An RAF Shadow R1 spy plane over the Mediterranean. (Photo: Gordon Zammit / Alamy)
Declassified Exclusive: Royal Air Force has surveillance tape of Gaza from the day Israel killed British aid workers – but refuses to publish it.
Family of slain aid worker demands to see footage
UN expert warns British military may have to hand tape to International Criminal Court
Britain’s Ministry of Defence holds video surveillance footage of Gaza from the day that Israel killed seven international aid workers but is refusing to publish the tape.
Among those killed in the World Central Kitchen convoy on 1 April were three British military veterans: John Chapman, James Kirby and James ‘Jim’ Henderson.
The footage was taken by a Royal Air Force (RAF) surveillance plane which spent approximately five hours above Gaza that day.
It seemingly returned to base in Cyprus minutes before the airstrikes were launched.
The RAF may therefore have collected footage of events leading up to the tragedy, which could provide clarity over Israeli claims that “Hamas gunmen” were seen near the convoy.
The Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces announced on Thursday July 18, that Hodeidah International Airport in western Yemen was hit by three airstrikes launched from American and British jet fighters. No further details were mentioned in the announcement which was broadcasted on Ansar Allah’s Almasirah news website.
Hodeidah airport was subjected to previous airstrikes by the United States and the United Kingdom on Friday, July 12. It has also been a vital target for the US and the UK for several months due to its location in Hodeidah Governorate, which overlooks the Red Sea. The airstrikes are believed to be launched to pressure Ansar Allah to stop its activities in the regional waters in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The Yemeni Armed Forces have begun their activity in the Red Sea since the Israeli aggression began on Gaza in the aftermath of October 7 events, by launching scores of attacks on commercial ships connected with Israel in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The airport was not the only location in Yemen to be targeted by US airstrikes during the course of the current week. “The US launched in its aggression on our country 13 raids this week in Hodeidah and Hajjah, but with no effect, neither in preventing our operations nor in limiting them,” Sayyed Abdulmalik al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Ansar Allah, said during a televised speech on Thursday July 18.” We seek to increase operations targeting ships in Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea,” added Sayyed Abdulmalik.
The Yemeni Armed Forces’s attacks in the Red Sea have had a great impact on one of the most important maritime trade routes in the World, suspending the transit of vessels belonging to some of the biggest oil and shipping companies worldwide. Vessels had to sail additional thousands of miles around the continent of Africa instead of going through the Suez Canal due to the blockade of the Red Sea caused by Ansar Allah’s attacks.
According to the Arab Center Washington DC research organization, Ansar Allah’s attacks represent a new phenomenon in geo-economic conflict being launched by a non-state actor using asymmetric warfare in fighting conventional armed forces, and imposing targeted economic sanctions by attacking international shipment selectively. Shipping companies based in pro-Israel countries, and ships carrying cargos connected to these countries, have lost access to the Red Sea shortcut, namely the Suez Canal, between Asia and Europe and therefore endured additional cost and extended sail duration. Consequently cargo fees have witnessed an increase, including on routes that do not pass through the Red Sea.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) mentioned in a report published in March, 2024 that attacks on vessels in the Red Sea reduced traffic in the Suez Canal, through which about 15% of global maritime trade volume normally passes. The attacks obliged shipping companies to divert their ships around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa as an alternative route, increasing delivery times by an average of 10 days.
On the morning of Friday June 19, Ansar Allah claimed responsibility for a drone attack which struck Tel Aviv and killed one person.
Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Yemen. Photo: TV Al Masirah
With its aggression against Yemen, Israel demonstrates its insistence to provoke an all-out regional war with support from the United States and its allies
The Israeli Occupation Forces launched airstrikes on the Red Sea port of the Hodeidah Governorate, in Yemen on Saturday, July 20. The Israeli airstrikes targeted gas, oil and power facilities within the Ansar Allah-run sea port with F-35 fighter jets, according to media reports.
The Yemeni Health Ministry announced that a number of people were martyred and wounded in the attack without providing further details. The Israeli airstrikes on Yemen came around one day after Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces launched a drone attack against the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. This was part of the military operations which the Yemeni Support Front has initiated in response to Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza.
