The atrocities of 7 October 2023 were far from the first committed by Hamas and followed years of brutality inflicted by Israel on the people of Gaza and greater Palestine. But that day marked the beginning of a whole new horror, as the Israeli government declared the start of what they call The Swords of Iron War.
Calling it a war assumes a battle, no matter how one sided, between two armies. If this was ever what was happening in Gaza, it certainly isn’t anymore.
I’m not going to try to convince readers that what Israel is doing in Gaza is horrific, that we are witnessing not a contested war but a premeditated slaughter. Anyone reading reports of how IDF ‘technical errors’ kill kids queuing for water or seeing videos of civilians burning to death in the ‘safe area’ they were forced into, who hasn’t reached that conclusion has a moral compass far too broken to be mended by one more list of war crimes.
The right side of history?
But whatever title our conscience, prejudice, cowardice or political expediency allows us to give to what we are watching happening in Gaza, the United Kingdom is involved in it right up to Britannia’s neck.
Governments of all shades have always been carefully selective about describing military action as war; they need to reassure their citizens that they are on the right side of history.
While Tony Blair was entirely happy to label the UK’s role in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as fronts in the ‘war on terror’, the Thatcher government balked at telling the country it was at war with Argentina. They simply sent 127 warships, dozens of jet fighters and over 25,000 armed service personnel to the Falklands to fight in a ‘conflict’. Over three years after invading Ukraine, having lost more than 100,000 soldiers, Russia’s ‘special military operation’ has still never been a war as far as Putin is concerned.
The loopholes that allow Britain to arm Israel
So, we are left to define a country’s military action by its deeds rather than the title it gives them. And when we examine the UK’s deeds in relation to Gaza they look extremely warlike.
In September 2024, the Labour government decided that 41,000 deaths constituted some sort of dreadful tipping point and finally announced they would restrict arms sales to Israel. An announcement they have since leaned on time and time again when justifying the absence of any other further action against the IDF. In fact, they only suspended around 30 of roughly 350 export licences, while inventing loopholes so big you could fly a jet fighter through them (which is exactly what the arms exporters did).
So, the UK continues to supply vital components and spare parts for the F-35 jets used to decimate Gaza and its population. Components without which those jets couldn’t fly let alone drop their 2,000lb bombs, including the crucial laser targeting system that enables them to pin-point every hospital, school or church they want to destroy.
Despite a legal obligation to block exports used to violate international law, and admitting the components they supply “might be used” by Israel to commit war crimes, the government refuses to act, claiming to do so would prevent them supplying other partners like NATO. Apparently, unlike Amazon, Deliveroo and Netflix, the government has no way of deciding whom it accepts as a customer.
Defensive or deadly?
Defending the limited number of export restrictions, David Lammy told MPs that “much of what we send [to Israel] is defensive in nature” such as “helmet[s] or goggles”, and “not what we describe routinely as arms”. This may seem to be a conveniently benign description of the headgear IDF snipers and tank drivers wear while they’re roaming what’s left of Rafah.
And it appears this is far from the whole story. Recent reports, based on Israel’s own import records, have found that since the announcement of restrictions on arms sales, the UK has continued to send thousands of items which the tax office describe as, “Bombs, Grenades, Torpedoes, Mines, Missiles and Similar Munitions of War and Parts Thereof – Other”. There have also been four shipments identified as “tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, motorised, whether or not fitted with weapons, and parts of such vehicles.”
Another convenient loophole allows companies like MBDA UK and Britain’s biggest defence firm BAE Systems, to cash in as long as the weapons involved are made abroad. Israel regularly drops GBU-39 bombs on the population of Gaza. The bomb’s wings, which help guide it to its target, are made in MBDA’s Alabama factory with the profits then fed back to their headquarters and shareholders via their base in Hertfordshire.
Spy planes and arms shipments
Then there are the engines for Israel’s deadly drones and quad-copters made by RCV Engines in Dorset, the training of Israeli soldiers in Britain provided by the Ministry of Defence, and the regular supply of equipment made in Wolverhampton used by the IDF to teach their pilots to fly.
The RAF itself has flown hundreds of surveillance missions over Gaza and the West Bank, providing intelligence to “regional partners” including Israel. They also allow the US to use UK military bases in Cyprus to do the same. These airbases are also used by the US to ferry weapons, with researchers from the British Palestine Committee describing RAF Akrotiri as a “logistical supply point” for American weapons going to Israel.
The IDF actively recruits volunteers from all around the world. The number of British citizens fighting with them in Gaza may well be in the high hundreds. The government allows this for dual citizens, and makes no attempt to keep track of them while they are on active service or to attempt to interview them on their return.
British weapons, Palestinian deaths
Following Israel’s latest assault on Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, which threatens to paralyse what’s left of the UN’s aid mission, the UK issued another of its increasingly routine condemnations of a situation Lammy confessed was sickening the British public. But such words sound hollow while the government refuses to take actual steps to curtail the horror. Back in May the government promised to take “concrete actions” if Israel didn’t cease its military offensive and lift restrictions on humanitarian aid.
None of those things have happened, instead we continue to have British weapons, British planes, British pilots, British airbases, and British-born soldiers directly involved in Israel’s war in Gaza. What else would it take before we have to say it’s Britain’s war as well? The arrest, internment and proscription those suspected of supporting the enemy or undermining the war effort perhaps!
Many experts are convinced that when an army blocks thousands of aid trucks so they can lure starving people into death traps run by American mercenaries, ‘war’ isn’t an adequate description for what is happening. Dr Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, is quite clear when he states: “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”
We may not want to call The Swords of Iron War Britain’s war, we may not want to call it a war at all. But, while we supply the weapons and a Palestinian child is killed or maimed every 15 minutes, it’s time to admit that Britain helped to kill them.
