JEREMY CORBYN has demanded ministers come clean about the RAF’s use of Cyprus bases to aid Israel.
The former Labour leader, now an independent MP, has written to the Foreign Office urging it to tell the truth about RAF Akrotiri’s role in the continuing genocide in Gaza.
He asked it to confirm if the base in Cyprus was being used to ship weapons to Israel and how many US air force flights had been made from it to assist the onslaught against the Palestinians.
“We deserve to know the full scale of our government’s complicity and participation in genocide,” Mr Corbyn said in the letter.
His intervention follows a Christmas visit by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to the base, where he boasted that it was not possible to talk publicly about the vital work being carried out there.
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 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/QILgUHrdWRE
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on 10 September, 2023 [OHAD ZWIGENBERG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has instructed Israeli forces to prioritise demolishing homes in Palestinian towns and villages within Israel, based on claims that they were built without permits.
According to Haaretz, Ben-Gvir lacks the legal authority to determine demolition policies, a responsibility held by Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in coordination with enforcement agencies.
Nevertheless, during private meetings with Israeli forces, he pushed for the destruction of Palestinian family buildings.
Sources reveal that Ben-Gvir justified these orders as a way to “demonstrate governance and increase deterrence,” even stating: “The best deterrent is evicting a family from its home.”
One source noted: “It was completely clear he meant demolitions in the Arab community. Ben-Gvir is seeking provocation and chaos; that’s what interests him.”
Senior Israeli occupation officers confirmed that Ben-Gvir insisted on prioritising demolitions of occupied homes, even when such structures are not high-priority cases.
The Israeli government justifies these demolitions by claiming the structures were built without permits, although obtaining such permits is nearly impossible for Palestinians under what Amnesty and other human rights groups have described as Israel’s two-tier apartheid system.
Ben-Gvir’s push to add occupancy as a criterion for demolition drew objections from senior Justice Ministry officials, who urged the Israeli forces to assert their independence. “Ben-Gvir is acting like a ‘super-commissioner’,” said one official.
Despite resistance, Israeli forces operations increasingly align with Ben-Gvir’s focus on demolishing Arab community homes, reported Haaretz.
State Prosecutor Amit Aisman and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara are aware of Ben-Gvir’s interference but have yet to confront him directly. Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir continues to issue demolition orders against Palestinian homes.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
On the day the US honours former President Jimmy Carter, a key figure in the creation of the International Criminal Court, the US House of Representatives passed an AIPAC-backed bill to sanction the ICC. In a 243-140 vote, the ‘Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act’ imposes sanctions on the ICC and key figures within it over its arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his ex-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, fueling controversy over US priorities and international justice.
US House passes bill to impose sanctions on International Criminal Court
On the day the US honours former President Jimmy Carter, a key figure in the creation of the International Criminal Court, the US House of Representatives passed an AIPAC-backed bill to sanction the ICC. In… pic.twitter.com/6ItCvvMoe0
The US House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in protest of its arrest warrant for Israeli officials, Anadolu Agency reports.
The bill, which was introduced last Friday as soon as the 119th Congress began, passed in a 243-140 vote.
The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act imposes sanctions on those who aid efforts by the ICC to prosecute Americans or Israelis.
The ICC issued arrest warrants in November for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
US congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, criticised the voting.
“What’s their top priority the first week of the new Congress? Lowering costs? Addressing the housing crisis? No, it’s sanctioning the International Criminal Court to protect genocidal maniac (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu so he can continue the genocide in Gaza,” Tlaib wrote on X.
Rep. Jim McGovern criticised Republicans for prioritising sanctioning the ICC amid the wildfires in the state of California.
“Of all the ways that Republicans have shown this country how messed up and backwards their priorities are, I have to say that this bill that we debating today to sanction the International Criminal Court, the ICC, this really takes the cake,” McGovern said from the House floor.
Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, pledged to bring the legislation to the Senate floor.
The Israeli army has continued a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 46,000 victims, mostly women and children, since 7 October, 2023, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.
The logo of Human Rights NGO Amnesty International is pictured in Paris on May 28, 2024 [STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images]
Amnesty International has suspended its Israel branch for failing to align with the organisation’s stance that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and accused the branch of “anti-Palestinian racism,” according to the New York Post.
The report, published on Tuesday, references a 6 January letter in which Tiumalu Lauvale Peter Fa’afiu, Amnesty’s interim international chairman, stated that the Israel branch had acted in ways that undermined the group’s mission.
The suspension is set to last two years, during which a review panel will evaluate whether to reinstate Amnesty International Israel or impose a permanent ban. The branch retains the option to appeal the decision.
“We take this action in response to evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within AI Israel, which violates core human rights principles and Amnesty values, and evidence of AI Israel’s misalignment with and hostility to Amnesty positions,” read a Monday email from Fa’afiu.
The interim international chairman also stated that Amnesty Israel had actively opposed the organisation’s research and reports, particularly the 2022 publication “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity” and the 2024 report, “’You Feel Like You Are Subhuman:’ Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”
“AI Israel has sought to publicly discredit Amnesty’s human rights research and positions,” wrote Fa’afiu.
“Its efforts to publicly undermine the findings and recommendations of Amnesty’s 2022 report on Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and, more recently, Amnesty’s 2024 report on Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, have been deeply prejudicial to Amnesty’s human rights mission, threatening our credibility, integrity and operational coherence.”
In response, members of Amnesty International’s Israeli branch have pushed back against their suspension, accusing the global organisation of overlooking anti-Semitism within its ranks.
Former Amnesty Israel Director, Yonatan Gher, criticised the move, describing the Israeli branch as “the guardian of the Israeli government against the human rights movement.”
In a leaked email, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard announced that the suspension would be formally addressed on 21 January. Fa’afiu reportedly added that a committee would “determine whether Amnesty International Israel has a future within the Amnesty movement.”
Amnesty did not reply to MEMO’s request for comment at the time of going to press.
dizzy: I am only able to quote a few small parts of this copyrighted article. What it shows is that Keir Starmer’s UK Labour Party government is actively participating in Israel’s genocides far more than people are aware of or that is generally accepted. I recommend reading this article and DECLASSIFIED UK as a source on UK’s active military involvement in Israel’s genocides.
Israel’s military chief Herzi Halevi meets Admiral Radakin in Tel Aviv on 2 August 2024. (Photo: IDF)
The most senior figures in the UK military made at least five unpublicised visits to Israel in the months after it began striking Gaza in October 2023, Declassified has found.
British government data shows that Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff and the UK’s top soldier, visited Israel on 21 January 2024.
On the trip he met the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, “to discuss future operations in the region”.
…
Radakin is also known to have visited Halevi again in Israel in August last year, while in November the Israeli soldier was invited by Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) to attend a meeting in London.
Halevi was given special immunity by the UK authorities to avoid the possibility of being arrested for war crimes while in Britain.
Another senior UK figure who has visited Israel is the head of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, who undertook a trip on 9 January 2024, for purposes which are undeclared in the government data.
The RAF has since flown hundreds of spy missions over Gaza, in aid of Israeli intelligence. The UK says that only information related to Hamas hostage-taking is passed to Israel from these flights, which take off from the UK’s sprawling military and intelligence base on Cyprus.
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 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/QILgUHrdWRE
