Steve Witherden, MP for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr, held a Parliamentary debate on British arms sales to Israel (Image: Parliament TV)
A WELSH Labour MP has called on the UK Government to suspend all arms sales to Israel to ensure that the UK is not “complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza”.
Steve Witherden, MP for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr, held a Parliamentary debate on British arms sales to Israel on Monday evening, calling on the UK Government to suspend all arms exports.
During the debate, Witherden described Gaza as a “slaughterhouse” and said that the UK Government is still letting the “weapons flow” into Israel despite the country’s genocidal acts on Gaza.
Witherden also highlighted the lack of transparency surrounding the true extent of UK military exports to Israel, particularly regarding the supply of components for the F-35 fighter jet programme, and urged ministers to outline the specific conditions that would trigger a halt to further exports.
“The Government have claimed that there are red lines that would trigger a halt to exports, but Gaza is already a slaughterhouse,” Witherden said.
“Children are emaciated or dying of hunger, hospitals have been intentionally destroyed and Israel’s leaders vow to wipe out Gaza, and still the weapons flow, so finally, Minister, where is our red line?”
The Labour MP added: “I call on this Government to suspend all arms exports to Israel, to ensure that no British-made weapons are used in Israel’s brutal plans to annex, starve and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population.
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.
Keir Starmer and David Lammy’s remarkable attempts to publicly realign their government’s support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza reflect similar shifts recently performed by political leaders in France, Canada, the US and Germany.
On 20 May, Starmer told MPs that innocent children’s suffering in Gaza was “intolerable”, while Lammy called it “abominable”. Lammy condemned Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s call to “purify Gaza” by ethnic cleansing as “dangerous, repellent and monstrous”[1].
By 26 May even the GermanChancellor, Friedrich Merz admitted that Israel’s actions in Gaza “can no longer be justified”.
Given such politicians’ unstinting support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, we may be forgiven for questioning whether their latest pronouncements indicate a shift in policy, a rhetorical attempt to placate public opposition to state collusion in genocide, or an insurance policy against being named in future legal proceedings.
In fact, Lammy’s suspension of UK-Israel free trade talks on 20 May in response to Israel’s block on aid to Gaza was swiftly followed on 26 May by an official visit to the port of Haifa by UK Trade Envoy, Lord Ian Austin, who as the UK Embassy to Israel triumphantly tweeted was “witnessing cooperation at every stop”[2].
While President Trump’s recent decision not to visit Israel was a signal to US allies to adjust their foreign policy stance, UK arms exports to Israel have been a consistent focus of sustained, pro-Palestine mass protests in Britain since October 2023.
Alongside an unparalleled mass movement on the streets of British towns and cities a quiet but effective legal challenge was launched against the UK government’s policy of arms exports to Israel. Campaigners took the UK government to court, accusing it of failing to uphold domestic and international legal obligations by supplying weapons and components used in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Starmer and Lammy’s performed their volte-face in the House of Commons just four days after a landmark High Court challenge by Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)[3] and Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq[4] against the UK government’s decision on 2 September 2024 to continue licensing export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, while suspending other arms exports due to risk of violations of international law.
The High Court case displays a web of contradictions and the hypocrisy of ministers’ public statements on arms sales to Israel. According to GLAN and Al-Haq, it exposed “structural flaws in accountability” in the UK arms export control regime, which “renders it unfit to ensure respect for fundamental legal and humanitarian obligations”.
Al-Haq points out, “In Parliament, the government maintains it is for the courts to decide whether Britain is complying with its legal obligations. Yet in court, their lawyers argued the opposite — they say that such matters are not for the judiciary to examine.”
Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe, representing GLAN points out, “The government has been telling Parliament that it is unable to answer questions regarding its decision to indirectly arm Israel because that decision is being tested in the courts, and at the same time telling the judiciary that it cannot examine that decision because that is the role of Parliament.”
In the High Court, UK government lawyers rejected Al-Haq’s assertion that there is at least a serious risk that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and said there is “a tenable view that no genocide has occurred or is occurring”.
Internationally accepted arguments relating to breaches of the Genocide Convention, in the context of the enormous harms suffered by civilians in Gaza, were dismissed by UK government lawyers as “touchy feely”.
The UK government also claimed it had seen “no deliberate targeting of women and children”, and therefore “no serious risk of genocide”. In its own evidence, the government included a report entitled “Research Report: Long-Range Shootings or Shootings of Minors.” This was withheld from GLAN and Al-Haq, despite a duty to disclose and an explicit request for its disclosure.
The UK government also claimed in the High Court that Israel’s targeting policies were as good as the UK’s. Is that even a defence?
That this happened days before Lammy’s statement to MPs on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will lead many to suspect that Lammy’s latest windy denunciations of Israeli politicians and a few settlers is a red herring intended to shield UK government ministers from charges of arms exports to Israel in breach of domestic and international law.
Lammy in his statement to MPs on 20 May referred to “a new, extensive ground operation throughout Gaza”, “renewed bombardment, new displacement and new suffering”, and said “we are now entering a dark new phase in this conflict”.
The emphasis on the new level of Israeli atrocities in Gaza is intended create a bogus political and legal distinction between the ‘normal conduct’ of Israel’s war on Gaza, impossible to conduct without arms exports, military intelligence and diplomatic support from Britain, and the latest ‘unacceptable conduct’ of the siege of Gaza by Israel, the starvation and mass displacement of Palestinians, which David Lammy and Keir Starmer condemn so robustly before TV cameras in the House of Commons.
