"Britain's Gaza Secrets Exposed": How U.K. Downplayed Israeli Crimes to Keep Selling Weapons
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A new documentary titled Britain's Gaza Secrets Exposed reveals new details about the U.K. government's internal response to alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Presented by journalist Ramita Navai and produced by Ben De Pear for Channel 4's investigative program Dispatches, the documentary examines government records, some newly publicized, to show how the United Kingdom ignored or concealed mounting evidence of Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza after the October 7 attacks.
"We were looking at how our country, which prides itself on having an ethical foreign policy and as being one of the supporting members of the United Nations on human rights, was able to keep selling arms," says De Pear. "And basically, what we found was a doctored process … It's quite extraordinary the level of duplicity that was going on in order for us to keep selling Israel arms." Ben De Pear also produced the 2025 BAFTA-winning documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, which the British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC, initially commissioned but later refused to air. Gaza: Doctors Under Attack was broadcast instead by Channel 4.
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Transcript
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Chapter 1: UK Labour Party conference
0:000 secondsThis is democracyow democracynow.org.
0:033 secondsI'm Amy Goodman. The British Labor Party is holding its annual conference in Liverpool. This is British Foreign Minister Ed Miban speaking earlier today.
0:1414 secondsAnd I and I want to say to the millions of people in this country and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and
0:2222 secondsoutraged by the plight of the Palestinian people, we hear you. You
0:2828 secondswere right. We call out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank. We call out the evidence of war
0:3737 secondscrimes in Gaza. We call out Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine. And we match words with action. We will ban the
0:4545 secondsimport of goods from illegal settlements. We will disrupt the supply lines of British finance, British construction, and British services for
0:5353 secondsillegal settlements. And when it comes to the attempt to destroy the two-state solution, this party, this movement,
1:001 minutethis government says, [cheering] "We will not let you succeed." That's the British foreign minister Ed
1:101 minute, 10 secondsMilliban speaking to the Labor Party conference in Liverpool earlier today.
1:161 minute, 16 secondsHe spoke a day after police arrested more than 50 protesters outside the conference for holding signs reading, "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine
1:251 minute, 25 secondsAction." Under UK law, Palestine Action is proscribed or banned as a terrorist organization. Well, we turn now to
Chapter 2: Government accountability
1:351 minute, 35 secondsBritain's Gaza Secrets Exposed. That's the name of a documentary that aired Thursday night on Channel 4 examining
1:441 minute, 44 secondshow the British government responded to Israel's war on Gaza. It's based in part on unpublished internal government
1:521 minute, 52 secondsdocuments. This excerpt looks at the role of David Cameron, Britain's former Conservative Prime Minister.
2:002 minutesIn January 2024, David Cameron was questioned about the government's response to the crisis by the Foreign Affairs Committee.
2:102 minutes, 10 secondsBy this point, [music] over 23,000 Palestinians had been killed, and Israel had blockaded Gaza for 3 months.
2:202 minutes, 20 secondsIf Israel have the power to turn the water back on that they turned off, surely that is a flagrant breach of
2:282 minutes, 28 secondsinternational humanitarian law. Well, I I I'm I'm not a lawyer. My view is they ought to switch it on because the north
2:352 minutes, 35 secondsof Gaza, the conflict is now effectively over there. And so so you've never had a piece of paper put in front of you by a foreign office lawyer that says that Israel is in
2:432 minutes, 43 secondsbreach of its international humanitarian commitments under international humanitarian law.
2:462 minutes, 46 secondsUm look, I I I the reason for not answering this question, I can't recall every single bit of paper that's been put in front of me. I see I look at everything. I mean, of course, there are
2:542 minutes, 54 secondslots of things that have happened where you think, well, surely that is that was something that shouldn't have happened and and so I don't want to answer that question.
3:033 minutes, 3 secondsNow, dispatchers can reveal what legal advice David Cameron had received. Only a month before giving evidence in Parliament, he had been sent [music] two
3:123 minutes, 12 secondsseparate assessments, concluding that Israel's blockade of Gaza was a possible breach of international [music]
3:183 minutes, 18 secondshumanitarian law. An email confirms he carefully considered all the information in one of them.
3:293 minutes, 29 secondsHave you been made aware or seen any evidence or have reasonable grounds to believe that Israel has breached
3:363 minutes, 36 secondsinternational lots of things that have been deeply concerning? Have you received legal advice?
3:423 minutes, 42 secondsDavid Cameron evaded those questions 10 times.
