The UK government has been urged to go further on sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, with senior lawyers warning that current measures “fall far short” of Britain’s obligations under international law.
Foreign secretary Ed Miliband last week announced a ban on the trade of goods with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move seen as a major shift in UK-Israel relations. Canada and France announced similar actions the same day.
But 130 top lawyers and legal academics have written to prime minister Andy Burnham to say the measures do not meet the UK’s legal obligations, including those set out in a 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice.
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They said they welcomed the new measures but that the UK must now extend sanctions to more sectors of Israel’s economy, prevent public bodies investing in settlements and enforce a full arms embargo.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Genocide denying [former] UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Medics care for patients at a clinic set up by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) treating severe injuries and burns sustained in Israeli bombardment, at the Rafah Indonesian Field Hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 24, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
“Support for Israel requires you to be against everything good in this world, like an organization which sends doctors to conflict areas to save human lives,” said one observer.
Doctors Without Borders on Saturday condemned allegations made by a British pro-Israel lobby group, which called on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to investigate and potentially proscribe the group, whose medical providers and other humanitarian workers provide lifesaving aid in 70 countries and have worked in Palestine during Israel’s assault there.
As The Telegraph reported, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKFLI) wrote to Mahmood as well as the Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator, calling on the Labour government to investigate Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The group claimed at least two of MSF’s workers who were killed by Israeli forces, physiologist Fadi Al Wadiya and driver Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh, had connections to terrorist groups in Gaza.
Palestine Islamic Jihad published a poster earlier this year naming Wadiya as a “martyr commander,” and UKFLI claimed Al Shalfouh was a sniper for a Hamas battalion.
MSF acknowledged the poster regarding Wadiya in February and said the medical group “had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to his killing by the Israeli Forces.”
“If the Israeli authorities had any reliable information about Fadi’s involvement in military activity, they never shared it with MSF either prior to his killing or when we reached out immediately after he was killed to ask for clarifications around the circumstances of his death,” the group added. “We would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity. Any employee who engages in military activity would pose a danger to our staff and patients.”
UKFLI sent its report on MSF to Mahmood asking her to ban the group, as the Labour government proscribed the protest group Palestine Action last year, labeling it a terrorist group under the Terrorism Act. The government took that action after members of the group vandalized planes at a military base.
The designation put Palestine Action on the same legal footing as Al Qaeda in the UK and made membership of the group—or even expressions of support for it—punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
The demand for the same designation for MSF, said former British Army general Charlie Herbert, was “absolutely grotesque.”
This is grotesque. Absolutely grotesque. There is no more impartial an organisation than @MSF. From Afghanistan to Sierra Leone, they never once failed to impress with their neutrality, impartiality and absolute commitment to humanitarian support. This is complete madness. https://t.co/L6A4LFiXfM
MSF doctors and healthcare workers have treated thousands of Palestinians in Gaza since Israel began its onslaught there in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. At least 15 people working with the organization have been killed by Israeli forces. The group is also currently providing humanitarian and medical aid in Sudan as the civil war there has displaced millions of people and collapsed the healthcare system; in Yemen as the conflict between the Houthis and Saudi-backed government troops has escalated; and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is facing an Ebola outbreak as well as humanitarian crises exacerbated by years of conflict.
“I work in aid, and when people ask who to support I always say MSF,” said researcher and activist Philip Proudfoot. “MSF, wherever I’ve been, are right there on the front, in dangerous conditions, in isolated outposts, providing life-saving support. They’re heroes. UK lawyers for Israel are not fit to wash their scrubs.”
US-based researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said the report by UKLFI demonstrates that “support for Israel requires you to be against everything good in this world, like an organization which sends doctors to conflict areas to save human lives.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
NAZA co-directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham attend the photo call for their documentary at the 83rd International Venice Film Festival, at Venice Lido on September 10, 2026. (Photo by Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images)
The directors of the film—which premiered at the Venice Film Festival—said they “felt the responsibility” to expose insider testimony about Israel’s systematic mass killing of Palestinians.
“We really are looking at… a system of killing, which is mass killing [and] relies on mass surveillance,” Abraham told reporters in Venice on Thursday. “We felt the responsibility as Israelis to use our position… to bring insider testimony into how the system looks like from the inside… And this is the film that we made.”
Szor said that “a lot of these things are also, it’s important to say… known because they’ve been documented by journalists, Palestinian journalists, in Gaza. It’s footage that has been out there.”
“But I think that we felt that there is still some sort of an importance to take those testimonies and put it in a film in a way that, of course, first of all, it’s different to hear,” she added. “The people who designed and operated those systems talk about it in front of a camera.”
