An Israeli soldier points his weapon during a military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus, June 10, 2025
THE MINISTRY of Defence has admitted that Israeli troops are currently being trained in Britain as the government is accused of “active participation” in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Armed forces minister Luke Pollard responded to a parliamentary question from Rachael Maskell MP by saying that Britain is “currently training” Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) personnel on “UK-based training courses.”
Mr Pollard said the training was one part of a “routine defence engagement” with Israel.
His response followed investigations into the British army’s training of Israeli personnel by media outlet Declassified.
Labour MP Richard Burgon, who chairs the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, told the Morning Star the admission was “truly sickening, especially given the genocide being carried out in Gaza.
“It’s also a flagrant violation of international law. The International Court of Justice has been totally clear that all states must stop any co-operation that aids Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
“Britain has a moral and legal duty to immediately end all arms sales and military co-operation with Israel.”
The Scottish Greens also hit back at the government’s admission, saying Britain’s role in the Gaza war “goes beyond complicity.”
Party co-leader Patrick Harvie MSP said: “This is nothing short of disgraceful. This goes beyond complicity — it is direct, active participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
“The UK is actively training members of the Israeli military while they carry out a brutal assault on Gaza.
“Every bomb dropped, every home destroyed, every child killed is a crime that the UK government is now tied to.
“Training soldiers who are part of these atrocities is a betrayal of every principle of human rights and international law. It must stop now.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign deputy director Peter Leary said the “disgraceful” revelation highlights the total inadequacy of the government’s actions.
“On Tuesday, Britain announced long-overdue sanctions against two Israeli ministers but continues to supply weapons to a regime that is perpetrating well-documented war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“We need much more than just a change of rhetoric and blocks on two ministers’ bank accounts.
“We need a full arms embargo, wide-ranging sanctions on the Israeli state, and a complete end to all military co-operation now.”
In a statement to the Morning Star, a spokeswoman from the Stop The War Coalition said: “That Britain is actively involved in training a foreign military currently engaged in genocide comes as little surprise given Labour ministers have been actively enabling the brutality of the IDF throughout.
“The political rhetoric may be starting to shift as Keir Starmer, David Lammy and the rest try to realign their government’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza in an attempt to placate public opposition.
“But it’s clearer than ever just how deep their collaboration with and enabling of war crimes goes.”
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/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Ukip leader with his ‘goons’ intimidating aid workers and migrants in Calais. Photo: Lachlan Macrae
This is what happens ‘when you’ve got a prime minister echoing Enoch Powell’.
British far-right thugs harassing migrants in northern France are being encouraged by mainstream politicians’ increasingly dehumanising rhetoric, aid workers have told Novara Media.
Faced with daily police violence and no safe route to the UK, migrants living in refugee camps in northern France have more than enough to worry about. But just to make things even worse, last week far-right troublemaker Nick Tenconi turned up with a mob of activists who filmed themselves intimidating migrants and aid workers for a self-promotional video.
Wearing black leather gloves, a stab vest and wielding a megaphone, Tenconi is seen goading aid workers by calling them “communists”, “Nazis” and “terrorists”, and tells viewers that leftists are “architects in the subversion of British culture and Christianity”.
Tenconi, who is 41 years old, gets exasperated when aid workers won’t “rationalise” with his arguments before telling them to “go win a war”. This was then packaged as a promotional video for Ukip, ending with a plea for money for this “vital work”.
Ukip’s national chairman Ben Walker has set up a crowdfunding page asking the public to donate £50,000 to support “a crucial initiative” to “secure our borders”. Making a sinister – and almost certainly fabricated – claim that the party had just “conducted its first operation… collaborating with French police to locate and stop small boats from crossing the channel”, the fundraiser asked for donations in order to “maintain designated teams on rotas in the North of France, working tirelessly to prevent the dangerous and illegal crossing of our borders.”
