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Labour MP slams his own government’s silence on Israel illegally abducting UK citizens

Following Israel’s illegal abduction of international humanitarian volunteers – including UK citizens – on 1 October, Labour MP Barry Gardiner questioned his government’s silence. In a letter to pro-Israeli foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, he said:

Please advise me of any other situation in which the U.K. government would remain quiescent after the kidnapping of more than a dozen of our citizens by a foreign government, through an act of piracy on the high seas?

In particular, he mentioned a constituent of his – Aaron White – who was participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla aid mission. Since White’s abduction by Israeli occupation forces, there had been “no word from him to confirm his safety”. And Gardiner asked:

Have you called in the Israeli Ambassador to protest? Have you spoken with your counterpart in Israel? Has the Prime Minister spoken to Benjamin Netanyahu to demand the immediate release of all British citizens? If not, why not?

He added:

The U.K. flagged vessel m.v. Alma is part of the flotilla and was in international waters when it was detained. Has the U.K. lodged a complaint against the state of Israel at the International Maritime Organisation headquarters in London for this violation of articles 100-107 & 110 of UNCLOS? If not, why not?

Barry Gardiner lays into government

Barry Gardiner said the volunteers simply wanted to break Israel’s intentional starvation of Gaza, lamenting:

Yet our government is mute!

Insisting that “further sanctions”, including on war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “must now be put in place”, he asserted:

The U.K. must not remain pitifully silent in the face of this direct assault on its citizens.

When future generations look back on the role British politicians played in the destruction of Gaza and its people, let them not say “Just like politicians in all the genocides before, they stood by and said nothing…

People will look back and condemn us as supine.

Andrew Feinstein, who significantly reduced Keir Starmer’s majority in the 2024 election, noted that Israeli pirates had illegally kidnapped and abducted one of the prime minister’s own constituents, Ewa Jaciewicz:

The Foreign Office, however, preferred to talk about Mauritius, Moldova, and the Maldives rather than condemning Israel for kidnapping UK civilians in international waters.

Israeli pirates take hostages to abuse centre

After their act of international piracy, Israeli occupation forces took their hostages to Ketziot military prison, a notorious torture centre. Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the Israeli government ministers the UK has already sanctioned due to his “repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians”, greeted the humanitarian captives by calling them ‘terrorists’.

The UN, international legal experts, human rights organisations, and genocide scholars have almost unanimously determined that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since 2023. Labour Party leaders, however, stubbornly continue to deny the genocide or dodge questions about it, as this recent Declassified UK video shows:

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.