geneva_convenience

A recent column published by The Times newspaper, co-authored by right-wing British historian Niall Ferguson and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, titled, Israel Has Done Most of the Job, Now Trump Can Finish It, has ignited widespread outrage across social media platforms.

The article, originally published in one of Britain's oldest newspapers, calls for US President Donald Trump to escalate military action against Iran in the wake of Israel’s recent operations.

The decision to platform Gallant, who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, has drawn sharp criticism.

Britain's public broadcaster said it would broadcast Gaza: Medics Under Fire after the review into the earlier documentary was concluded. But on Friday, the BBC announced it would not air the film.

"We have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC," the broadcaster said in a statement.

The CfMM report, published this week, examined more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content related to Israel’s war on Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 6 October 2024.

The BBC used the word “massacre” 18 times more often to describe Israeli deaths than Palestinian ones. It offered almost equal numbers of victim profiles for both populations - even though a vastly higher number of Palestinians have been killed. This is not a neutral editorial choice; it is a devaluation of Palestinian lives.

And it doesn’t stop there. Palestinian guests on BBC programmes were routinely interrogated, interrupted, and pushed to condemn Hamas - as if that were the price of being allowed to speak. Israeli spokespeople, many of whom defended war crimes on air, were treated with deference. Not one Israeli guest was asked to condemn the deliberate bombing of hospitals, refugee camps or schools - despite mountains of evidence and international outrage.

The asymmetry extends to reporting on hostages and prisoners. Israeli hostages were the subject of intense coverage, complete with emotional interviews, wall-to-wall updates, and sombre, humanising details. Palestinian prisoners - thousands of whom have been held without charge or trial - barely registered.

Even in cases of prisoner exchanges, BBC coverage focused almost exclusively on Israeli returnees. Who were the Palestinian prisoners? How long had they been imprisoned? Were they tortured, abused, or denied due process? These questions were largely left unasked and unanswered.

The governments of Britain and Canada are sanctioning two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, a move expected to be matched by other allies, in a break with Washington that highlights the hardening stance toward Israel in the West over its conduct of the war in Gaza.

The sanctions, set to be announced on Tuesday, will limit the right to travel and freeze the financial assets of the Israeli security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in Canada and Britain, according to two officials familiar with the plans.

Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, decried the move as “outrageous” on Tuesday.

A British company has sent over 1,000 munitions containers to Israel amid the Gaza genocide, raising concerns about UK arms export controls. The information is contained within shipping documents reviewed exclusively by Declassified and The Ditch.

The documents show how Permoid Industries, an engineering firm in Durham, has sent 16 shipments of “storage containers” weighing over 100 tonnes to Elbit Systems in Israel since October 2023.

Permoid declined to comment but did not deny that the cases were designed to carry weapons. Its website says the firm produces “a wide range of ammunition containers”, which are suited for “belted ammunition, cartridge, mortar and shell munitions” including 155mm artillery shells.

The UK has avoided condemning the Israeli seizure of a British-flagged aid vessel heading towards Gaza in the early hours of Monday morning. The Madleen boat, whose 12-person crew included Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and French lawmaker Rima Hassan, was intercepted by Israeli naval commandos at 3:02am CEST.

The vessel was in international waters at the time of the interception, 40 nautical miles from the Egyptian coast and 120 nautical miles from the nearest point in Gaza, the flotilla’s organisers told Middle East Eye.

Asked by MEE if the government condemned the interception of a UK-flagged vessel, the Foreign Office avoided directly answering the question.

Instead, it referred to a statement by Downing Street, which said that the UK wanted to see Israel resolve the detention of the vessel “safely with restraint, in line with international humanitarian law”.

Brussels / London, 9 June 2025 — The Hind Rajab Foundation has formally filed a war crimes complaint with the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit (Counter Terrorism Command, SO15) concerning the Israeli naval raid on the British-flagged humanitarian vessel Madleen, which took place in international waters on 8–9 June 2025.

The complaint targets the Shayetet 13 unit that executed the attack and Vice Admiral David Saar Salama who is the commander in chief of the Israeli Navy.

The British government privately threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court if it issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, Middle East Eye can reveal.

David Cameron, then foreign secretary in Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, made the threat in April 2024 in a heated phone call with Karim Khan, the British chief prosecutor of the court.

Cameron told Khan that applying for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant would be “like dropping a hydrogen bomb”.

Cameron said it was one thing to investigate and prosecute Russia for a “war of aggression” on Ukraine, but quite another to prosecute Israel when it was “defending itself from the attacks of 7 October”.

He claimed the warrants would have “profound implications” in Britain and within his own Conservative Party. Cameron then said that if the ICC issued warrants for Israeli leaders, the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”.

UK firm RCV Engines has officially cancelled its agreement with Israel for the supply of drone engines, after the deal and the use of the drones to attack civilians in Gaza was exposed by Declassified UK in April.

A Declassified UK investigation exposed the company’s involvement in supplying the engines for the ‘APUS 25’ “long-endurance TactiQuad” drone manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for use by the occupation against the people of Gaza.