Transcription
The Labour government have come to the conclusion that there's no genocide in Gaza. Of course, they would say that because they're participants in it. Karma, David Lami, and the Labour Party are Israel's partners in crime. And now we have the evidence.
From December 2023, the British government have been sending daily spy flights over Gaza to collect intelligence which they've been handing to Israel. They were the Shadow R1 spy plane and they were in the air over Gaza for 5 hours. I could track these flights leaving from RF at Criterion on Cyprus and coming back, but the pilot turned the transponder off halfway to Gaza. So, we never knew what they were doing over Gaza for the last 18 months.
But on July 28th, we noticed that a plane was flying over Gaza with its transponder on. We traced that plane back to RAF Critier. We saw that that plane actually belonged to an American company called Straight Flight Commercial Leasing. What transpired was that the British government had privatized their whole spy for Israel program. We started investigating and the whole program unraveled. MOD sources confirmed the contractor was the RAF. MOD sources also confirmed that the intelligence that Britain has been sending to Israel has been sent to the Israeli military. And not only that, this intelligence has been sent to the Israeli military in real time.
So that means when the plane is in the sky and one of the major capabilities of the Shadow R1 plane that Britain has been sending over Gaza is target acquisition for military strikes. Britain is a participant in the military campaign because if those British spy planes going over Gaza were about hostage rescue, why would they be flying around Carunis for 2 hours? Even the Israeli government doesn't believe the hostages are kept there. Carunis at the time was the center of the fighting. So, what that footage looks like is an overflight for the Israeli military campaign.
This changes everything and exposes why the British government were trying so hard to keep secret the flight path of their spy planes over Gaza. We don't know what intelligence the British were gathering over Carunis on the 28th of July for 2 hours and handing to the Israeli military. But what we do know is that on that day in the Carunice area, a 3-year-old girl called Cila Awad was murdered by the Israelis in a bombing attack on her tent. This should be evidence in the war crimes trial.
MOD sources gave a sense of what the feeling was inside the Ministry of Defense itself. They said when those pictures of starving kids in Gaza came out, the UK should have stopped the program completely, not contracted it out to a US corporation. Why did they contract it out to the US corporation? The evidence that the motive was concealment is the fact that these planes are on the block list. You can't access any information about them taking off or coming back to RAF at Criteri. The only way we found out about the plane was when it was in flight and we were seeing its transponder was turned on over Gaza.
The government currently refusing to say how much the contract with this US company is costing the UK taxpayer. That's not tenable. There's no justification for that level of secrecy. It's our money. We're paying to participate in genocide and we're not even allowed to know how much we're paying. Who is the British government working for? The truth is that we're not an independent country and we're not a sovereign country. Our foreign policy is made in Washington. Washington's foreign policy is made in Tel Aviv and this is a recipe for endless war.
Karma's Labor has secretly been allowing Israeli Air Force planes to land in Britain ever since it took office in July 2024. From September 2024 to June 2025, nine separate Israeli Air Force planes have landed in Britain. They all landed at RF Brize Norton, the largest air base in Britain, which was recently targeted by direct action group Palestine Action. The important part about this is that the Labour government has tried to keep this secret up till now. When asked in parliament in February, the UK government refused to say how many Israeli Air Force planes were landing in Britain. This is a huge black hole in the British governance system. How can we have foreign militaries landing in our country, especially ones involved in genocide and war crimes without them having to tell us? It's an outrage.
Importantly, this was a policy change from the previous Conservative administration. So, what changed? Why is Labour now trying so hard to keep this information secret? It's because there's a cover up going on, but that cover up ends now. Labour Defense Minister Luke Pollard told Parliament, "For operational security reasons and as a matter of policy, the Ministry of Defense will neither confirm, deny, nor comment on any foreign nations military aircraft movement or operations within UK airspace or UK overseas bases." This is a lie.
In February 2024, the previous Conservative government had told Parliament that nine Israeli Air Force planes had landed in Britain in the previous 5 months of genocide. The first one landed on the 27th of September, 2024. This was just weeks after Labour had suspended 29 arms licenses for Israel because they said they could be used in Gaza for war crimes. So why was the Labor government also allowing Israeli military planes involved in the bombing of Gaza to land in Britain? This makes no sense and shows that those suspensions were a fraud and a farce and secondly that there's a cover up going on that they don't want to show the real complicity of the British government in the crimes that are being committed in Gaza.
This plane then landed three times the following month on the 13th, the 15th, and 18th of October. There was a brief hiatus after this before it came back in March 2025. Another Israeli Air Force plane arrived in May 2025, and the final one with registration 264 arrived in June. This final plane spent 13 hours on British soil before it flew on. All three planes and all nine visits have been the same plane. It's the KC77, also called the REM aircraft. This is an air-to-air refueling aircraft which is used by the Israeli military to refuel their fighter jets during long bombing missions over Gaza. The plane also carries a satellite communication suite which allows for secure communications with Israeli fighter jets including the F-15, the F-16, and the F-35. This aircraft, which has been landing in the UK, thus serves a critical role for the Israeli Air Force to keep their operations in Gaza going on. So, we're not only complicit in this genocide, we're participants.
This Israeli Air Force plane that has been landing in the UK was also in the air over Gaza on the 19th of October 2024. This was at the same time as an Israeli fighter jet was in the air over Gaza and bombed a residential complex at Bet Laia, killing at least 73 people. Maybe you might think an air-to-air refueling vehicle is not key to the genocide, but it is. In fact, an F-35 pilot has commented, "The most critical benefit of air refueling is it allows us to project and sustain air power. Tankers allow us to fly indefinitely. Even if I was running my power settings as efficiently as possible, I could only stay airborne for about 2 hours." We've all seen the quantity of bombing in Gaza. These air-to-air refueling vehicles are key to those fighter jets being able to stay in the air and pummel Gaza for hours on end.
