RAF surveillance planes regularly fly to Gaza and supply Israel with the intelligence gained.

[mouthpipette]

Over 500 surveillance missions have been flown by the RAF from Akrotiri since Oct 2023, yet not a whisper of it in MSM. It might be something to do with the D notice sent out to UK media organisations that suppresses reporting the activity of UK forces in Gaza. Also there is a block on questions about this being raised by MPs, as Kenny MacAskill, MP for East Lothian found out.

Both the conservative and labour governments have said that these flights were to help find the hostages.

Israel are our allies and Hamas are a common foe. We should be doing more to help them

the uk should be doing better then. The Pm of the country we are supporting has got an a arrest warrant for committing war crimes. Only just last week the idf killed innocent doctors and only after the truth has came live we know idf lied and killed them by a mistake. Uk could be soon be accused of supporting war crimes

*accused of assisting in war crimes.

You follow that twix account?
There are some pretty dubious things on it.

Unfortunately not the first Holocaust denier twitter account I've seen posted on here.

Quite a hamas fan too from the content.😕

I’ve been aware since they started, there have been regular articles on these flights, they’re also being used to gather evidence to support or refute allegations of war crimes.

@mouthpipette
“Point 1) There has been hardly any coverage of this fact and I surmise most people were unaware of this UK involvement.”

The lack of coverage is because all the data collected is classified and therefore there are no findings that can be reported in the public domain. If most people are not aware that is because many people in the UK are not obsessively focussed on Gaza, despite claims to the contrary.

“Point 2) Why are our politicians being discouraged from asking questions?”
They are being discouraged from asking questions in Parliamentary sessions that are publically broadcast and accessible to anyone in the world because much of the intelligence is classified. They can ask all the questions they want in the appropriate closed meeting with the proper INFOSEC arrangements in place and get answers if they are read in.

“Point 3)…I don't want the UK to in any way be complicit in the actions of Israel.”
Too late for that. We have been and are complicit.

Yes This was my next point, we have many British aid workers ( ie doctors annd nurses with MSF, WFP, etc) and UN employees in Gaza working. The flights are so we have our own surveillance over what is happening there.

Good. We need to do all we can to obliterate Hamas.

That's a very simplistic approach and one that will not guarantee Israel peace. As long as the root cause, which is the lack of a Palestinian state, remains, groups that use violence will continue to spring up.

The root cause is a religious hatred for Jews, not the lack of a Palestinian state.

The Arabs could have had their own state in the region many times over.

The Palestinian identity was manufactured solely as a weapon against Israel.

Were there many calls for a Palestinian state between 1948 and 1969?

@mouthpipette you don’t seem to really understand what it means that the UK & Israel are allies.

Just because you don’t like something doesn’t change the basic facts. Posting on Mumsnet or Facebook or whatever… it makes zero difference in the end.

@Twiglets1 "you don’t seem to really understand what it means that the UK & Israel are allies."*

I've already outlined why I think Israel and UK are allies, What is it that I am missing ?

You’re missing that they co- operate with each other and if the UK government wants to help Israel with their surveillance they will. They share Israel’s aim to destroy Hamas & didn’t need to seek permission from @mouthpipette from Mumnnet or care what she wants or doesn’t want.

@Twiglets1 who wrote ( and who seems to have missed my earlier post) "You’re missing that they co- operate with each other and if the UK government wants to help Israel with their surveillance they will."

er, No, I didn't "miss" that. I previously outlined some of the economic links between UK and Israel and I acknowledged that the two are tied in with one another.

They share Israel’s aim to destroy Hamas & didn’t need to seek permission from @ mouthpipette from Mumnnet or care what she wants or doesn’t want.
I am not, at any moment, expecting David Lammy to give me a ring so that he can ask me how the UK should proceed in its dealings with Israel. I am not, yet, that deluded. However anyone who believes that I sit here, awaiting a call from David, so that he can ask for my permission, should perhaps consider their own state of mind.

What a weird reply.

To be an ally is not just about economic links. But no point discussing it further since you are inclined to go into fantasies about ridiculous scenarios.

I wonder did the RAF planes manage to spot which animals the IDF were protecting life saving vehicles from by crushing them up and burying them with 15 dead bodies? They must be pretty big, so you think they'd be able to spot them from the air. That would be a good use of their time seeing as no one else seems to have the answer.

It’s not wrong for Israel to defend themselves against Hamas. They instigated a vile and vicious mass terror attack on 7 October. hamas are a proscribed terrorist organization in the uk because they are violent Islamist extremists who are dangerous to us too.

Maybe they can spot the vapourising space lasers some anti semites claim Israel has?

I'd settle for answers as to why life saving equipment was crushed and buried along with 15 people who were executed one by one.

Why would someone be against assisting a foreign state to commit genicide?

Government states it's to assist recovering hostages, are you against that?

If our government really wanted to bring about hostage release, it would help to push Israel to the negotiating table..... so far that has been the only successful way of getting hostages out alive.

But unfortunately we value our economic and strategic ties with that country and allow those considerations to dictate our foreign policy, which basically means the UK line is, "Don't upset Israel, let them do pretty much what they want........... meanwhile for home consumption, we may tut-tut a little bit."