A couple of hours after Hodeidah port was attacked by the Israeli Occupation Air Force, the Yemeni Armed Forces announced in a televised statement, that the Israeli enemy targeted the power station, the port, and fuel tanks in the Hodeidah governorate with airstrikes, and that all these targets are civilian facilities.
The spokesperson of the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier-General Yahya Sare’e, also said in the statement that Ansar Allah will respond to the blatant Israeli aggression on Yemen and will not hesitate to strike the enemy’s vital targets. He also reaffirmed what was declared in Ansar Allah’s previous statement in regard to considering the occupied Yafa area as an unsafe zone.
Sare’e confirmed that the Yemeni Armed Forces will continue their operations in support of their brothers and sisters in Gaza, regardless of the implications and consequences. He added that they have prepared the means for a prolonged war with the Zionist enemy until the aggression on the Palestinian people is halted and the siege is lifted.
The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, also condemned the Israeli aggression on Yemen. Hamas called on all countries and forces of the Arab Islamic nations to condemn the aggression, urging them to unite, mobilize resources, and engage in confronting the usurping Zionist enemy. Islamic Jihad stated that the Zionist crime against Yemen confirms that the criminal entity poses a danger to all the peoples of the Arab and Islamic nations. It also pointed out that the aggression against Yemen would not have happened without the blatant Western support for the criminal entity, primarily by the US and UK who have also been launching airstrikes against Yemen since January.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at Nachalat Yitzhak cemetery in Tel Aviv on June 18, 2024. (Photo: Shaul Golan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
“We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit Washington, D.C. next week, an American legal group on Friday pressured the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into him and other officials for committing or authorizing genocide, war crimes, and torture targeting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Since Israel launched its retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces partly armed by the U.S. government have killed at least 38,848 people and wounded another 89,459—according to Gaza officials—while destroying civilian infrastructure and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.
“We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza,” says the Center for Constitutional Rights’ (CCR) 23-page letter to Hope Olds, who leads the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
“Given the frequent travel of Israeli officials and citizens to the United States resulting in their presence within U.S. jurisdiction, and recalling that HRSP is part of a coordinated, interagency effort to deny safe haven in the United States to human rights violators,” the letter states, “the Department of Justice must urgently investigate and hold accountable those responsible for war crimes and other serious crimes being committed on a wide-scale basis in the occupied Gaza Strip, including potentially U.S. and U.S.-dual citizens.”
🚨Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered. pic.twitter.com/2id5cpOa58
The Israeli prime minister is expected to be in the United States from at least next Monday to Wednesday for a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden—who is currently isolating in his Delaware home due to a Covid-19 infection—and to address a joint session of Congress, despite objections from critics of Israel’s war including some lawmakers.
“Netanyahu has killed more than 14,000 precious Palestinian children with U.S. weapons and support and is starving all of Gaza—and now sycophants in the White House and Congress are rolling out the red carpet for him,” Maria LaHood, CCR’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. “DOJ’s Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section must exercise its mandate to investigate Netanyahu and hold him to account for his heinous crimes, just as it would an international criminal from any other country.”
The group’s letter says that “in light of Netanyahu’s imminent visit, HRSP should prioritize investigating him… There is overwhelming evidence that under Netanyahu, Israeli forces and authorities are committing genocide, war crimes, and torture against Palestinians in Gaza, acts that are proscribed under federal criminal statutes and prosecutable by HRSP.”
“As the most powerful political figure in Israel, Netanyahu also leads the Security Cabinet, as well as the recently dissolved War Cabinet—the two bodies responsible for setting the strategy for and directing the military assault on Gaza since October 7, 2023,” the letter stresses. “He therefore bears criminal responsibility for the serious international crimes committed against the Palestinian population over the past nine months.”
We also urge the convening of an inter-agency effort to identify the number of U.S. citizens that have actively served in the Israeli armed forces since Oct 7 (including active-duty U.S. citizens) and the impact of torture, war crimes, and other atrocities in Gaza since Oct 7.
