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
Palestinian children play next to buildings destroyed by Israeli army strikes in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, January 7, 2025
PRESSURE continues to mount on the government over its backing for Israel and its failure to take any serious measures to impede its genocide of the Palestinian people.
MPs from all parts of the Commons united at the first opportunity in the new year to demand that ministers act.
Even many Tory backbenchers — although not Kemi Badenoch’s front bench — seem disgusted at Britain’s continuing complicity with Israeli war crimes.
Vocal support for Israel seems to be draining away on the Labour back benches, while Liberal Democrat, SNP, Green and independent MPs are more-or-less united in urging a change of course.
There are several concrete actions they are demanding that the government should take.
First is an end to all arms sales to the Israeli regime. So far the government has only suspended a minority of the licences which permit the export of British military equipment to Israel.
Yet there is now little room for doubt that the Israeli military is engaging in war crimes daily and is in continual breach of international law.
Continuing to supply the Israeli war machine with equipment makes ministers themselves culpable for the consequences.
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
THE fight for Palestinian justice is critical in the “dangerous and unstable” coming year, the government was warned today as campaigners announced a new wave of mobilisations.
Thousands in Gaza entered 2025 battling to survive as Israel continued its ethnic cleansing campaign, blocking off aid and decimating medical facilities and shelters.
The Labour leadership has remained silent on the destruction of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospital, Kamal Adwan, last Friday.
The government continues to hold 330 active arms licences permitting exports to Israel, including for components for lethal F-35 jets that have dropped 2,000lb bombs on the innocent people of Gaza.
Campaigners from across the peace movement have pledged to intensify their efforts this year, pressing the government for a full arms embargo.
A spokeswoman for the Stop the War Coalition said: “As Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank continues in real time, we will not give up our fight for justice for Palestine and for ending this government’s complicity in genocide.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
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/QILgUHrdWRE
Scenes from Israel’s siege on Kamal Adwan Hospital. On the left, the last photo of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya as he walks towards Israeli tanks. On the right, IOF forced health workers and patients to strip and evacuate the hospital. Photo: Screenshots
As part of its ethnic cleansing policies, Israel continues to systematically target medical facilities and health workers across the Gaza strip.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) set Kamal Adwan Hospital on fire on Friday, December 27, putting the largest medical facility in the northern part of the besieged enclave out of service. Kamal Adwan is located in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip and was one of the last functioning hospitals in the area.
According to the Director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Munir al-Bursh, the IOF ordered 350 people including 75 patients and their escorts along with 185 medical staff to evacuate the hospital, and move to a nearby school sheltering displaced people.
Gaza’s Health Ministry stated that it has completely lost contact with medics inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital since the IOF stormed the facility.
The whereabouts of the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, are currently unknown. Dr. Safiya had been providing constant updates on Israel’s siege of the hospital for the last several months and pleading for international institutions to take action to stop Israel’s attacks. On December 2, 2024, he penned a column in the New York Times titled, “I’m One of the Last Doctors in This Hospital in Gaza. I’m Begging the World for Help.” In the essay, he wrote, “We feel as if the rest of the world is wrapped up in a different world from the one we are in. We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip.”
Notably, in its report on Israel’s final siege on the hospital, the Times depicts the travesty at Kamal Adwan as collateral damage in Israel’s “offensive against Hamas militants” uncritically repeating Israel’s allegation that “the hospital was a stronghold for Hamas and that it was carrying out ‘targeted operations’ in the area.”
In a statement published on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) slammed Israel’s arson attack on the hospital, which used to serve over 400,000 Palestinian citizens. “This morning’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service. Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” the statement reads.
“60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, reportedly remain in the hospital. The patients in moderate to severe condition were forced to evacuate to the destroyed and non-functional Indonesian Hospital. WHO is deeply concerned for their safety,” the statement continues.
The WHO clarified that the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital followed Israel’s escalating restrictions on the organization and its partners to access the hospital. The raid also came after repeated attacks on the hospital and its vicinity since early October. The organization considered the assault on the hospital as part of the systematic dismantling of the health system in Gaza, labeling it as a “death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”
For its part, the Palestinian Presidency slammed the attack considering it as “part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of genocide and displacement against the Palestinian people”, and a “serious and blatant violation of international law and international agreements and conventions that protect medical facilities and personnel during armed conflicts.”
The Palestinian Presidency urged global health organizations, including WHO, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and other international humanitarian bodies “to fulfill their responsibilities toward stopping this crime against the Palestinian healthcare sector.”
The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) condemned the attack calling it a “war crime” committed amid “international inaction and full complicity from the US administration.”
In an Al Jazeerainterview on Friday, Hamas official Osama Hamdan refuted Israeli claims that there were Palestinian fighters in the hospital and stated that Kamal Adwan Hospital has been subjected to a massacre for 75 days. Hamdan added that the attack on the hospital is part of an attempt by Israel “to end all manifestations of civilian steadfastness in northern Gaza.”
