Declassified UK

October 2024

Hi everyone, Mark Curtis here. I hope you are all bearing up.

It’s been a terrible month for Palestinians, to whom my heart continues to go out. It’s increasingly difficult to find words to describe what is happening in Gaza, and now Lebanon.

This month we turned to Shahd Abusalama,who was brought up in Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza, to write a very moving article about her family’s situation in northern Gaza. She wrote that they are experiencing ‘the worst stage of genocide’ as Israel attempts to empty and annex the area. She said that her family and numerous others have been facing relentless, indiscriminate Israeli bombing, targeting concentrations of displaced Palestinians. Entire neighbourhoods have been razed to the ground.

I admire those taking action to do what they can to stop Israel’s war machine. Huda Ammori of Palestine Action outlined for us how Israel’s machinery of war in Britain can indeed be stopped. She wrote how Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems, is finally losing money at its drone engine factory near Birmingham. This follows years of campaigning by her organisation, a group she co-founded in 2020.

Our staff reporter, John McEvoy, has become our top investigative journalist and I urge everyone to follow his revelations here. This month, he produced no less than three groundbreaking stories (which would all have been covered in the mainstream media, if they were actually news organisations).

First, John revealed that the UK secretly developed a defence plan with Israel. According to leaked documents, the British project was codenamed HEZUK and was designed to counter the “destabilising regional activity of Iran and Hizballah”. This would be done by strengthening UK-Israel intelligence collaboration and increasing military cooperation, with the effect of deepening bilateral security integration.

Psychological warfare

John also revealed that Britain secretly advised the Israeli military on psychological warfare techniques. Leaked documents reveal how the British army’s 77th brigade – which uses psychological operations and social media to help fight wars “in the information age” — discussed strategy and tactics with the Israel Defence Forces.

John’s third revelation was that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government waged a secret campaign to stop Britain boycotting trade with Israel. Leaked files show Israeli officials held a high-level “sensitive” meeting about the issue with Conservative politician Michael Gove when he was justice secretary in 2015.

I can also claim to have been pretty active this month in writing new articles. I showed that the UK is refusing to provide details of the military training it is providing to Israeli armed forces in Britain. (Yes, they are providing training in Britain, and this has not been mentioned in any national media, as far as I’m aware).

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) rejected a freedom of information request that would shed light on this. That rejection was the first sign that Keir Starmer’s new government has adopted the Conservative’s secretive approach towards the training.

Gaza is unfortunately not an anomaly. I wrote about Gaza being Britain’s seventh genocide. Since the 1960s, Labour and Conservative governments have supported or acquiesced in several cases of genocide across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. I also wrote an explainer on what Britain is doing in Lebanon, amid Israel’s new invasion.

Lots of other issues

I don’t want us to take our eyes off the abysmal UK treatment of Julian Assange, even though he is now free. I wrote about how the UK is snubbing the Council of Europe by rejecting its call on the UK authorities to hold an independent review into Britain’s treatment of him.

It’s not just Gaza or Lebanon or Iran. Iona Craig showed how Israel’s deadly bombing of Yemen is being undertaken with UK-made weaponry. British-supplied fighter jet parts are linked to “indiscriminate” Israeli attacks on a major port in Yemen, worsening the country’s already dire humanitarian situation.

And Richard Norton-Taylor wrote about the UK’s aircraft carriers. As Labour presents the public with large tax rises and cuts in services, Britain’s armed forces are wasting billions of pounds of public money on these projects, which have no practical use in present or potential future conflicts.

Changes at Declassified

As many of you know, I’m stepping down as the organisation’s director to become chief columnist, where I can do more investigations, writing and interviews. After over five years leading Declassified from the beginning, I feel it’s time for a change, and I’m really looking forward to it. Declassified is a gem of an organisation, and we’re just at the beginning.

We’re in the process of recruiting a new director, and I’ve no doubt we will soon have a new person with renewed energy and expertise to help take us forward. We’re looking to a new director to prioritise our drive to reach more people and to increase our political impact. Watch this space!

Indeed, thanks to the support of our members and trusts & foundations which back us, we’re in the best position we’ve ever been in. One key aspect of this is that we’re growing. We’re recruiting a new video journalist to increase our capacity to do videos, interviews and social media – this will increase our outreach to new audiences.

Our YouTube viewership is growing quickly, thanks to Phil Miller’s regular interview series, which hundreds of thousands of people are watching. If you don’t know about this, go to our YouTube channel here.

Another change is that Matt Kennard, our former head of investigations, has chosen to leave the organisation. Matt has been one of our most important journalists and therefore this is a significant change. He’s contributed greatly to Declassified and we wish him well. We will soon recruit a replacement and there is no shortage of excellent investigative journalists out there who we can bring on board soon.

We’re thriving and this is an exciting time for us and our ability to increase our exposure of the UK establishment, deepen our investigative work and increase our political impact. Thanks again to the thousands of donors who support our work! If you want to help support this exciting new stage of our development please consider a monthly donation!

Your donations fund our investigations

Increasingly, we’re able to rely on the public to support our work. We’re trying to reveal what British policy-makers are really doing, surrounded by a national media largely covering this up. Although we’re growing, we’re still very small compared to the corporations that make up mainstream media.

But our impact is huge! We’re reporting facts the mainstream media wouldn’t even consider newsworthy. So much of this comes down to our ethos – independent, rigorous, investigative journalism in the service of the public.  

In the last few months especially, we’ve seen more and more people following our work. Our YouTube channel has exceeded 50k subscribers, and there’s more than 35k people following us on Instagram. The numbers of people reading our articles, subscribing to this newsletter and supporting us with regular donations, are all growing – fast.

Reporting on what we do is sometimes hard work. Thank you for engaging with us. Together, we will change things.

Thank you for your continued support.

Mark Curtis