The UK has been an active participant in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza for the last 15 months, a new report published by the British Palestinian Committee (BPC) reveals today.
The 22-page document entitled ‘British military collaboration with Israel’ says: “The UK has not simply failed to meet its third-party responsibilities to uphold international law, including its duty to prevent genocide, but has been an active participant in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza for the last 15 months.”
Cataloguing evidence of the “many layers of collaboration between the UK and Israel in this genocidal project”, the report details the UK’s active involvement in the Israeli arms industry, British provisions of logistical support and weapons transfers to the Israeli military, British protection of Israel’s military infrastructure, direct military intervention from the UK in Yemen to support Israel’s goals and repeated, ongoing intelligence provision from the UK to Israel via surveillance flights.
BPC Director, Dr Sara Husseini, said: “This report shows that UK complicity in Israel’s crimes goes far beyond arms sales.”
Highlighting the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s ruling that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to “plausible genocide”, Husseini added: “As the world looked on in horror, Israel continued its genocidal aggression in Gaza for a further 12 months. The UK has provided active military assistance to Israel throughout.”
This, she continued, implicates “its institutions and officials in the gravest breaches of international law.”
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UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Commenting ahead of the Chancellor’s speech on growth when she is expected to signal government backing for airport expansion in the South East, including a third runway at Heathrow, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said:
“The third runway at Heathrow is bad economics. There’s little evidence that airport expansion in the southeast will boost the economy – the only things that will grow for sure are noise, air pollution and climate emissions. The last thing our economy needs is more billions in damage from storms and floods.
“Fewer and fewer business people choose air travel – the vast majority of flights are taken by a wealthy elite of frequent leisure flyers. Most of the benefits of airport expansion will go to jet-setters, airlines and airport bosses, leaving taxpayers and holidaymakers to pay billions for new infrastructure and transport links.
“Chasing growth for growth’s sake is not an economic strategy. Instead of picking up any old polluting project from the discard pile, the Chancellor should focus on green industries that can attract investment and bring economic and social benefits for years to come, like secure jobs, affordable energy bills and cheaper, better transport.”
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
MORE THAN 50 activists plan to march from HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Surrey, to the Royal Courts of Justice, Westminster, where 16 climate activists will appeal against their draconian prison sentences tomorrow [today].
The Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists were jailed for a combined 41 years for taking non-violent action to call for an end to reliance on fossil fuels.
The sentences include five years imposed on JSO founder Roger Hallam for organising a protest over Zoom, and two years given to Phoebe Plummer after she threw soup on glass covering Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
Last year, then UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders Michel Forst condemned the use of legislation such as the Public Order Act and civil injunctions to criminalise peaceful protests.
When Mr Hallam and four others were jailed for organising a protest on the M25, Mr Forst described it as a dark day for “anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms” in Britain.
…
Steve Scott-Robson a 63-year-old father and educator joining the walk said: “I applaud loudly the spirit of these 16 activists, and I am grateful to them for their brave and defiant actions.
“It is an utter abomination that the country that has benefited from industrialisation first — and therefore longest — is the country in Europe that has the harshest legislation aimed at environmental activists.”
Red Army soldiers with prisoners of Nazi concentration camp, 1945. Source: Wikimedia Commons
As European leaders gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate 80 years since its liberation, they upheld a revisionist narrative that downplays the role of the Red Army in defeating Nazism
On January 27, 1945, soldiers of the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp where over one million people—overwhelmingly Jews—were murdered. Eighty years later, European leaders gathered in Poland, now home to the Auschwitz memorial, to hear survivor testimonies and reaffirm the commitment to ensuring such atrocities never happen again.
Yet this year’s commemoration came with a blazing omission. Despite the USSR’s vital role in defeating Nazi Germany and its allies—at the cost of over 20 million Soviets’ lives—there were no representatives of the Russian Federation at Auschwitz. In its pursuit of punishing Russia for the war in Ukraine, the European Union (EU) has virtually erased the Red Army’s contributions from the narrative. Leaders like Ursula von der Leyen and Giorgia Meloni issued statements of remembrance while avoiding any mention of the USSR. Only left politicians dared to talk about the full picture in their messages on the day of remembrance.
