216

UK suspends 30 arms exports to Israel over Gaza war crimes concerns (www.middleeasteye.net)

submitted 1 week ago by Keeponstalin@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The UK has suspended 30 arms export licences to Israel following a review under the new Labour government which found that British-made weapons may have been used in the violation of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

Arms campaigners and rights advocates who have pressed for a full suspension of arms sales to Israel for months welcomed the decision, but criticised the continued export of F-35 fighter jet components which one called "a workhorse of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign".

The announcement cames hours before two organisations which have challenged the UK government in the High Court over the continued exports were set to pursue fresh legal action in an attempt to force the exports to stop immediately.

Lawyers with the UK-based Global Legan Action Network (Glan) and the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq said they told the government last week of their intent to request an emergency order and had planned to do this at a Tuesday morning hearing.

Anna Stavrianakis, director of research and strategy at UK-based Shadow World Investigations and professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, told Middle East Eye that without the suspension of the F-35 components, the statement “seems more like an attempt to mollify critics than a meaningful restriction on Israel’s ability to commit genocide”.

all 15 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago

30 arms exports out of 350, and gives an exception for the components required for F-35Bs which were used to bomb a school the same day this was announced.

Lammy even said this will have a negligible impact on Israeli military power.

This is a clear attempt at trying to turn the public on-side whilst collaborating with Israel to ensure the bombs keep dropping more than ever. Especially suspicious is that some of the licenses being suspended appear to be for arms that are already being limited by Palestine Action's sabotage campaign.

It's still 30 less licenses than last week, but it's too little and too late. Labour has an institutional islamophobia problem and as such is not interested at all in leveraging its position to end the genocide.

[-] galmuth@feddit.uk 0 points 1 week ago

Labour has a far far less of an islamaphobia issue than the Conservatives.

Labour did previously have a antisemitism issue however, and undoubtedly they're hesitant to do anything which might be tagged antisemitic (even if it's not).

But despite that, they haven't been in power for long and have already done far more than the Tories did.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Weird deflection, because it's common knowledge that the Tories are islamophobic and evil, but the moment anyone mentions this about Labour, Starmerite sycophants like you storm in to cover it up.

Jeremy Corbyn was vindicated for his defence of Palestine, where will you be in 30 years when someone asks what you did about the genocide?

[-] galmuth@feddit.uk 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not a "Starmerite sycophant" whatever the hell that is. I am not a fervent supporter of any political party. I simply do not believe that Labour are inherently islamophobic - I've seen nothing to suggest that. Im not trying to cover anything up or deflect by saying that the Tories are Islamophobic. It's relevant because the Tories have been in power and controlling foreign policy up until a month or so ago. If the Tories were still in charge, there would have been no change to the UK gov's position.

Not that I think that Islamaphobia is the driving factor behind support for Israel, nor do I pretend to fully understand, besides the obvious fact that they're an existing ally and were attacked by terrorism which kicked this off.

The tide is turning against the Israelian government's scorched-earth policy but it's taking too long, especially from the US side. Seemingly the Israelian people are also taking issue with their government's position which is more pressure than we can exert from our side.

Btw Jeremy Corbyn was vindicated for what, defending Hamas and Hezbollah? Plenty of people have stood up for Palestine over the years without standing up for Hamas. Palestinians deserve to be free, not controlled by Hamas terrorists.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

New Labour politicians have a massive debt to Israeli-linked Jewish Groups in the UK for the Anti-Semitism slander campaign against Corbyn and the Labour Party during his leadership that lost Labour an election and brought him down as leader of the party to be replaced by a New Labour leader (who promptly started a pogrom against Leftwingers in the party).

Of course, as is tradition in England (and because in the recent elections they lost 10 Parliament seats to people who campaigned as independents exactly because of New Labour's pro-Zionist "No Genocide is too great" policies), they're doing a bit public opinion management with a loudly announced measure that de facto does nothing.

If there's one thing that over a decade of living in Britain has taught me was to always look behind the curtain when it comes to grand very public gestures by the local politicians, the more the noise they make about their "great measure" the more the need to dig out the part of the story they're not telling people about.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Finally, a little bit of that Law and Order people love to campaign on

[-] Maeve@kbin.earth 13 points 1 week ago

I'd love it if my own nation would step up and do the bare minimum right thing.

[-] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 week ago

Enhancing shareholder value?

What do you mean that's not the "right thing"?

[-] Maeve@kbin.earth 4 points 1 week ago

I'm not a genocide fan, if that helps.

[-] NastyNative@mander.xyz 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Every little bit helps! At-least UK is doing something about in the US we are like 800 packages shipped and delivered to kill civilians! Ffs

[-] roboto@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago

Great, now suspend the rest.

this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024

216 points (97.4% liked)

World News

38529 readers

3803 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.