Dua Lipa, Massive Attack, Gary Lineker, Primal Scream and Benedict Cumberbatch lead more than 300 figures urging Keir Starmer to “end UK complicity” in Gaza
Other signees include Danny Boyle, Annie Lennox, Tracey Emin and Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos
Famous faces including Dua Lipa, Primal Scream and Benedict Cumberbatch are among the hundreds of people urging Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “end UK complicity” in Gaza.
The requests were put forward in an open letter to the PM, led by refugee charity Choose Love. As highlighted by Sky News, it demands all UK arms sales to Israel are immediately suspended, that there is immediate humanitarian access for experienced aid agencies, and that the government commit to seeking a ceasefire for “the children of Gaza”.
“We urge you to take immediate action to end the UK’s complicity in the horrors in Gaza,” it reads. It also outlines that children in Gaza are starving, while adequate medicine and food “sit just minutes away” – a reference to the 11-week blockade of supplies to Gaza by Israel, which was lifted last week.
Famous figures from the music world to have signed the letter include Dua Lipa, Primal Scream, Massive Attack, Paloma Faith and Annie Lennox. Names from the world of television and film include director Danny Boyle, Game Of Thrones star Lena Headey, Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Riz Ahmed, Maxine Peake, Tilda Swinton, Dermot O’Leary, Gary Lineker, Laura Whitmore and more.
Elsewhere, artist Tracey Emin has signed, as have model Lily Cole, activist Munroe Bergdorf and Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos.
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Original article continues at https://www.nme.com/news/music/dua-lipa-massive-attack-gary-lineker-primal-scream-and-benedict-cumberbatch-lead-more-than-300-figures-urging-keir-starmer-to-end-uk-complicity-in-gaza-3865812
The tangled web of UK ministers’ tales of arms sales to Israel
by Alex Gordon at https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/the-tangled-web-of-uk-ministers-tales-of-arms-sales-to-israel/
Keir Starmer and David Lammy’s remarkable attempts to publicly realign their government’s support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza reflect similar shifts recently performed by political leaders in France, Canada, the US and Germany.
On 20 May, Starmer told MPs that innocent children’s suffering in Gaza was “intolerable”, while Lammy called it “abominable”. Lammy condemned Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s call to “purify Gaza” by ethnic cleansing as “dangerous, repellent and monstrous”[1].
By 26 May even the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz admitted that Israel’s actions in Gaza “can no longer be justified”.
Given such politicians’ unstinting support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, we may be forgiven for questioning whether their latest pronouncements indicate a shift in policy, a rhetorical attempt to placate public opposition to state collusion in genocide, or an insurance policy against being named in future legal proceedings.
In fact, Lammy’s suspension of UK-Israel free trade talks on 20 May in response to Israel’s block on aid to Gaza was swiftly followed on 26 May by an official visit to the port of Haifa by UK Trade Envoy, Lord Ian Austin, who as the UK Embassy to Israel triumphantly tweeted was “witnessing cooperation at every stop”[2].
While President Trump’s recent decision not to visit Israel was a signal to US allies to adjust their foreign policy stance, UK arms exports to Israel have been a consistent focus of sustained, pro-Palestine mass protests in Britain since October 2023.
Alongside an unparalleled mass movement on the streets of British towns and cities a quiet but effective legal challenge was launched against the UK government’s policy of arms exports to Israel. Campaigners took the UK government to court, accusing it of failing to uphold domestic and international legal obligations by supplying weapons and components used in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Starmer and Lammy’s performed their volte-face in the House of Commons just four days after a landmark High Court challenge by Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)[3] and Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq[4] against the UK government’s decision on 2 September 2024 to continue licensing export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, while suspending other arms exports due to risk of violations of international law.
The High Court case displays a web of contradictions and the hypocrisy of ministers’ public statements on arms sales to Israel. According to GLAN and Al-Haq, it exposed “structural flaws in accountability” in the UK arms export control regime, which “renders it unfit to ensure respect for fundamental legal and humanitarian obligations”.
Al-Haq points out, “In Parliament, the government maintains it is for the courts to decide whether Britain is complying with its legal obligations. Yet in court, their lawyers argued the opposite — they say that such matters are not for the judiciary to examine.”
Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe, representing GLAN points out, “The government has been telling Parliament that it is unable to answer questions regarding its decision to indirectly arm Israel because that decision is being tested in the courts, and at the same time telling the judiciary that it cannot examine that decision because that is the role of Parliament.”
In the High Court, UK government lawyers rejected Al-Haq’s assertion that there is at least a serious risk that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and said there is “a tenable view that no genocide has occurred or is occurring”.