Chapter 3: Whistleblower perspectives
3:483 minutes, 48 secondsThe documentary Britain's Gaza Secrets Exposed also features former British Foreign Office official Mark Smith, who
3:563 minutes, 56 secondsresigned in protest over arm sales to Israel. These are his words in his own
4:044 minutes, 4 secondsvoice, though he's portrayed on screen by an actor.
4:084 minutes, 8 secondsWe've all seen the aerial footage of entire neighborhoods literally flattened
4:154 minutes, 15 secondsto the ground. They've destroyed the vast majority of all residential buildings in Gaza.
4:274 minutes, 27 secondsI've never seen anything like it in my career, in my life.
4:344 minutes, 34 secondsHe'd been a lead officer on arms sales assessments during the Saudiled war in Yemen. He was now working as a diplomat
4:424 minutes, 42 secondsrepresenting the UK and Ireland and was shocked by the handling of Gaza.
4:504 minutes, 50 secondsAnd the nature of the assessment is such that you can kind of make it say
4:584 minutes, 58 secondswhatever you want. Um and that is why the system is broken
5:065 minutes, 6 secondsbecause of the scale of destruction. He was concerned about possible war crimes and even genocide.
5:155 minutes, 15 secondsSo even without being on the team and having [music] access to
5:225 minutes, 22 secondsthe assessments being made, I could see on the news in broad daylight
5:305 minutes, 30 secondswith the naked eye the most appalling attacks taking place on a daily basis.
5:405 minutes, 40 secondsAlmost every single school and almost every single hospital in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed.
5:545 minutes, 54 secondsHow are we justifying our arms exports?
6:006 minutesIf there is even a question whether domestically or internationally that a
6:086 minutes, 8 secondsstate that you are selling arms to might be conducting a genocide,
6:156 minutes, 15 secondsthen the time to be discussing whether they might be in breach of IHL is way gone.
6:236 minutes, 23 secondsThat's British Foreign Office official Mark Smith, who resigned over Britain's policy towards Israel. We're joined now
Chapter 4: Documentary investigation
6:306 minutes, 30 secondsby Ben Depair, executive producer of Britain's Gaza Secrets Exposed. He's produced four films on Gaza since
6:376 minutes, 37 secondsOctober 7th, including Gaza Doctors Under Attack. The BBC refused to air
6:446 minutes, 44 secondsthat film last year. Channel 4 picked it up and it then won a BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Oscars. Ben Depair
6:526 minutes, 52 secondsserved as editor of Channel 4 News for 10 years. We thank you so much for being with us. Ben, talk about this piece that
7:007 minutescame out, this documentary on Thursday night and what are these Gaza secrets, where you got them.
7:077 minutes, 7 secondsWell, it's extraordinary to hear Ed Milliban today at the Labour Party conference rewriting um UK policy. I I
7:147 minutes, 14 secondsheard just just now you played the clip um that he's calling what happened in Gaza possible war crimes or or war
7:227 minutes, 22 secondscrimes even. um uh and that is a long way forward from where his predecessor was and where this government has been
7:307 minutes, 30 secondsand the previous government. Our film focused on the process by which the foreign office, our government, assesses
7:397 minutes, 39 secondsIsrael's conduct, its military behavior in Gaza because not only are they an ally of the United Kingdom, uh, but we
7:487 minutes, 48 secondsalso sell them weapons and we are the signary of a number of international treaties, including the genocide convention, which means if there is even
7:557 minutes, 55 secondsa risk of a genocide taking place, you are meant to take action as a fellow country under that genocide convention.
8:018 minutes, 1 secondyou meant to stop the genocide, not aid it, not sell weapons. Uh we're also signitaries of the arms um treaty, which
8:088 minutes, 8 secondsis that uh you do not sell arms to a country that may be committing war crimes. And when we got these documents from inside the foreign office, they
8:178 minutes, 17 secondswere the assessments written by a team who were watching hundreds of videos, the sort of videos that you and I watched on our phones that the whole
8:248 minutes, 24 secondsworld watched on their phones of civilians being killed, schools being bombed, hospitals like our last film being attacked, the whole health system
8:328 minutes, 32 secondstaken out, journalists being killed, over 200 of them. Obviously 73 74,000 people have now been killed in Gaza, but
8:408 minutes, 40 seconds20 21,000 of them are children. So [snorts] in in in its scale um there's not been a bombing campaign like it this
8:478 minutes, 47 secondscentury this century. So we were looking at how our country which prides itself on having an ethical foreign policy and
8:558 minutes, 55 secondsas being one of the supporting members of the United Nations on human rights was able to keep selling arms. And basically what we found was a doctorred
9:039 minutes, 3 secondsprocess where assessments were coming to ministers that were saying these are possible war crimes but fairly neutral.