Given the sustained horror of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians over a period of 20 months and the growing evidence of UK government complicity in immoral and illegal arms sales, it will be a difficult political trick for Starmer and Lammy to pull off.
As Gearóid Ó Cuinn, Director of the Global Legal Action Network says, “The government has now been exposed as being disingenuous in Parliament and in court; this merry-go-round of delay and inaction is facilitating genocide and needs to stop. A decision in our case will come far too late for the people of Gaza who are being starved to death – the government must immediately end arms sales and other forms of military support to Israel and apply sanctions.”
[4] UK’s ‘flawed’ assessment of genocide in Gaza revealed in court that contradicts claims made in Parliament, 20 May 2025 https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/26458.html
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 For Genocide Vote Labour.UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from Unicorn horn dust
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Palestinian residents flee the conflict zones by car, on donkey carts, and on foot, carrying their belongings to safer areas following intense Israeli military attacks on the Jabalia Refugee Camp in northern Gaza on May 21, 2025. [Saeed M. M. T. Jaras – Anadolu Agency
The Israeli army controls over 77% of the Gaza Strip, local authorities said on Sunday, Anadolu reports.
“Field data and verified analysis indicate that the Israeli occupation forces now effectively control approximately 77% of Gaza’s total geographic area,” Gaza’s government media office said in a statement.
The Israeli army gained control through “direct ground offensives, the deployment of its forces in residential and civilian areas, or preventing Palestinians from accessing their areas, lands, and properties via intensified fire, or forced evacuation,” it added.
The office strongly condemned the Israeli plans of mass displacement, ethnic cleansing, systematic genocide, and settler colonialism by force, “under the cover of a siege and an open war targeting both people and infrastructure.”
It held Israel and its supporters, including the US, UK, Germany, and France, fully responsible for the crime of genocide in Gaza.
On Thursday, Israel Hayom newspaper said that the army plans to control 70-75% of Gaza within nearly three months as part of an expanded military campaign in the enclave.
Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing more than 53,900 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war crimes against defenseless civilians in the enclave.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘‘not a genocide’‘ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from Unicorn horn dust
Victims of the Israeli attack are taken from the morgue of al-Nasser Hospital to be buried after funeral procedures, on May 19, 2025 in Khan Younis. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The United Nations human rights chief called Israel’s intensifying assault on Gaza “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.”
The Israeli military on Monday designated Gaza’s second-largest city a combat zone and ordered all residents to evacuate ahead of an “unprecedented attack,” the latest escalation of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocidal assault on the enclave’s besieged and starving population.
The forced displacement order came as Israeli tanks and troops pushed further into the Gaza Strip as part of a renewed ground assault on the territory, which has been decimated by relentless bombings that began in the aftermath of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said Monday that the rate of Israeli killings in Gaza has intensified significantly in recent days, crushing any lingering hope of an imminent cease-fire and heightening alarm over the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian emergency on the ground.
The group estimated that more than 300,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced between May 12 and 18, with that number set to grow with the evacuation of Khan Younis.
“This surge in lethal attacks is part of a broader escalation by the Israeli military, marked by a scorched-earth policy and the systematic destruction of Gaza’s remaining residential areas and infrastructure,” said Euro-Med. “The ongoing campaign—now in its 19th month—has been characterised by mass killings, enforced starvation, and the deliberate dismantling of life-sustaining systems, with the explicit aim of eradicating the Palestinian population in Gaza and eliminating any possibility of return or reconstruction.”
Avichay Adraee, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), wrote in a social media post early Monday that “from this moment, Khan Younis governorate will be considered a dangerous combat zone.”
“The IDF will launch an unprecedented attack to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations in this area,” Adraee continued. “For your safety, evacuate immediately.”
Video footage posted to social media showed Israeli airstrikes pounding the area and residents scrambling to evacuate their families, many of whom have already been displaced multiple times since late 2023.
“They are literally forcing all of Gazans into a concentration camp in what used to be Rafah in southern Gaza, after destroying it. They are now planning on annihilating Khan Younis,” Elia Ayoub, a researcher based in the United Kingdom, wrote Monday. “There’s never been a genocide so thoroughly documented as it was live-streamed straight to our phones.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes in Gaza, said Monday that the IDF is moving to seize “full control” of the “entire strip” while allowing in “minimal” humanitarian aid—remarks that deepened concerns about Israeli plans to starve out Gaza’s population and annex the territory.
“If this means annexation, it violates international law,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in response to Netanyahu’s comments. “Sweden maintains that the territory of Gaza must not be changed or reduced.”
“There needs to be a cease-fire and end to the fighting, and the hostages must be released,” she added. “No more statements or plans from the Israeli government that exacerbate the situation for civilians in Gaza.”
Over the past 24 hours, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 130 people, bringing the official death toll since October 2023 to 53,486, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
In a statement late last week, United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk warned that Israel’s “latest barrage of bombs” and “methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods”—as well as the cut-off of humanitarian assistance—signals “a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.”
“We must stop the clock on this madness,” said Türk.
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 For Genocide Vote Labour.