Tenconi is leader of Ukip and far-right group Turning Point UK (TPUK). TPUK was behind a series of protests against drag performances in south London pubs in 2023. Last year, Novara Media reported how TPUK was a key force organising far-right action against leftwingers and Palestine protests, sometimes descending into disorder, while attempting to maintain links with leading figures in the Conservative party. Its honorary president, Marco Longhi, has since defected from the Tories to Reform.
Pro-Palestinian activists wave Palestinian flags and keffiyehs from open bus windows as they, along with around 1,000 other participants in the Sumud or “Resilience” Convoy, depart from Tunis, Tunisia, on June 9, 2025. (Photo: Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“A tsunami of humanity is rising for Gaza.”
As Israeli forces unlawfully boarded the Madleen, a boat carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and detained the volunteers on the vessel on Monday, approximately 1,000 pro-Palestinian advocates from across Northwest Africa were boarding a convoy of buses and cars in Tunisia—planning to travel for days to the Rafah crossing, where they aim to break Israel’s blockade that’s starving people across the war-torn enclave.
The Sumud Convoy, whose name means “steadfastness” or “resilience” in Arabic, is carrying aid and being led by the Coordination of Joint Action for Palestine in Tunisia, and has ties to the Global March for Gaza, which includes rights advocates from about 50 countries across the world who were en route to Cairo on Wednesday.
“This is a civil and popular initiative in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Wael Naouar, a member of the organizing team, told The New Arab. “We refuse to remain silent.”
The convoy crossed into Libya on Tuesday and has been resting after a full day of travel as organizers wait for permission to cross the eastern part of the divided country.
In Tripoli in the western region, the volunteers have been welcomed by hundreds of locals, and fuel station owners have reportedly said they will provide free gas to all cars, buses, and trucks that join the convoy.
Thousands of North African volunteers launched a mass land convoy toward Gaza, aiming to break the Israeli blockade through Egypt. pic.twitter.com/OLuX7iZzh4
Along with the current delay in receiving approval from eastern Libyan authorities to cross the region, the convoy and the Global March for Gaza could face resistance from the Egyptian government as organizers plan to march for three days from El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula to the Rafah crossing.
Egypt classifies the area between El Arish and Rafah as a military zone and has not released a statement on whether it will allow the march.
If the volunteers make it to the Rafah crossing, they will have to contend with the Israel Defense Forces. In addition to abducting international activists including Swedish climate leader Greta Thunberg and Palestinian-French member of European Parliament Rima Hassan this week, Israeli forces killed 10 activists carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza on a Turkish flotilla in 2010.
Ghaya Ben Mbarek, an independent journalist from Tunis, told Al Jazeera that people in the convoy “are feeling courage and anger” as they head toward the Gaza border.
“The message people here want to send to the world is that even if you stop us by sea, or air, then we will come, by the thousands, by land,” Ben Mbarek told Al Jazeera. “We will literally cross deserts… to stop people from dying from hunger.”
Fadi Quran of the U.S.-based advocacy group Avaaz said the journey of the convoy—which has been growing as more people have joined since leaving Tunisia—is “one of the most beautiful things humanity has to offer in 2025.”
“A tsunami of humanity is rising for Gaza,” said Quran. “Amplify it.”
If you’re not watching people across North Africa come out in droves to celebrate the convoy to break the siege, you’re missing out on one of the most beautiful things humanity has to offer in 2025.
The Sumud Convoy is supported by the Tunisian General Labor Union, the National Bar Association, the Tunisian League for Human Rights, and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, while groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement and CodePink are affiliated with the Global March for Gaza.
Advocates from countries including the Netherlands, Canada, and Ireland plan to arrive in Cairo on Thursday, when they hope to begin the three-day march to Rafah.
Canadian Sen. Yuen Pau Woo wrote to the Egyptian government on Tuesday, asking for support for the march.
“I believe that Egypt’s support for this humanitarian action would send a powerful message to the international community,” said Woo.
Kellie McConnell, a member of Irish Healthcare Workers for Palestine, also expressed hope that the international action will force governments around the world, including those that have backed Israel’s bombardment and blockade of Gaza, to “pay attention and do everything in their power” to end the attacks that have killed more than 55,000 Palestinians.