So why are we hosting these vehicles? I put seven different questions to the Ministry of Defense about what these Israeli military air-to-air refueling vehicles were doing in the UK. I didn't get one response. One of those questions was, "Are we refueling these vehicles in the UK?" They didn't respond. Another one was about what the protocol is for Israeli military planes to land in Britain. Who makes the decision? Again, no response. All the Ministry of Defense spokesman told me was, "It is routine for the UK to authorize requests from international partners for access to UK bases." Then they added, "We continue to work with allies and partners to support deescalation in the Middle East." It's a sick joke. The Ministry of Defense is not being secretive to defend you. It's being secretive to defend themselves from you. They don't want you to know what your tax money is being used for. It's being used for potentially refueling Israeli aircraft that have been involved in the bombing of Gaza.
This is a country whose prime minister is a subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes. This is also a country which is being investigated for genocide at the International Court of Justice. As British citizens, you have to ask who is our government working for? Despite the fact that majority of people in this country want nothing to do with Israel and want an arms embargo on the country, our government, our ministers have been giving orders that allow that genocidal machinery, that military machinery to land in our country. That makes them not only complicit, but participants in what is going on. I believe that we already know enough that British ministers could be prosecuted for their role in Gaza.
If we had a functioning media, this story would be on the front page of every newspaper. I can guarantee it won't appear in any mainstream newspaper. Why is that? Why is our media so controlled? One reason might be that the government is pressuring media not to cover this stuff. Early on in the genocide, it was reported that the SAS, UK special forces, had deployed to Cyprus for quote unquote Gaza operations. The following day, a dnotic censorship order was sent out by the Ministry of Defense to all media to say you cannot say another thing about the SAS and Gaza. We know nothing about what the SAS has been doing in Gaza potentially and Israel for the last 2 years. But maybe also it's part of a culture of obedience to power which exists in the British mainstream media. When you're talking about your government's participation in the genocide, it doesn't get more serious. It's an outrage that no one covers this stuff.
On April 1st, 2024, three British aid workers, all of of the military veterans, were killed in an Israeli air strike. This wasn't a mistake. This was a targeted air strike. Their cars were targeted one by one. In the aftermath, the government refused to give the footage that had been taken over Gaza that day by British spy planes. Again, I ask, who is the British government working for? Isn't their most critical role to protect us and protect our safety? Yet they're refusing to hand over the footage they have of when a foreign power kills our own people. This is an outrage.
Another key component of this has been the UK base on Cypress RF at Criteria, which has become the international hub for getting weapons and other supplies to Israel so they can get their genocide done. It's highly likely that Israeli military planes have been landing at RAF Criteria as well, including possibly fighter jets themselves. In 2024, Kenny McKascal, then Alberta MP for East Loian, asked the Ministry of Defense if any Israeli F-35s would be landing at RAF at Criteria. The department replied, "For operational security reasons and as a matter of policy, the Ministry of Defense does not offer comment or information relating to foreign nations military aircraft movements or operations." This answer from the Ministry of Defense came just a month after the Daily Express had published a story based on senior sources within the UK military which said that Israeli F-35s had up until recently had access to RAF Acriteria on Cyprus. Israeli F-35s, the sources said, had a facility to render technical assistance at the RAF Acriteri base in Cypress.
The secrecy I've described about Israeli Air Force planes in the UK is also mirrored by the secrecy around US Air Force planes in the UK. There's 11 so-called RAF bases in the UK which are actually US Air Force bases. They have been used throughout the genocide to move weapons and other equipment to Israel, but we know virtually nothing about what was on those planes. That's because the UK government has a blanket statement whenever you ask about US activity on our bases that we don't comment on it. That's unacceptable. Anyone who believes in democracy understands that we need a higher threshold for transparency about foreign militaries on our bases than even our own forces.
This goes to the heart of the matter that UK foreign policy is not made for us. It's not made to protect us and it's not made for our interests. What it's made for is the interests of the small elite that runs Britain. Why is our participation in a genocide protecting us? Why is it anything good for us? What it is about is the UK establishment which has been captured by Israel doing anything they can to support this genocide. In that context, the people who are trying to stop the genocide, Palestine Action, are now being criminalized as terrorists. Palestine action sparked the prescription order from Ivet Cooper because of an action at RF Brize Norton. This new story shows that RF Bri Norton is a key part of the Israeli genocidal machine.
Under the genocide convention, states have a duty to punish and prevent genocide. Our state is doing the opposite. And these new revelations show that the UK is an active participant in a genocide. Everywhere you look, the UK is a key part of this genocide and it needs to stop. But what do we do in the context of our government participating in a genocide, lying about it, and trying to keep that participation secret? Well, as journalists, we can expose it, but we also need legal institutions to step up to the plate. I'm talking about the ICC and the ICJ. Now, they have cases against Israel and Israeli ministers, but I think their investigations need to go to London, too, and to look at our ministers. There's enough information there already to launch a case. When a case is launched, they have all different mechanisms to get even more information. My hunch is that we're still scratching the surface. The participation goes much, much deeper. We're talking about a crime which will echo down the ages. This is a crime which will be talked about in hundreds of years and our government has been participating in it from the beginning. Our media has been covering for that participation. So, it's up to us to make sure the ministers involved, anyone in the chain of command is held accountable and faces justice because the victims in Gaza deserve that at the least.
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