Declassified UK

Hi everyone, Phil Miller here. It’s good to see some glimmers of hope in the Middle East with a ceasefire in Lebanon, which came just days after the International Criminal Court finally issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.

There’s mounting pressure too on Britain’s Labour government to suspend all UK arms exports to Israel, and end their loophole for F-35 fighter jets. I was at the High Court in London last week to watch the legal challenge led by Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq. You can watch the interview I filmed outside court with Al-Haq’s legal adviser Ahmed Abofoul, who has had over 60 relatives killed by Israeli military attacks on Gaza.

While Al-Haq’s long-running court case may not achieve an immediate embargo, it’s been one of the only ways to force the Labour and Conservative governments to disclose documents about the extent of UK arms exports to Israel. At this latest hearing, we learnt how Labour quickly caved into American pressure soon after being elected, and created a ‘carve-out’ for F-35 exports to Israel. You can read more about that here.

My colleague John McEvoy has been doing more hard hitting investigations. This time he exposed how a Royal Air Force F-35 base at Marham in the east of England has been shipping spare parts to Israel. It seems like RAF Marham functions as an Amazon-style warehouse for the global F-35 supply chain, and has played an important role in keeping Israel’s fleet in the sky.

I interviewed John about his investigation on our YouTube channel, so you can watch him explain it fully on there. More and more people are coming to our work through YouTube, and this month I edited a short documentary about the RAF spy flights over Gaza, which has had nearly 200k views.

We worked with a freelance cameraman in Cyprus to capture the first footage of the spy plane taking off to surveil Gaza. He had to film outside the RAF base on Cyprus all day and was rewarded around sunset when the plane finally broke cover. Like much of our work, the impact was felt outside the UK, with the Cypriot press picking up on the story and more demonstrations against the base there likely to come

We do of course continue to publish plenty of articles too. On our website you’ll find pieces this month about the privatisation of Ukraine by Mark Curtis, on Saudi Arabia’s controversial World Cup bid by Lina al-Hathloul, on press freedom by professor Des Freedman and on Gaza’s medical catastrophe by Iain Overton.

So until next time, there’s lots to be reading and watching

Best wishes,

Phil, editor at Declassified UK

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