Thread by @tom_d_

Meet Colonel (ret.) Chris Romberg, former British army officer (29 Commando Regiment), military attache at UK embassies in Egypt and Jordan, and son of a Holocaust survivor.

Chris was arrested today for supporting a terrorist organisation.

A quick thread >

I first met Chris 17 years ago. His Jewish father fled from Austria to the UK, aged 25, to escape the Nazis, a fact which has motivated his protest today. 

“You grow up believing the myths you're told,” he said. “Land without people for a people without land, and all that.”

His views changed partly due to experiences he had while working in the British diplomatic presence in two countries adjacent to Israel. He remembers being told by a diplomat who had worked in apartheid South Africa that what he had seen Israel do in Palestine was far worse.

He remembers, more than 25 years ago, the Foreign Office advising the government that Israel was committing war crimes in Palestine. And he remembers the government's response: to say nothing committal; the UK would “hide in the EU pack.”

His disgust has mounted over the years, and he felt he needed to take a stand.

Chris was arrested this afternoon wearing his regimental tie and blazer.

He was taken by police this afternoon to a makeshift processing centre at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, in the building to which he used to report as a military attache.

Chris has a simple message, as both a British army veteran and the son of a Holocaust survivor: the genocide in Gaza must end, British cooperation with the IDF must stop, and Palestine Action is not a terrorist organisation.

. . . He'd probably also want you to know that nearly eight hours after the protest begun, people are still being arrested in Parliament Square for holding bits of paper expressing support in principle for an organisation that has never used violence against anyone.

For more on other protesters arrested yesterday, see this thread: