Palestinians look at the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in central Gaza Strip, September 4, 2025
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A US-contracted flight over the southern city of Khan Younis in December 2024, the night before Israeli bombing killed 30 Palestinians, indicated intelligence flights from the British base were “being used for fighting on the ground,” according to the journalist.
Britain’s intelligence and military support to Israel since October 7, as well as the continued authorisation of components of F35 jets, “crosses the line into participation,” Mr Kennard added.
Forz Khan, the lawyer who represented the family of Jim Henderson, an aid worker with World Central Kitchen who was killed in April 2024, said it was ”highly likely that Sir Keir Starmer is guilty of genocide.”
Considering the government’s failure to totally ban the sale of arms and to stop intelligence sharing with Israel, he said: “It is highly likely the Prime Minister of this country is guilty of genocide.
“It is highly likely that John Healey, the Defence Secretary, is guilty of genocide. And others who provide support, some of them civil servants, will be found guilty should they be tried.
“Not only has it not fulfilled its legal obligations, the United Kingdom government has totally and utterly breached international criminal law —and UK criminal law— and its legal obligations, as well as assisted genocide.”
Mr Khan also said the government had footage which could have provided further information concerning the killing of Mr Henderson, from an RAF surveillance flight said to be operating at the scene.
He added that it is “absolutely true” that the government is more interested in protecting Isreal than it is in finding the truth about a citizen who was killed in Gaza.
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.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.Vote Labour for Genocide.
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Palestinians gather at an aid distribution point set up by the privately-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on June 25, 2025. [Eyad BABA / AFP /Getty Images]
A group of senior Democratic senators in the US has issued a scathing letter calling on the Trump administration to immediately halt funding to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial private organisation accused of complicity in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians near its aid distribution sites.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Welch, joined by 19 others, urged the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought to cut financial support to GHF and redirect funds to established humanitarian mechanisms. “We urge you to immediately cease all US funding for GHF and resume support for the existing UN-led aid coordination mechanisms,” the senators wrote.
The letter, shared with The Guardian and published on Van Hollen’s website, sharply criticises the administration’s handling of the GHF programme, alleging that funding was approved despite serious internal warnings from USAID officials. The agency flagged “operational and reputational risks and lack of oversight,” noting that the group’s risk management plan failed to provide assurances that aid would reach civilians in need.
GHF began distributing aid in Gaza in late May after the Israeli government approved limited entry of food and supplies through only four militarised sites in the south. The system replaced a UN-led aid network that previously operated over 400 distribution points across the Strip. The shift is believed to have been designed to displace Palestinians and fragment the aid ecosystem in favour of Israeli-coordinated alternatives with the final aim of ethnically cleansing Gaza.
Since GHF began operations, thousands of Palestinians have been killed while attempting to access food near its sites, according to UN data. Witnesses report civilians being fired on by Israeli tanks, drones and soldiers. “Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarised zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,” warned UN Secretary-General António Guterres in late June.
The senators’ letter raises serious concerns that GHF is not a neutral humanitarian actor. The organisation is reported to work in close coordination with the Israeli military and uses American private military contractors, including Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, to secure its aid convoys. These contractors have been documented using live ammunition and stun grenades during aid distributions.
GHF’s first executive director, Jake Wood, resigned prior to its operational launch, stating the plan could not be implemented without abandoning fundamental humanitarian principles. The senators noted that GHF’s system, by forcing Palestinians to travel long distances to receive food, risks facilitating forced displacement.
Despite the mounting evidence of war crimes, the State Department proceeded with a $30 million grant to GHF in June. This was done under a “priority directive” from the White House, bypassing standard audits, Congressional consultation and legally mandated vetting procedures meant to prevent aid from reaching designated terrorist organisations. The grant was also exempted from third-party monitoring.
Further controversy surrounds GHF’s reported involvement in a proposal dubbed the “Gaza Riviera,” a 38-page development plan for large-scale camps, which critics argue would legitimise Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign by resettling Palestinians outside of Gaza.
The senators also demanded full transparency from the administration of President Donald Trump, calling for the release of GHF’s funding documents, award contracts, and any export licences for military services. They questioned whether US nationals employed by GHF-linked contractors had engaged in hostilities in Gaza, and if the administration had licensed the export of firearms to these firms.
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.
A relative carries the body of Palestinian child Muath Al-Basus, who was killed in an Israeli military strike, during his funeral outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, September 4, 2025
UN specialist speaks out as Gaza tribunal told of atrocities
MINISTERS could face prosecution for war crimes as the Gaza tribunal today heard that Israeli military deliberately mutilated boys’ genitals for “target practice.”
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese said that British policymakers who green-lit economic ties with Israel, and who allowed the trade of arms during the genocide met the “criminal threshold” for complicity in war crimes.
The Jeremy Corbyn-led tribunal also heard shocking first-hand accounts from medics and humanitarian workers and legal experts who worked in Gaza.
British doctor Nick Maynard, who recently returned on his third trip to Gaza since October 7, told of the injuries he saw while working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, which he said amounted to a “daily witnessing of war crimes.”
He said that Israeli forces targeted specific body parts of Palestinian children, citing examples of bullet wounds in their head, neck and abdomen.
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Ms Albanese said that Britain’s failure to uphold the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide could leave government officials at risk of prosecution.
She said: “This failure to abide by international obligations alone could be sufficient to establish a case for criminal complicity in the actions of Israel.
“Conduct such as the present and moral support [for Israel] has been found to meet the criminal threshold for complicity for individuals before international tribunals.
“Government officials can be held individually responsible if found complicit of crimes .
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army 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.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
Palestinians gather in the ruins of Gaza City in the hopes of obtaining humanitarian aid packages dropped from planes | Mahmoud Abu Hamda/Anadolu via Getty Images
It’s clear that Netanyahu’s ‘messianic fantasy’ is full control of the territory. Staying silent is complicity
As its appalling onslaught in Gaza and treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank are broadcast around the world, Israel is increasingly encountering international opprobrium. Yet Binyamin Netanyahu’s position is still not under threat from the country’s domestic opposition, whose criticism of his government scarcely stretches to the war.
While that may be starting to change, the Israeli prime minister’s rule will likely persist as long as he can rely on the support of Donald Trump, which shows no sign of abating. In any case, he could probably rectify any significant shift in domestic attitudes by engineering another crisis with Iran.
Why support for the war persists in Israel needs to be understood, and it is worth recalling that before the Hamas attack nearly two years ago, Israeli Jews thought that they were at last achieving a measure of lasting security.
At the time, the occupied West Bank has seen a steady increase in the number and size of Jewish settlements, along with all the strategic roads, checkpoints and patrols that went with them. That helped to ensure Israel could more effectively control the whole area, which was already enclosed by the heavily guarded border with Jordan and the separation barrier with Israel.
More widely, Israel had overwhelming air superiority in the region, which enabled it to project power in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. It was far from complete, given the presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the theocratic regime in Iran, but Israel’s ever-present connection with the United States offered further protection.
Perhaps the most reassuring element was how Gaza had been subdued after the shock of the 2006 Hamas election victory over Fatah, a secular nationalist party that had previously had a majority on the Palestinian Legislative Council.
That election had been held across all the Palestinian territories and was followed by violent Israeli and international opposition to the onset of Hamas rule, as well as conflict between Fatah and Hamas. Within months, Fatah had regained control of the West Bank, while Hamas ran Gaza, which almost immediately became subject to a near siege by Israel.
The first of the four, in 2008, was a 22-day Israeli military offensive that killed around 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. This was followed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) assassinating Hamas’s military chief of staff, Ahmed Jabari, and conducting eight days of air raids in 2012.
Then, mid-2014 saw a seven-week IDF offensive after Hamas kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers. That bitter air and ground offensive led to the deaths of more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis. Israeli losses were mostly IDF ground troops, which is one reason why many senior Israeli soldiers are now reluctant to put troops into Gaza City.
More recently, in May 2021, the IDF killed 260 Palestinians in Gaza, and 13 Israelis died in rocket fire from Gaza. Thirty more Palestinians were killed in further attacks in 2022.
Amid these short but intense wars, many Israelis became used to brief bursts of warfare, which were often seen as a necessary means to control Palestinians. Israeli military personnel even referred to such violence as “mowing the grass”, according to foreign correspondent and author Phoebe Greenwood, whose vivid insights into reporting on the years of war do much to explain the lack of balance in the mainstream media when it comes to Israel and Palestine.
In total, in the 15 years leading up to 2023, in the wake of the first and second Intifadas (Palestinian uprisings) and the control of Gaza, Israeli military operations killed close to 5,000 Palestinians and wounded thousands more. That this was well over three times the Israeli death toll on 7 October counted for little among the great majority of Israeli Jews, enabling the Netanyahu coalition to go to war with those Palestinian “human animals” to destroy Hamas once and for all.
Within weeks, it became clear that Hamas would not easily be defeated. From very early on in the war, the IDF was pursuing the Dahiya Doctrine of punishing the civilian population to undermine support for Hamas. That is failing to the extent that while Hamas has lost thousands of its paramilitaries, there are many thousands more ready to take their place.
As a result, Israel is using increasingly extreme measures, including killing medics and paramedics, destroying hospitals and medical centres, and starving people by cutting off food supplies.
At the same time, the Netanyahu government is conducting an international propaganda exercise, especially in the UK and Germany – two of the states where support is most urgently needed.
In an interview with LBC journalist Iain Dale last year, Hotovely suggested that “every school, every mosque, every second house” in Gaza had access to underground tunnels and that this justified Israel’s bombardment.
“But that’s an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza, every single building there,” said LBC presenter Iain Dale. “Do you have another solution?” she responded.
That response starkly supports Nimer Sultany’s assessment of the situation in an article in The Guardian this week. Sultany, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who is a reader in public law at SOAS University of London, wrote: “Israel is pursuing the messianic fantasy and the criminal enterprise of a ‘Greater Israel’, with the goal of ‘maximum land, and minimum Arabs.’”
Ambassador Hotovely’s views certainly support Sultany’s argument, as does the announcement this week that Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan to take full control of Gaza City. From there, it seems likely that the rest of the Gaza Strip would be next, followed by the West Bank.
Sultany is right to call this aim a “messianic fantasy”. Western political leaders must recognise it as such and radically change their policies on selling arms and sharing intelligence with the IDF, as well as introducing sanctions on trade with Israel. Given the UK’s long-term relationship with Israel, and its close military and security links with the IDF (which exceed those of any other nation bar the US), Keir Starmer should take the lead in this.
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.UK 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.
On Wednesday we were crammed into the unsalubrious court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice to hear the judgment from Judge Chamberlain on whether Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action would be granted a judicial review of the proscription of the organisation.
Judge Chamberlain breezed in and went immediately into a summary of his judgment, beginning with an account of the process so far. This was covered in my last report; the only new information was that the Special Advocate who had been present during the closed session was Tim Buley KC.
In this extraordinary abuse of process, the security services are allowed to bring alleged “intelligence” material into proceedings, which Huda Ammori and Palestine Action are not permitted to see. Nor are their lawyers allowed to have any idea what allegations have been made.
Instead a court-appointed “Special Advocate” is supposed to represent their interests, without being allowed to tell them what the accusations are. Nor can they tell the special advocate what points to make, as in “we absolutely have no foreign funding and have never had any contact with any foreign intelligence agencies”.
Nobody is ever allowed to know what a “Special Advocate” actually does or says in the closed session, nor what the government lawyers or those giving evidence on behalf of the security services do or say.
If I were a Special Advocate, I would do nothing except hand the judge a copy of the Dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and say: “This shows the quality of security service intelligence. Now go and wipe your arse with it.”
Having told us there had been a closed evidence process, Judge Chamberlain then gave us what he said would be a brief summary of his judgment. The link is to the full judgment.
… [A detailed account of events and arguments by Craig Murray.]
So while the granting of a judicial review represents some kind of victory, it is meaningless for now, as both the proscription and the repression continue – as does the Genocide.
I do not have any hope for success from the judicial review – all this is part of the smoke and mirrors of process and legality behind which the British Establishment seek to mask their complicity in the crimes of Zionism.
Palestinians look at the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in central Gaza Strip, September 4, 2025
![Palestinians gather at an aid distribution point set up by the privately-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on June 25, 2025. [Eyad BABA / AFP /Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2221372445.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