Various developments this week have elevated concerns for the people of Gaza. The World Health Organization said Friday that poliovirus has been detected in sewage samples at six locations in the strip, and Amnesty International on Thursday published interviews with 27 former detainees who described being tortured by Israeli forces.
A Wednesday report from Oxfam detailed what the group called Israel’s “water war crimes” in Gaza. That same day, Israeli lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing “the establishment of a Palestinian state” west of the Jordan River—widely seen as an effort to send a message to Netanyahu ahead of his trip to D.C.
International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, and Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice—which on Friday issued a nonbinding advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”
So far, legal efforts to hold the Biden administration accountable for enabling Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians have been unsuccessful. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit against the president, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
CCR attorney Katherine Gallagher, who represented plaintiffs in the case, said that “this stunning abdication of the court’s role to serve as a check on the executive even in the face of its support for genocide should set off alarm bells for all.”
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaks at the NATO Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on July 10, 2024 (Photo: Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images)
“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other,” said one advocate.
Days after independent United Nations experts said the blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza over the past nine months has led to famine throughout the enclave, rights groups on Friday applauded the British government’s announcement that it will restore funding to the U.N.’s relief agency in Palestine—but said the Labour Party will remain complicit in the suffering of Gazans as long as it continues arming Israel.
Tim Bierley, a campaigner at Global Justice Now, said the decision to restore U.K. funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) six months after it was suspended was “welcome and long overdue,” following mounting reports of dozens of Palestinian children and adults dying of starvation in the intervening months.
The U.K. was one of several wealthy countries that suspended funding for UNRWA, which operates mainly on international donations, after Israel in January claimed without evidence that 12 out of 13,000 UNRWA staff members in Gaza had been involved in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and other countries severely reduced UNRWA’s ability to provide food aid, healthcare, sanitation services, and employment to Palestinians, nearly all of whom have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment.
Following sustained advocacy by rights groups and Labour Party lawmakers who support Palestinian rights, Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday announced that the new Labour government, which took control after this month’s elections, has committed to providing £21 million ($27 million) to UNRWA following former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to suspend funding.
Lammy noted in his speech to Parliament that restoring UNRWA funding is “absolutely central” to ensuring humanitarian aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza.
“No other agency can deliver aid at the scale needed,” he said.
The government’s decision leaves the U.S.—UNRWA’s largest funder—as the only country that has not restored its financial support for the agency. In March, the U.S. passed a military spending package that prohibits UNRWA funding through at least March 2025.
Bierley was among those who noted that while the U.K. is committing to provide more humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza, the Labour government is still providing Israel with military aid.
“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other. Labour has had more than enough time to review the evidence: The U.K. must ban all arms sales to Israel with immediate effect,” said Bierley.
Journalist Owen Jones added that considering all countries except the U.S. have already restored funding—with many citing the U.N.’s finding that Israel’s accusations were unsubstantiated—the Labour government’s decision is “the bare minimum.”
“Now end arms sales and stop trying to wreck the [International Criminal Court] arrest warrants,” said Jones, referring to the U.K.’s bid to intervene in the ICC’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Member of Parliament Andy McDonald of the Labour Party called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to “clarify that it supports the processes that will prosecute war crimes and that the U.K. accepts the ICC jurisdiction over Israel, and has no truck with the nonsense legal argument of Israel being exempt from international law.”
I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary's decision to overturn the suspension of funding to UNRWA.
But on arms sales and compliance with international humanitarian law, we urgently need the government's legal assessment – and action.
— Andy McDonald MP for Middlesbrough & Thornaby East (@AndyMcDonaldMP) July 19, 2024
The humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians said the Labour Party’s decision will restore “an irreplaceable lifeline” to a population of 2.3 million Gaza residents who “face an existential threat from Israel’s military bombardment and siege.”
“We hope that David Lammy and the U.K. government will now commit to increasing multi-year support to the agency,” said the group, “to bolster its vital humanitarian work across the region and ensure the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees are upheld.”