“We can turn the tables in this genocide,” said McConnell. “We can stop the absolutely appalling brutalization and desperate treatment of people in Palestine.”
If the advocates are blocked at the border like the Madleen was intercepted on Monday, one activist in the Sumud Convoy told The New Arab, “even that will send a message.”
“People over power,” they said. “If they stop dozens, thousands will rise.”
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/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Tunisians depart on Gaza convoy. Photo: Tunisia Land Convoy
Thousands of volunteers from more than 50 countries are partaking in the Global March to Gaza to break the siege and blockade, deliver humanitarian aid, and demand an end to Israel’s genocide.
An international coalition composed of labor unions, solidarity movements, and human rights organizations from over 50 countries has announced the launch of an initiative to enter the Gaza Strip by foot. Thousands of international volunteers will partake in a large-scale mobilization from Cairo to the Rafah crossing in order to demand an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and to shed light on the catastrophic conditions endured by Gaza’s residents amid famine and relentless bombardment.
Called the “Global March to Gaza”, the campaign marks a significant moment in the international solidarity movement with Palestine. The key objectives outlined by the organizers of the global march are to end the famine in Gaza, facilitate the entry of thousands of aid trucks stalled for months at the Rafah crossing, establish a stable and permanent humanitarian corridor, expose Israel’s crimes, and demand accountability for those responsible.
The thousands of participants hailing from trade unions, rights groups, medical sectors, and civil society have united with a clear message: international silence in the face of Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza is complicity and the people of the world demand action. For the last 20 months, as Israel has carried out its genocide against the people of Gaza, millions of people across the world have mobilized in support of the Palestinian people and to demand an end to Israel’s crimes, marking a historic upsurge in the movement for Palestine across the world.
Seif Abu Keshk, a member of the international committee of Global March to Gaza, said in an interview with BreakThrough News that the march aims to halt the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, ensure the unconditional and immediate entry of humanitarian aid, and demand the lifting of the “inhumane” blockade imposed on Gaza. He stressed that the initiative is purely humanitarian, without any political affiliations or official sponsorship, with all participants volunteering and funding their own involvement as part of a broader effort to strengthen global solidarity and exert mass pressure on complicit or silent governments.
From Cairo to Rafah
Volunteers from the different countries will start arriving in Egypt’s capital Cairo on June 12 and then travel to the city of Arish, from where they will begin their on-foot march to Rafah on June 15. Organizers underscore that the objective is not only to reach Rafah but also to stage a sit-in at the crossing to pressure authorities to open it and allow the entry of aid. They have expressed readiness to endure hardship as a modest expression of solidarity with Gaza’s residents, who have been deprived of food, water, and medicine for the last several months and been under constant bombardment over 20 months.
German lawyer Melanie Schweitzer affirmed that the march is entirely peaceful and civilian in nature, conveying a unified humanitarian message that transcends political and cultural boundaries. Irish activist Karen Moynihan noted that organizers have been in contact with Egyptian embassies and their own national diplomatic missions to ensure safe passage. She stressed that the initiative does not seek to hold Egypt accountable, but rather to cooperate with it and apply real international pressure on Israel to lift the blockade. She emphasized that any state failing to act against these crimes is complicit in genocide – and history will not forgive such silence.
This mobilization comes amid growing global criticism of Israel’s continued blockade on the entry of humanitarian aid and its maneuver to delegate the management of humanitarian aid to a private US company, the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF). The GHF was created to replace UNRWA and other aid agencies working in the region, as Israel argued that they were collaborating with Hamas. Yet the GHF’s aid distribution centers set up in Rafah have done little to distribute necessary aid and became the site of Israeli massacres of Palestinians when Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinian aid seekers on two occasions.
The GHF aid distribution mechanism sparked widespread outrage. Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA head, condemned the incident in Rafah stating that the scenes were “shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe.” He declared that “the crisis in Gaza cannot be addressed by weaponizing humanitarian assistance.”
