Pressure Mounts on Sunak to Stop Arming Israel

Former U.K. Supreme Court justices wrote to the prime minister telling him to cease arms sales to Israel amid a “plausible genocide” in Gaza and also stunningly called for sanctions against Israeli leaders, reports Joe Lauria.

 By Joe Lauria

in London
Special to Consortium News

More than 600 British lawyers, academics and retired senior judges — including three who sat on the country’s Supreme Court — have written to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak imploring him to “end through lawful means acts giving rise to a serious risk of genocide,” namely, to stop arming Israel while it carries out its atrocities in Gaza. 

The letter on Wednesday comes in the wake of leaked audio recordings revealing that the British government is ignoring the advice of its own lawyers not to continue supplying weapons to Israel for its Gaza operation. 

“The ICJ [International Court of Justice]’s conclusion that there exists a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza has placed your government on notice that weapons might be used in its commission and that the suspension of their provision is thus a ‘means likely to deter’ and/or ‘a measure to prevent’ genocide,” the letter to Sunak says.   

It warns: 

“The UK must take immediate measures to bring to an end through lawful means acts giving rise to a serious risk of genocide. Failure to comply with its own obligations under the genocide convention to take ‘all measures to prevent genocide which were within its power’ would incur UK state responsibility for the commission of an international wrong, for which full reparation must be made.”

The 17-page letter at first gives lip service to the governments’ calls for increased aid and a pause in fighting, and then blasts Sunak for “the sale of weapons and weapons systems to Israel,” telling him that “to maintain threats of suspending UK aid to [the U.N. relief agency] Unwra falls significantly short of your government’s obligations under international law.” 

In what previously seemed unimaginable, the letter calls for sanctions to be imposed “upon individuals and entities who have made statements inciting genocide against Palestinians.”  That would include the prime minister, president and defense minister of Israel. 

MPs Also Warn Government 

Conservative MPs and the public are also putting pressure on Sunak, especially after an Israeli airstrike deliberately killed seven foreign aid workers this week, including three Britons. 

The Guardian reported: 

“Three Tory backbenchers and one former minister now in the Lords said that the UK should stop exporting arms to Israel after the airstrike, while the findings of a YouGov poll, conducted before the strike, suggested that the government and Labour are out of step with public sentiment, with a majority of voters – by 56% to 17% – in favour of an arms ban.”

Consequences

While such a move may seem impossible in the United States, it seemed impossible in Britain just weeks ago.  There is developing a turn against Israel in this country that could spread across the Atlantic and to the Continent as evidence mounts of Israel’s unconscionable atrocities and seemingly endless impunity. 

The developments in Britain give rise to hope that instead an end to it might be in sight. 

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/03/pressure-mounts-on-sunak-to-stop-arming-israel/