9:109 minutes, 10 secondsAnd then the ministers were saying we don't see any uh cause concern here.
9:169 minutes, 16 secondsCertainly David Cameron said that uh we can keep signing them off. And even as he was sorry publicly saying we were going to take tough action against what
9:259 minutes, 25 secondsIsrael is doing privately they were signing off these weapons sales licenses so that we can continue um selling arms to Israel.
9:349 minutes, 34 secondsSometimes on the same day.
9:369 minutes, 36 secondsYes. Yes. There was one um uh bombing of the world central kitchen which in which six aid workers were killed. Three of
9:439 minutes, 43 secondsthem were British and on that was on the 1st of April. On the 2nd of April um David Cameron came out saying demanding
9:519 minutes, 51 secondsthat the Israelis uh take action. They do a proper investigation and on the 3rd of April he was signing the latest
9:589 minutes, 58 secondsweapon sales uh license so that we could continue selling them weapons. It's quite extraordinary. um uh the the level
10:0710 minutes, 7 secondsof duplicity that was going on in order for us to keep sending Israel arms.
Chapter 5: Aid worker deaths
10:1210 minutes, 12 secondsI want to go to a clip that's related to the bombing of the World Central Kitchen. Uh this is from Britain's Gaza
10:2110 minutes, 21 secondsSecrets. It focuses on that attack where World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza uh
10:2810 minutes, 28 secondswere killed. Um, it was seven of them in April 2024.
10:3510 minutes, 35 secondsNeil and Trish Henderson's son, James, had served in the Royal Marines in Afghanistan. [music] From February 2024, he was working for
10:4310 minutes, 43 secondsWorld Central Kitchen, a charity delivering food to civilians in Gaza. We could see what was happening in Gaza.
10:5110 minutes, 51 secondsBut you think if they're doing humanitarian work, then they're going to be safe. Yeah, they should be safe.
10:5910 minutes, 59 secondsThey should have been safe. They should have been safe.
11:0111 minutes, 1 secondYeah. He wasn't out there fighting the war. He was out there trying to help people.
11:0811 minutes, 8 seconds[music]
11:0911 minutes, 9 secondsJames entered Gaza just before famine was declared by the UN. As a security adviser, he was responsible for the
11:1611 minutes, 16 secondsteam's safety along routes coordinated with the IDF.
11:2511 minutes, 25 secondsHe said, "No matter where you go, you can all you can hear is drones all the time." When I finished on the phone to you, he
11:3211 minutes, 32 secondssaid, "I'm going to go up and put some more um World Central kitchen stickers on the roof."
11:4011 minutes, 40 secondsAnd and that was the last time I spoke to him.
11:4511 minutes, 45 secondsOn the 1st of April, James and two other British veterans, John Anthony Chapman and James Kirby, were driving in an aid
11:5211 minutes, 52 secondsconvoy. At 11 p.m., an Israeli drone fired on them. Seven aid [music] workers were killed, including the three Brits.
12:0312 minutes, 3 secondsI've got always remember Trish just crying out to me, it's Jim, [music] you know, and then you realize, you
12:0912 minutes, 9 secondsknow, that even one of the seven that old days is just a blur really in
12:1612 minutes, 16 secondsin that sense. This killings of the aid workers in the World
12:2312 minutes, 23 secondsCentral Kitchen strike triggered an international outcry.
12:2812 minutes, 28 secondsThe devastating Israeli air strikes that killed World Central Kitchen personnel yesterday bring the number of aid workers killed
12:3712 minutes, 37 secondsin this conflict to 196, including more than 175 members of our own UN staff.
12:4612 minutes, 46 secondsThis is unconscionable, but it is an inevitable result of the way the war is being conducted.
12:5612 minutes, 56 secondsI welcome what the Israeli foreign minister said yesterday to me about a full urgent and transparent inquiry into
13:0613 minutes, 6 secondshow this dreadful event was allowed to happen. And we want to see that happen very, very quickly.