As global outrage grows at the imminent famine and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza due to Israel’s blockade, the Global March to Gaza, as well as the recent Freedom Flotilla voyage to Gaza, seek to take the action that the world’s leaders refuse to and show the people of Gaza that they are not alone.
From Tunis to Rafah
The international initiative to launch the Global March to Gaza coincides with similar grassroots actions at the regional level, most notably in Tunisia. Since mid-May, Tunisian civil associations, major trade unions, student groups, and youth movements have been preparing a convoy that will depart from Tunis, pass through Cairo, and converge with the global march in support of its demands. At the moment, thousands of Tunisians are on buses en route to Egypt. Organizers emphasize that while the convoy carries symbolic humanitarian aid, it primarily bears a clear political message: No to the blockade, No to normalization, Yes to Palestinian freedom.
Coordination between the Tunisian and international sides has been ongoing for weeks, through joint media and logistical committees, especially with participants from the Maghreb and southern European countries such as Italy, Spain, and France. Tunisian organizers describe the convoy as the “Maghreb wing” of the global march – laying the foundation for a comprehensive grassroots movement stretching from North Africa to the gates of Gaza.
The convoy, which departed from Tunis on June 9, includes unionists, doctors, students, journalists, and activists of all ages – some of whom have previously taken part in solidarity missions to Lebanon or Gaza. The Tunisian coordination committees are now focused on collecting donations, finalizing logistics, and securing transit permits from the Egyptian embassy. The convoy received symbolic send-offs in the capital and other cities it passed through, in a display of popular support and mobilization.
Participants from neighboring countries have joined the convoy, including individuals previously involved in the flotilla attacked off Malta. Around 2,000 Tunisians converged along the route from Tunis to Ras Ajdir crossing, from where they crossed into Libyan territory. For the next several days they will continue across Libya, into Egypt and towards Cairo, then proceed to Arish and finally Rafah.
Tunisia Palestine solidarity convoy. Photo: Tunisia Land Convoy
The convergence of the Tunisian convoy and the global march at the Rafah crossing, expected around June 15 or shortly thereafter, will not only be a symbolic media event but will transform into an open international protest camp at the border. Sit-ins will continue, banners and slogans will be raised, and governments will be called upon to assume their moral and political responsibilities. A unified international petition will be delivered to Egyptian authorities and UN representatives in the region, demanding the immediate and unconditional opening of Rafah and the entry of over 3,000 aid trucks carrying food, medicine, and fuel.
Tunisian participants also plan to host cultural and awareness-raising activities at the crossing, including discussion circles, artistic performances, and live media campaigns to broaden international popular support and expose Israel’s crimes to global public opinion – especially with major international media outlets expected to cover the event.
In sum, the convergence of the Global March to Gaza and the Tunisian convoy represents a pivotal moment in the history of international grassroots solidarity with Palestine. This is not merely a march to a border, it is a march toward the conscience of the world, reviving the power of direct action and sending a message to those under siege in Gaza: You are not alone. From Tunis to Dublin, from Cape Town to Krakow, people are rising for Gaza, carving pathways of solidarity and defiance against siege and injustice.
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/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
House of Commons Handout photo issued by the House of Commons of Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivers her Government’s spending review to MPs in the House of Commons, London, June 11, 2025
UNIONS will not accept any benefit cuts that plunge the most vulnerable further into poverty, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak told GMB Congress today.
Speaking before Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered her spending review, he told delegates in Brighton that ”if 2024 was a year of change, 2025 has to be a year of deliver, a year where the government makes good its promises to working people.”
He said the first of three priorities for the union federation this year was ”to make sure the government delivers its manifesto commitments that won it the election last year.
”I want ministers to also think again on their current plans to reform social security,” Mr Nowak said. ”Nobody unable to work should be left out of pocket and nobody in work at the moment or looking for work should see their benefits cut to balance the nation’s books.
”When it comes to social security, we cannot and will not accept the most vulnerable being plunged further into poverty.”
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An Israeli soldier points his weapon during a military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus, June 10, 2025