Internationally accepted arguments relating to breaches of the Genocide Convention, in the context of the enormous harms suffered by civilians in Gaza, were dismissed by UK government lawyers as “touchy feely”.
The UK government also claimed it had seen “no deliberate targeting of women and children”, and therefore “no serious risk of genocide”. In its own evidence, the government included a report entitled “Research Report: Long-Range Shootings or Shootings of Minors.” This was withheld from GLAN and Al-Haq, despite a duty to disclose and an explicit request for its disclosure.
The UK government also claimed in the High Court that Israel’s targeting policies were as good as the UK’s. Is that even a defence?
That this happened days before Lammy’s statement to MPs on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will lead many to suspect that Lammy’s latest windy denunciations of Israeli politicians and a few settlers is a red herring intended to shield UK government ministers from charges of arms exports to Israel in breach of domestic and international law.
Lammy in his statement to MPs on 20 May referred to “a new, extensive ground operation throughout Gaza”, “renewed bombardment, new displacement and new suffering”, and said “we are now entering a dark new phase in this conflict”.
The emphasis on the new level of Israeli atrocities in Gaza is intended create a bogus political and legal distinction between the ‘normal conduct’ of Israel’s war on Gaza, impossible to conduct without arms exports, military intelligence and diplomatic support from Britain, and the latest ‘unacceptable conduct’ of the siege of Gaza by Israel, the starvation and mass displacement of Palestinians, which David Lammy and Keir Starmer condemn so robustly before TV cameras in the House of Commons.
Given the sustained horror of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians over a period of 20 months and the growing evidence of UK government complicity in immoral and illegal arms sales, it will be a difficult political trick for Starmer and Lammy to pull off.
As Gearóid Ó Cuinn, Director of the Global Legal Action Network says, “The government has now been exposed as being disingenuous in Parliament and in court; this merry-go-round of delay and inaction is facilitating genocide and needs to stop. A decision in our case will come far too late for the people of Gaza who are being starved to death – the government must immediately end arms sales and other forms of military support to Israel and apply sanctions.”
[1] Foreign Secretary Oral statement to Parliament, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 20 May 2025https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territories-foreign-secretary-statement-20-may-2025
[2] https://x.com/ukinisrael/status/1927014394921189849
[3] GLAN and our Palestinian partners, human rights organisation Al-Haq are taking the UK government to court over weapons exports to Israel https://www.glanlaw.org/israel-weapons-sales
[4] UK’s ‘flawed’ assessment of genocide in Gaza revealed in court that contradicts claims made in Parliament, 20 May 2025 https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/26458.html
by Alex Gordon at https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/the-tangled-web-of-uk-ministers-tales-of-arms-sales-to-israel/
dizzy: Hoping that Alex Gordon and Stop the War Coalition do not object to me republishing their article.
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Spain pushes for 2-state solution at international meeting on Gaza in Madrid
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Spain’s foreign minister insisted Sunday that the two-state solution is the only alternative to conflict between Israel and Palestine and is pushing for concrete measures to advance it at an international meeting in Madrid, Anadolu reports.
“What’s the alternative? Kill all the Palestinians? Send them, I don’t know where—to the moon?” Jose Manuel Albares said in a speech ahead of the meeting.
Madrid is hosting a group of 20 countries—foreign representatives from European nations, Muslim countries, and Brazil—as well as international organizations to discuss ending the war, Israel’s siege on Gaza, and advancing toward a two-state solution.
“Gaza is an open wound for humanity… There are no words to describe what is happening in Gaza—but just because there are no words doesn’t mean we will remain silent,” said Albares.
The number of countries in the so-called Madrid Plus Group has doubled, said Albares, with countries like Germany, Italy, France, and Portugal, which did not attend the first meeting, showing up on Sunday.
READ: Israeli army controls 77% of Gaza: Media office
“There’s a lot of diplomatic muscle here today,” said Albares. “We are different governments coming together, but we all believe in the same principles and are not resigned to accepting violence as the natural way for Israelis and Palestinians to relate.”
He said that “time is running out” for a two-state solution, but the Madrid meeting aims to clarify “concrete steps” to turn the situation around for the sake of both Palestinians and Israelis.
Albares said Spain will push for measures to end the war, including suspending the EU-Israel trade agreement, an EU-wide arms embargo on Israel, sanctioning more individuals linked to the conflict, and “making the two-state solution impossible.”
Spain will propose that the upcoming UN meeting on June 16 be used as a “great movement for the recognition of a Palestinian state,” he added.
“Then, around a year later, we can hold another international meeting with Palestine as a full state with complete rights within the UN,” he said.
READ: UN food agency calls for ‘sustained, daily’ flow of aid to stave off starvation in Gaza
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Vote Labour for Genocidal Mass-murder like the Nazis did