13:1213 minutes, 12 secondsBut that same day, Cameron was publicly demanding answers from the Israelis behind closed doors, he signed off the
13:2013 minutes, 20 secondslatest approval of weapons exports to Israel without waiting for Israel's investigation [music] to be completed.
13:2813 minutes, 28 secondsThis was just 2 days after the drone strike.
13:3313 minutes, 33 secondsThis letter outlines his decision, which was based on the fifth IHL assessment.
13:3913 minutes, 39 secondsThe foreign secretary does not recommend the suspension of any extent export licenses to Israel.
13:4913 minutes, 49 secondsThat's a clip from the documentary Britain's Gaza Secrets that just aired on Channel 4. Even the case of the
13:5513 minutes, 55 secondskilling of 5-year-old Hinrajab and her family. The British office concluded there was insufficient evidence to show there had been a breach of what's called IHL, international humanitarian law.
Chapter 6: Media and censorship
14:0814 minutes, 8 secondsFinally, on this before we go to your previous documentary, Ben, um where you got a lot of the documents that you base
14:1614 minutes, 16 secondsBritain's Gaza secrets, there was a court uh case taken by Al Hack um through an organization called
14:2314 minutes, 23 secondsGlenn where they were trying to um stop the UK government selling arms to Israel. And so in that there was
14:3114 minutes, 31 secondsdisclosure of the assessments that were being made. Um and we managed to get hold of these because they're court documents, but We we happen to be the
14:3914 minutes, 39 secondsonly people who had actually bothered looking through them in any detail journalistically and we only have a minute left, but I want to go to your recent film on Gaza
14:4714 minutes, 47 secondsthat you produced, Gaza Doctors Under Fire. The BBC pulling the film weeks before its scheduled broadcast. Channel
14:5614 minutes, 56 seconds4 aired it instead. It then won a BAFTA during the awards ceremony. You and your colleague, the correspondent on the piece, Ramita Navi, blasted the BBC.
15:0915 minutes, 9 secondsWe refuse to be silenced and censored.
15:1215 minutes, 12 secondsAnd we thank [applause]
15:1515 minutes, 15 seconds[cheering]
15:1515 minutes, 15 secondsThank you. Thank you.
15:2015 minutes, 20 secondsAnd we thank Channel 4 for showing this film. [applause] We also want to dedicate this award to Jaba Badwin and
15:2815 minutes, 28 secondsOsama Alashshi, the two journalists on the ground who made this film for us.
15:3415 minutes, 34 secondsThey did so amongst um a killing spree that killed over 250 of their colleagues, journalists in Gaza. So, I'd like a round of applause for them,
15:4115 minutes, 41 secondsplease. [applause] And and finally, just a question to the
15:5215 minutes, 52 secondsBBC. Given that you dropped our film, will you drop us from the BAFTA screening later tonight? Thank you. Bye.
16:0016 minutesSo that's Ben Depair and Ramita Navi at the BAFTA ceremony in their acceptance
16:0616 minutes, 6 secondsspeech. Ben, did the BBC air your speeches uh when they ran just within the next hours?
16:1416 minutes, 14 secondsUh they did. They did actually uh and they they were very fair to us. They they showed our clips of the criticism of them. They they they they came under
16:2316 minutes, 23 secondshuge pressure especially from the government here um over Gaza. Uh the BBC is a brilliant journalistic
16:3016 minutes, 30 secondsorganization. They they caved in a little bit um during the first year and a half of the Gaza uh war. um and they
16:4016 minutes, 40 secondswould be came under I would say unacceptable government pressure and they didn't perhaps react in the way they should but I see positive signs now
16:4916 minutes, 49 secondsespecially that our our own government is now uh criticizing Israel openly and taking a very firm stance or a firmer
16:5716 minutes, 57 secondsstance you you will see the BBC perhaps given the space to do the coverage that they've normally done over many years
17:0617 minutes, 6 secondsBen Deair executive producer of Britain's Gaza Secrets and Gaza, Doctors Under Fire. He's produced four films on
17:1417 minutes, 14 secondsGaza since October 7th, 2023. Um he served as editor-inchief of Channel 4
17:2117 minutes, 21 secondsNews for 10 years, has been in Gaza 10 times over the last 20 years. Thanks for watching Democracy Now on YouTube.
17:2917 minutes, 29 secondsSubscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to make sure you never miss a video. And for more of our audience supported journalism, go to
17:3717 minutes, 37 secondsdemocracynow.org. or where you can download our news app, sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to the daily
17:4417 minutes, 44 secondspodcast, and so much
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