An injured child is transferred to a Yemeni hospital after a Saudi strike in Saada province on 18 October (Photo: Houthi Media Center/Alamy)
Wes Streeting once called for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. Now he’s helping its air force bomb Yemen.
Britain is expanding its aerial refuelling of Saudi fighter jets to include bombing raids on Yemen, despite a major spike in civilians being killed in these airstrikes.
Wes Streeting initially said the UK would only provide air-to-air refuelling for Saudi jets patrolling the kingdom’s skies to ward off drone and missile attacks on airports and oil infrastructure by Yemen’s Houthi movement.
The defence secretary is now letting British fighter jets join those patrols, as well as providing refuelling for Saudi airstrikes on “Houthi military targets in Yemen”.
It comes as last month saw more civilian casualties resulting from Saudi airstrikes on Yemen than any other since 2022, according to the Yemen Data Project.
At least 66 civilians were killed and a further 90 injured, with eight children among the dead.
One of the deadliest strikes came on 22 September, when six civilians including a woman and two children were killed in the bombing of a residential home in the city of Mokha.
That same day, Britain agreed to provide air-to-air refuelling support to the Saudi air force, supplementing the deployment of air defence equipment and UK personnel already in the region.
Saudi forces struck a market in the Al-Taiziyah district of Taiz governorate five days later, killing seven civilians and injuring 40 others, including five children.
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. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), left, speaks with Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI) during a hearing on February 27, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“The American people do not want American military integration with a country responsible for war crimes, international law violations, and mass killings amounting to genocide.”
A coalition of over 50 rights groups on Thursday wrote to leaders in Congress to “strongly urge” them to reject not only specific proposals in each chamber’s version of the next Pentagonbudget, but also “any legislation seeking to intertwine US and Israeli defense or intelligence capabilities.”
The provision in the House-approved National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (HR 8800) is Section 219—previously titled Section 224—and the related but slightly different proposal in the pending Senate bill (S. 4784) is Section 1217. Congressional leadership is expected to negotiate a version of the full NDAA that can pass both GOP-controlled chambers.
“The provisions would establish a new US Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative aimed at accelerating joint research, development, and integration of Israeli-origin and jointly developed defense technologies into US military systems and programs of record,” says the new letter to the chairs and ranking members of both Armed Services committees: Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-RI) and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
“This would expand US-Israeli military integration across some of the most sensitive domains of emerging technology, including quantum computing, AI and autonomous systems, cyber and electronic warfare, directed energy, and defense industrial base co-production, while expediting pathways from R&D into procurement,” notes the letter, first reported by Reuters.
Congressional consideration of the provision comes nearly three years into US-armed Israeli forces’ campaign in the Gaza Strip—decried as genocide by many activists, experts, and governments around the world—in response to the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel. The violence has claimed over 73,000 Palestinian lives and continues, despite a nearly year-old ceasefire.
“These facts alone should prevent even the discussion of deepening military ties, especially given the complete inability of the United States to apply existing laws, such as the Foreign Assistance Act or the Arms Export Control Act, that would require the suspension of US military aid and arms transfers to Israel,” the groups argued. “The American people do not want American military integration with a country responsible for war crimes, international law violations, and mass killings amounting to genocide.”
Pointing to polling that has shown growing opposition to US military aid to Israel “across the political spectrum,” the coalition wrote that “Section 219/1217 works to hide continuing US military support to Israel from public scrutiny and congressional oversight and involvement. Far from working to shift the US-Israel relationship in line with American public opinion, this section encourages the direct use of Israeli-manufactured technology into the US’ systems, which may render the United States dependent on Israel’s provision of such technologies, and make disentangling the relationship in the future ever more difficult.”
“At a time in which American interests are increasingly diverging from those of Israel, and American public opinion is turning increasingly against unconditional support to Israel, creating new points of influence for Israel in the U.S. defense-technology ecosystem is exceptionally dangerous,” stresses the letter.
It also sounds the alarm about Section 622 of the 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act, which was introduced in May by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and “would limit the president’s ability to restrict America’s intelligence-sharing and military collaboration with Israel by requiring the president to identify and document a specific national security concern that necessitates any changes, and expand intelligence sharing and cooperation with countries that have normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords.”
“Governments have an obligation to ensure the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms when advancing their national security interests, including countering threats to their populations’ right to privacy or other freedoms,” the letter declares. “Intertwining US and Israeli information-gathering and defense raises significant concerns given the recent evidence of Israeli espionage against people in the US, including government officials.”
Signatories include A New Policy, Amnesty International USA, Demand Progress, IfNotNow Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, Just Foreign Policy, National Lawyers Guild, National Nurses United, Peace Action, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, RootsAction, Win Without War, and dozens of other organizations.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.