These events have to be read as part of a broad revisionist trend spreading through Europe, in which far-right parties, such as Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and France’s National Rally, are using anti-communist tropes to rewrite history. This trend has taken root among mainstream parties as well. Just days before Holocaust remembrance day, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning Russia for “exploiting the narrative of the ‘liberation of Europe from Nazism.’” The text of the resolution also criticized the restoration of Lenin’s monuments in Ukraine and called for a “pan-European” memorial for “victims of the 20th century totalitarian regimes,” a vocabulary that aims to equate fascism and communism.
In what can only be described as a severe case of historical amnesia, the parliamentaries proposed a ban on “both Nazi and Soviet communist symbols” across the EU. As some have pointed out, implementing such a ban would complicate commemorations like the one on Monday, given the prominence of Soviet uniforms in archival photographs of liberation.
While the EU is entertaining itself with erasing communism’s role in defeating Nazism in World War II, it seems to have learned extremely little from the Holocaust itself. The first phase of a ceasefire in Gaza had not even begun when Polish authorities announced they would allow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the Auschwitz commemoration—despite an International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges. Though Netanyahu ended up not attending himself, the mere possibility highlights Europe’s willingness to overlook crimes against humanity if committed by its current allies.
“Laying claim to the memory of one genocide in order to justify another genocide is morally and politically unacceptable,” historian Enzo Traverso said in a recent interview with Jacobin, commenting on Europe’s reactions to the genocide in Gaza. “The memory of Auschwitz should be mobilized to impede new genocides, not to justify them.”
By refusing to acknowledge the full history of Nazism’s defeat in 1945—especially the contributions of the Red Army and communist movements—Europe only fuels the rise of the far-right. Parties like Alternative for Germany (AfD), National Rally and Brothers of Italy may avoid explicit antisemitism in their platforms, but their policies thrive on the same hatred and violence that drove the Holocaust. As these parties gain electoral ground, the slogan “Never again is now” is becoming increasingly difficult to believe.
Protesters hold up a banner reading “NO” with the O shaped like an Adolf Hitler caricature during a demonstration against right-wing extremism, U.S. President Donald Trump, and right-wing billionaire Elon Musk on January 25, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo: Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
“We must not forget the tragic lesson of our past,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “Evil, violence and contempt cannot triumph anew.”
Billionaire enterpreneur Elon Muskinsisted at a far-right rally in Germany over the weekend that the European country must move “beyond the past” and leave behind the memory of one of the deadliest genocides in history—but as leaders on the continent marked the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp liberation on Monday, several made clear that Musk’s advice was not welcome.
Musk’s comments on “‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Sunday. “Especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on the social media platform X, “I couldn’t agree more.”
The country’s ambassador to Israel said that while Musk claimed German children are treated as “guilty of the sins” of the Nazis during World War II, the government simply wants “them to grow up informed and responsible and to apply the lessons of Germany’s past.”
As Common Dreams reported, the Tesla CEO and key adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump made the remarks at a rally for Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Saturday, five weeks before Germans are set to vote in federal elections.
AfD is currently polling at 19%, trailing the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is in first place at 28%. But leaders across Europe, including Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Scholz have warned that Musk appears to be angling for the spread of far-right ideologies—including neo-Nazism—in European countries.
The AfD has been designated a “suspected extremist” group by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, and one of its candidates for public office last year said that “not all” Nazis who worked for Adolf Hitler’s government were criminals.
The party has been ostracized in Germany, with other political groups including the CDU ruling out the formation of a coalition government with the AfD, but last week CDU leader Friedrich Merz said he would push for tougher anti-immigration proposals even if they were submitted by the AfD.
Scholz, who represents the Social Democrats, toldStuttgarter Zeitung in response to Merz’s comments that “the firewall to the AfD must not crumble.”
As Tusk oversaw the liberation of Auschwitz anniversary on Monday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he alluded to Musk’s comments at the AfD rally.
“We must not forget the tragic lesson of our past,” he said on X, which is owned by Musk. “Evil, violence, and contempt cannot triumph anew.”
Musk’s comments came days after he appeared to flash a Nazi salute twice at an event for Trump’s inauguration.
In the U.S. on Sunday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker addressed Musk’s remarks at the AfD rally on CNN, asking why Trump hadn’t spoken out against them.
“President Trump ought to be calling that out,” said the Democratic governor. “If he doesn’t agree with Elon Musk, if he doesn’t agree with two Sieg Heils at his own rally, and backing a party that backs Nazis, then he ought to say so. Why isn’t Donald Trump speaking out?”
