. the police tracked them down and the Crown Prosecution Service brought charges under the terrorism act. But although they were convicted, and could have been sentenced to six months in jail and an unlimited fine, Judge Ikram let them off with a conditional discharge because ‘emotions ran very high at the time’.

He concluded that they had not ‘shown any support for hamas’, despite the fact the murderers and rapists of hamas had crossed into Israel on paragliders and filmed themselves doing it — videos seen around the world.

Lawyers for the three women claimed preposterously that the images were ‘symbols of peace’.

Even though the law states clearly that a guilty verdict merely requires that any ‘reasonable person’ would consider that the images amounted to support for a terrorist organisation, Judge Ikram decided to show extreme leniency, even though he said they had ‘crossed the line’.

It has since been revealed that Judge Ikram recently ‘liked’ a social media post by a Left-wing barrister who specialises in conspiracy theories about Israel.

THE post, by Sham Uddin, who is standing as an independent MP in East London, read: ‘Free Free Palestine. to the Israeli terrorists both in the United Kingdom, the United States, and of course Israel you can run, you can bomb but you cannot hide — justice will be coming for you.’

Ikram now says that he ‘ didn’t know’ he had liked the post and it was a ‘genuine mistake’. Sorry, but this stretches credibility to the limit. he’s a judge, for heaven’s sake, someone who is supposed to have a heightened grasp of detail.

How could he not know he’d liked it? a genuine mistake? Pull the other one. Ignorance is no defence in law.

At the very least we are entitled to question his impartiality.

Ikram’s record on the bench has since been subjected to well-warranted scrutiny. he hasn’t always shown such leniency in other cases.

In 2022, he jailed police constable James Watts for sharing racist memes on Whatsapp about the saintly George Floyd, whose murder by a Minnesota cop sparked the Black Lives Matter madness. he then boasted about that sentence to a gathering of american law students.

In December, he handed out suspended prison and community service sentences to six retired police officers who shared racist jokes about Meghan Markle, again on Whatsapp. how would he have reacted if they’d all argued that they couldn’t remember sharing the jokes, or that they’d made a ‘genuine mistake’?

Whatsapp messages are supposed to be private. What’s the difference between what they did and Ikram liking a racist post on another online forum?

the paraglider images were displayed in public, on the streets, in the aftermath of the worst slaughter of Jews since the holocaust. the weekly proPalestine/ hamas marches in London and elsewhere are throwing petrol on the flames of the worst outbreak of anti- Semitism in Britain since the 1930s.

We can argue until the cows come home about whether these women should have been brought to court, since far worse hate crimes against Jews are being committed on the same marches and going unpunished. We can also debate where free speech and legitimate protest ends.

But there can be no argument about Judge Ikram’s application of double standards.

happy to hand out jail sentences to police officers over private Whatsapp messages, but soft on those considered by the police and CPS, and ‘any reasonable person’, of glorifying terrorism in public. For defence counsel to claim that paragliders are a ‘symbol of peace’ is taking us — and the court — for fools. and for Ikram to show sympathy because ‘emotions ran high’ is farcical.

Emotions are often running high when a crime is committed — whether some thug bottling a bloke for looking at his bird in a boozer on a Saturday night or invading the pitch because his team has just gone three down after ten minutes. But that’s no defence, either.

Yet when it comes to crimes committed in the name of wokery — including blocking motorways and glorifying terrorism — emotion frequently trumps natural justice these days.

In Judge Ikram’s opinion, making private jokes about Meghan Markle is a far more serious offence than glamorising hamas murderers. and to add insult to injury, one of the women was excused having to pay costs because her ‘immigration status’ prevents her receiving benefits. You couldn’t, etc.

For once, there can be no criticism of the Met or the CPS, both of whom diligently pursued the arrest and prosecution of these women.

BUT Judge Ikram’s decision not to punish them, coupled with his liking of a ‘Free, Free Palestine’ social media post by an anti-Israel conspiracy theorist, not only throws his impartiality into question but again raises the very real suspicion that Britain now operates a two-tier justice system, in thrall to wokery.

Ikram has been rightly criticised by everyone from Downing Street to the Jewish Leadership Council and former home Secretary Sue Ellen Braverman.

Critics say he should be suspended from the bench until a full review can be carried out into not just his motives in letting these women off scot-free but also how he was ever allowed to hear this case in the first place.

I second that emotion.