US President Donald Trump gestures while boarding Air Force One at Morristown Airport, August 16, 2026
YURI GAGARIN, the first man in space, famously said that looking at the world from the cosmos you realise it is “too small for conflict and just big enough for co-operation.”
He spoke at the height of the cold war of a world under the shadow of nuclear war. That threat is still with us and growing.
But Met Office warnings that we face the strongest El Nino weather phenomenon on record, and that 2027 may well be the hottest year on record in consequence, underline the urgency of international co-operation on the other great menace of our age, the climate emergency.
El Nino — a weakening or reversing of the usual direction of trade winds over the Pacific, which slows the upswell of colder, deeper water to replace warm surface waters in the ocean that covers half the planet, with knock-on effects on worldwide weather — is a periodic event and scientists are not sure climate change has affected it.
…
It should be obvious by now beyond the traditional anti-imperialist left that, as far as Britain’s foreign policy goes, we are on the wrong side: tied to a superpower bent on a globally destructive course.
However ministers might distance themselves from this or that aspect of Trumpism, the overarching narrative of our politics — the need to militarise for great-power conflict — serves the interests of the US-led bloc and its determination to maintain worldwide dominance. That dominance is being used to corral ever more countries toward social and ecological catastrophe.
dizzy: I have been thinking along these same lines – that not only the UK but also European countries need to make a break with Trump and the United States. Why would anyone have warm relations with their own executioner?
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
I mentioned a short time ago that I needed to write a piece on terrorism. This is the first published draft, it may well change.
I decided to publish a piece on terrorism while Anne Widdicombe murder featured prominently in the UK press. Anne Widdicombe was a well-known UK politician who like many Reform politicians had transferred her allegiances from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party plc. An intolerant bigot, it’s unclear whether she was immigration and justice spokesperson for the Reform party plc when she was violently murdered by a 28 year old man repeatedly wielding a hammer.
The London Metropolitan Police lead on terrorism policing in the UK. An alleged possible terrorism connection allowed the transfer of the investigation from the regional Devon and Cornwall Police force to the Metropolitan police.
Normal people understand terrorism as being about using bombs to kill people indiscriminately. This is actually very difficult to do because – I suggest that by definition you have to be divorced from normal life, mentally ill to do this – and what we find instead is that nutters attack and kill people using knives, etc.
Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.
In UK, terrorism is defined as attempting to influence the government. It follows that political activists engaging in the democratic process are terrorists – including myself wanting government action addressing climate change, disagreeing with fossil fuel exploitation in the North Sea, objecting to and wanting and end to UK’s complicity in Israel’s genocide for colonial expansion. I have a long history of UK police treating me as a suspected terrorist and interfering in my life for my actions as a political activist.
But this is selective of course. Super rich proprietors of newspapers Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere, etc not only attempt to influence the government but no way are these cnuts regarded as terrorists when they are the de-facto the weilders of power. These are cnuts who support Israel’s genocide and deride climate activists as eco-zealots, etc.
As I said earlier, people understand that terrorism is about people indiscriminately killing the public using bombs. This is what Israel is doing with the UK government complicit in it’s actions. This intolerant Fascist government instead accuses people damaging arms factories complicit in genocide, painting military planes, painting banks or retired vicars and other pensioners holding signs with words banned by the government of terrorism.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Palestinians inspect the rubble of the Abu Latif house hit by an Israeli strike in the port area of Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine on August 02, 2026. [Saeed M. M. T. Jaras – Anadolu Agency]
Hamas accused Israel on Sunday of deliberately escalating its attacks on the Gaza Strip to derail understandings reached with mediators and the US administration on completing implementation of the ceasefire agreement, Anadolu reports.
In a statement, the Palestinian group said Israeli attacks since Sunday morning had killed more than 18 Palestinians and “wiped out” entire families.
The bombardment constituted “a deliberate escalation by the government of war criminal Netanyahu, aimed at obstructing the understandings reached with the mediators, including the US administration, to complete the implementation of the ceasefire agreement,” it said.
Hamas called on the mediators and guarantors of the ceasefire agreement to “assume their responsibilities,” condemn the Israeli attacks and “immediately” pressure Israel to halt its assaults and comply with the agreement.
The group described the attacks as acts that “amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” and called on the international community to take legal action to hold Israeli leaders accountable.
It also urged measures to protect Palestinians, who it said continued to face “the threat of genocide and displacement.”
On Friday, the Peace Board and US President Donald Trump announced an agreement to implement the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire, with the board saying Hamas had accepted a detailed roadmap. Israel has not officially commented on the proposal.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
US President Donald Trump gestures while boarding Air Force One at Morristown Airport, August 16, 2026
