Declassified UK

Posted: 17th June 2024

May 2024

Hello everyone, Mark Curtis here. This month we’ve been encouraging people to take action to help stop Israel’s ongoing brutality against Palestinians, now almost unbelievable in its ferocity and shamelessness.

We produced a printable flyer showing the key ways in which Britain is complicit in Israel’s genocide, targeted at activists. And we’re encouraging everyone to write to the International Criminal Court asking them to investigate UK ministers for their complicity in Israel’s crimes. You can find these resources on the new Activism page on our website.

Now the International Criminal Court is seeking to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli ministers, it must also investigate his accomplices in the British government. We believe seven British ministers – including Rishi Sunak, David Cameron, Grant Shapps and Kemi Badenoch – must be investigated for aiding Israel.

The extent of UK support for Israel is as significant as the national media’s failure to mention it. Matt Kennard found that the UK military has flown 200 spy missions over Gaza in support of Israel. British spy planes have recorded up to 1,000 hours of footage over Gaza, including from the day Israel assassinated three UK aid workers.

Matt also found that 60 British warplanes have landed in Israel since the Gaza bombing began but the UK government refuses to give full details of what they have onboard.

Amazingly, Britain continues to train Israel military personnel in the UK – again unmentioned by the mainstream media. But I found the government is refusing to provide us with any details of what this training entails.

Sanctions on Israel? I also wrote about how UK ministers, far from imposing sanctions, are actually seeking to step up trade amidst the genocide. Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch is busy negotiating a new trade deal with the country.

Israel lobby

John McEvoy’s research found that the Israel lobby in the UK has fundeda third of Conservative MPs: Tory politicians have accepted over £430,000 from Israel lobby groups and made 187 trips to the country.

The main funder is Conservative Friends of Israel, a parliamentary group which does not disclose its own sources of funding. How is that allowed?

John also reported on how Britain shields Israel from war crimes charges, and how the Conservatives have repeatedly protected Israeli politicians, spies and soldiers from being arrested for war crimes when they visit Britain.

Alex Bustos of Palestine Deep Dive wrote an article on how Israel’s brutality against Palestinians draws on British rule. Britain’s “mandate” over Palestine from 1920-48 left an apparatus of repression which Israel inherited and still uses today in its ferocious war on Palestinians.

An election

In the coming election, an array of independent candidates are standing against Labour figures who have backed Israel’s war on Gaza. Perhaps the most prominent is Andrew Feinstein, who is standing against Keir Starmer in his London seat. Andrew, who also sits on the Declassified board, wrote for us on why he’s standing.

It would be nice if elected MPs challenged a genocide being conducted in real-time with UK support. Instead, our regular contributor Hamza Yusuf found that the parliamentary body that is meant to monitor genocide is silent, and asleep at the wheel.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media continues to apologise for, or cover up, the extent of Israeli crimes. Another of our regular contributors, Professor Des Freedman, investigated one particular tragedy – the Israeli army’s killing of six year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza. He found that Britain’s national media failed to unequivocally pinpoint Israel as responsible, refused to follow up the story and cover important new information, and then moved on.

Interviews

Phil Miller, our editor, is doing much more video work and interviews than before and you can find many of the stories above covered on our YouTube channel here. See Phil’s interviews with Matt, John, myself, Andrew Feinstein, and others, on the channel.

And please subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already.

Why we need indie media

If we’re going to change things in the UK – and we must – it’s going to have to come from us. It’s up to us to support and fund independent media challenging the establishment. We’re a very small team, and we heavily rely on funding from the public to sustain our work. Yet we are massively punching above our weight and will continue to do so with your help.

Whether it’s £3, £5 or £10 a month, whatever you can afford to give each month will make a real difference to our work.

For more on the urgent need for robust independent media you can join me alongside Hamza Yusuf, Yara Hawari and Amy Hall for a major joint event with New Internationalist on 3 June at 6.30pm. We’ll be discussing Why we need independent media for real coverage of the war on Gaza with Natalie Fenton of the Media Reform Coalition moderating.

Go here for more details and to register. Hope to see you there.

For now, all the best,

Mark

Director of Declassified UK