According to the film, one former member bluntly said that the unit’s mission was to “thwart peace.”
However, Abraham and Szor said their purpose was not to expose a handful of rogue soldiers, but to examine the machinery and policies behind the violence.
The documentary’s title refers to an Israeli military acronym used to quantify the civilians expected to be killed in an attack—a chilling bureaucratic shorthand for people often referred to as collateral damage, or, in the so-called “War on Terror” still being waged by the United States 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, “bugsplat.”
The film’s sources describe artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, mass surveillance, and the hacking of mobile phones to identify alleged Hamas operatives, sometimes despite the known presence of family members and other civilians.
Israeli forces have operated under loosened rules of engagement that effectively permit the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member. The Israel Defense Forces utilizes cutting-edge AI technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, and destroys them with weapons including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many supplied by the US.
The result has been the killing and wounding of more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Most of the victims have been civilians, including more than 21,500 children killed and tens of thousands more disabled or wounded.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice—also in The Hague—and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
Abraham and Szor are best known internationally for co-directing with two others the film No Other Land, which chronicled ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The film won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature.
NAZA—which reportedly received a 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere—is the sole documentary among the films competing for the festival’s famed Golden Lion. It joins a growing body of recent films about the Gaza genocide.
American Doctor, directed by Poh Si Teng, follows US physicians working inside Gaza hospitals amid Israel’s deliberate destruction of the strip’s medical and healthcare systems.
Last year’s The Voice of Hind Rajab offered a harrowing mix of acted scenes and the actual 70-minute audio recording of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl’s desperate final phone call to Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel amid an Israeli massacre of her family as they were trapped in a car under tank fire.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The change in policy is a direct result of sustained pressure from activists and organisers across the Palestine movement. But what comes next?
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We can certainly retain our anger at the government’s complicity. No sanction can offset the foreign policy decisions made by the former prime minister Keir Starmer and former foreign secretary David Lammy, the repression of domestic pro-Palestine advocacy, or the sheer loss of life. But we must balance this with cautious optimism that the political tide is turning.
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The necessary next step is a full arms embargo and an end to cooperation with Israeli security forces – to truly have teeth, these sanctions must not take with one hand and then give with another. Miliband has said that “we’ve already suspended over 30 arms licences used by the IDF in Gaza. That suspension remains fully in place”, and that the government will “now also refuse all licence applications for arms and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation”. But components of F-35 jets continue to be exported to Israel and used for operations in Gaza, as are surveillance technologies such as drones and radar made in the UK by Elbit Systems. This is a total dereliction of duty by the British government.
Miliband’s announcements were a necessary reminder that a just political future is possible and, within it, a reckoning with past crimes. As a campaigner, I have borne witness to Israel’s most egregious human rights violations: I have documented Israeli settlers committing pogroms against the community of Al-Mufaqara, sat in Palestinian villages threatened with home demolitions and army raids, and witnessed the ongoing daily misery of Israel’s apartheid policies. This has all strengthened my motivation to see the end of the Israeli occupation.
Genocide 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/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Ed Miliband is expected to set out the measures in a statement to MPs on Tuesday. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
Ed Miliband to reassert support for Palestinian rights and a two-state solution in move fiercely criticised by US and Israel
Ed Miliband will announce a broad reset of the UK’s relations with Israel on Tuesday, promising the government will take a more active approach in supporting the Palestinian cause.
In an intervention which has already drawn fierce criticism from the US and Israel, the foreign secretary will impose a UK ban on the trade in goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements.
He has also told civil society groups he is determined to reassert support for a two-state solution to the conflict, with an appeal for the protection of Palestinian rights and respect for international law.
The prime minister, Andy Burnham, spoke to the US president, Donald Trump, on Monday night, a call which No 10 said “stressed the importance of a two-state solution”, but it gave no other details of the conversation.
On Tuesday the US ambassador to Israel said the US could issue its own reprisals against the UK. Mike Huckabee, who had claimed the Labour government is gripped by “Jew hatred”, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it would “do great damage to any Brits who are doing business in a number of states in the US”.
Comment by dizzy: It’s an inadequate and delayed response by the UK government following it’s extended active participation is Israel’s Gaza genocide. [11am: Actually continuing UK’s active participation in Israel’s Gaza genocide. Addressing illegal settlements only is inadequate(ed: and a distraction). ]
What’s needed is a total severance of relations with Israel: it needs to be recognised and treated as a state committing the war crimes of genocide and forced displacement. Anything less that that may be regarded as complicity in genocide. Arms sales and military assistance and co-operation must end.
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.Genocide 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