One day prior to setting the facility to fire, Israeli fighter jets launched an airstrike on a building opposite of Kamal Adwan Hospital. At least 50 people were killed in the attack, including three health workers. Earlier in the month, IOF placed booby trapped devices around the hospital, and eyewitnesses said they saw explosive robots and hidden bombs deployed around the facility.
Kamal Adwan was not the only major medical facility to be targeted by IOF in Gaza during the past two weeks. Israel also intensified its attacks on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and the Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza city, which has prompted doctors and authorities in Gaza to request immediate intervention by the international community.
Yet, despite the numerous cries for help and warnings of dangerous escalation by Gaza’s health workers, Israel has been able to proceed with the destruction of healthcare and its genocide of the Palestinian people thanks to the full backing it enjoys by the United States government.
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
A Palestinian girl carries an empty jerry can amid the ruins of Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 4, 2024. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“This isn’t just negligence; it is a calculated policy of deprivation that has led to the deaths of thousands from dehydration and disease,” said the rights group’s director.
A Human Rights Watch report published Thursday accuses Israel of “extermination and acts of genocide” in Gaza “by intentionally depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths.”
Mirroring language used in Article II of the Genocide Convention to define the crime of genocide, HRW said that Israeli officials “have deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population in Gaza” by deliberately denying Palestinians “access to safe water for drinking and sanitation needed for basic human survival.”
“Israeli authorities and forces cut off and later restricted piped water to Gaza; rendered most of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure useless by cutting electricity and restricting fuel; deliberately destroyed and damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and water repair materials; and blocked the entry of critical water supplies,” the report states.
“In doing so, Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide,” HRW continued. “The pattern of conduct, coupled with statements suggesting that some Israeli officials wished to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, may amount to the crime of genocide.”
NEW: For over a year, the Israeli government has deliberately denied Palestinians in Gaza the minimum water needed for survival, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths.A calculated policy.An act of genocide. 🧵⤵️www.hrw.org/news/2024/12…
HRW “also found that some statements from senior Israeli officials calling for cutting water, fuel, and aid, in tandem with their actions, have amounted to direct and public incitement to genocide.”
According to the report:
Immediately after the attacks in southern Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian armed groups in Gaza on October 7, 2023, which Human Rights Watch has found amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israeli authorities cut all electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip. On October 9, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of Gaza, stating, “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed.”
That same day, and for weeks thereafter, Israeli authorities cut off all water and blocked fuel, food, and humanitarian aid from entering the strip. Israeli authorities continue to restrict the entry of water, fuel, food, and aid into Gaza and to cut Gaza’s electricity, which is required to operate life-sustaining infrastructure. This continued even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures in January, March, and May 2024 ordering Israeli authorities to protect Palestinians in Gaza from genocide and, in so doing, provide humanitarian aid, specifying in March that this includes water, food, electricity, and fuel.
HRW detailed how Israel “also barred nearly all water-related aid from entering Gaza, including water filtration systems, water tanks, and materials needed to repair water infrastructure,” and how Israeli forces “have deliberately attacked and damaged or destroyed several major water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities.”
“Based on interviews with healthcare professionals and epidemiologists, it is likely that thousands of people have died as a result of the Israeli authorities’ actions,” the report states, adding that deaths are in addition to the more than 45,000 Palestinians directly killed by Israeli bombs and bullets.
HRW added that hundreds of thousands of Gazans have contracted diseases and ailments attributable to a lack of access to safe and sufficient water, including diarrhea, hepatitis A, skin diseases, and upper respiratory infections.
“Water is essential for human life, yet for over a year the Israeli government has deliberately denied Palestinians in Gaza the bare minimum they need to survive,” HRW executive director Tirana Hassan said in a statement. “This isn’t just negligence; it is a calculated policy of deprivation that has led to the deaths of thousands from dehydration and disease that is nothing short of the crime against humanity of extermination, and an act of genocide.”
Without naming any specific nations, the report notes that “several governments have undermined accountability efforts and continue to provide the Israeli government with arms despite the clear risk of complicity in serious violations of international humanitarian law.”
The United States is Israel’s main arms supplier and diplomatic ally, approving tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons transfers, vetoing several United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions, and threatening international officials seeking to hold Israel accountable for its crimes.
“Governments should not contribute to the grave crimes that Israeli officials are committing in Gaza, including crimes against humanity and genocidal acts, and should take all steps possible to prevent further harm,” Hassan said. “Governments arming Israel should end their risk of complicity in atrocity crimes in Gaza and take immediate action to protect civilians with an arms embargo, targeted sanctions, and support for justice.”
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
