Fathom republishes a speech Andrew Fox prepared for a gathering outside the UK Foreign Office following David Lammy’s decision to ban a proportion of UK arms exports to Israel. Fox served for 16 years in the British Army completing three tours of Afghanistan and leaving in 2021 as a Major in the Parachute Regiment. This speech originally appeared on Fox’s substack The editors invite responses to this and other articles about Labour’s policy shifts published in Fathom.
In the last six months, I have visited Israel three times. I have had meetings with President Herzog, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defence Minister Gallant and Foreign Minister Katz. I have met every level of the IDF, from strategic planners in Tel Aviv, to Commander Southern Command, two the commanders of both Divisions who fought in Gaza, to ordinary IDF soldiers. In the last month, I have been to Gaza and witnessed the destruction there first hand.
The international attacks on Israel come on three fronts: Israel’s reasons for going to war; Israel’s conduct during the war; and international lawfare.
Israel’s reasons for going to war
Firstly, propaganda is used to diminish and downplay Israel’s reason for this war in the first place: 7 October. I have seen demonic footage of that day above and beyond that which is publicly available. I have watched video recorded by Hamas themselves as they slaughtered Jews with inhuman glee. I have walked in human ashes in Kibbutz Be’eri, Nir Oz, and Kfar Aza. I have seen the Nova festival site and spoken to survivors. I have visited the IDF base at Nahal Oz, where amongst other atrocities, Hamas burned alive 22 IDF soldiers. I am friends with hostage families. There is no question – none whatsoever – that Israel’s war in Gaza against the monsters of Hamas is both just and legitimate. Even after three fighting tours in Afghanistan, I have never seen horror that comes close to that which Hamas perpetrated on 7 October.
Israel’s conduct during the war
Secondly is the international propaganda campaign to force Israel to lay down their arms. Israel is fighting against a disinformation machine, funded by their allies in Iran, Qatar, Turkey and other nations. Their aim is to persuade the world that Israel is committing war crimes, so they will pressure Israel to ceasefire, so that Hamas can survive.
Have mistakes and errors been committed in this war? Of course, and Israel’s supporters must confront them head on and own them. That is what moral countries do. We have all seen the footage of the WCK aid convoy strike. An independent Australian investigation agreed with the IDF’s conclusions: it was a sloppy mistake that led to innocent deaths. The IDF has already undertaken procedural changes so it does not happen again.
We have all seen the videos of IDF soldiers misbehaving in the houses of Gaza: unconscionably stupid behaviour that has caused irreparable harm to Israel’s cause in the eyes of the world. Again, it should be easy for us to condemn this stupidity.
Personally, as a British soldier, I take issue with the IDF’s prisoner handling procedures in stripping detainees naked. By the same token, we have all read of the horrors of Sde Temain detention facility and the assaults on prisoners that have taken place. All of these are objectively wrong, but none amount to a pattern of war crimes, and certainly none of them would have been prevented by a ban on UK arms sales.
What really matters is how the broader IDF handled them. They have taken accountability, they have changed procedures and rules of engagement, and they have arrested soldiers where crimes are credibly alleged. They are behaving exactly as I would expect from any Western military in the same situation.
And Western militaries are innocent of none of these things. The cruel truth is that mistakes and law-breaking happen in wartime. When you train young men and women to be aggressive; arm them; and send them into the most extreme of situations; some of them will lose discipline and make bad decisions. This is a simple fact of war. The Australian SAS committed war crimes in Afghanistan, executing prisoners. The British SAS are undergoing an investigation into similar allegations. In Iraq, the British had Camp Breadbasket and Baha Musa. The Americans in Iraq had the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Fallujah killings and the Mahmudiyah rape and murder. In Afghanistan, they killed ten innocent civilians with a drone strike even as they were withdrawing from Kabul. War is never clean or easy. What matters is accountability for mistakes.
Let us now look at what the IDF has done right. They have taken unprecedented measures to protect civilians. They have evacuated over a million people from combat areas, in line with their international humanitarian law obligations. They have dropped millions of leaflets, made millions of phone calls and sent millions of text messages to warn people to get out of harm’s way.
Israel repaired the water lines to Gaza damaged by Hamas on 7 October. They have enabled field hospitals to be set up and have provided tents for the displaced. They have facilitated more aid into Gaza than was going in before the war. They have built two new vehicle crossings at Erez to replace the crossing destroyed by Hamas on 7 October. They have kept the Kerem Shalom crossing open and have built three new roads in Rafah to ensure that aid can continue to enter, even whilst manoeuvre operations are going on. They have even facilitated a route from Kerem Shalom to Gate 96. This route allows Palestinian trucks to drive through Israeli territory within stone’s throw of the kibbutzim where Palestinians massacred Israelis on 7th October.
I have seen IDF targeting procedures in their headquarters. They have taken unprecedented measures, exceeding their International Humanitarian Law obligations, with a specific cell set up to measure population densities in Gaza before any strike can take place. Whilst they use AI to help process intelligence to generate targets, the whole strike planning process is done by IDF troops who use a targeting cycle entirely similar to that used by NATO forces in Afghanistan. One in every two planned air strikes in Gaza has been cancelled due to civilian proximity.
The fatality statistics speak for themselves. With fully half of Hamas’ claimed 40,000 deaths in Gaza being Hamas fighters, there have been astonishingly few civilian deaths for a war of this nature. And here is the key point: not one war crime has been conclusively proven since the start of the war. Not one. The allegations made against Israel are nothing more than elements of a propaganda campaign to ensure that Hamas survive, and Israel lose the war.
International lawfare
This all links to the third and final element of the campaign against Israel: lawfare. We have seen cases in the ICJ and ICC. Even today, reports suggest that South Africa have asked for more time to submit their ICJ case due to a lack of evidence of genocide. The very fact they are asking for a delay exposes the fraudulent basis of this case. If Israel was plausibly committing anything like genocide in Gaza, the submission of evidence by South Africa would, by definition, be of the utmost urgency. This lawfare is nothing more than a tactic to once again force Israel to stop fighting and for Hamas to survive.
And this British government, shamefully, is now participating in this lawfare. From withdrawing our opposition to the ICC arrest warrant application, to our Foreign Minister touring the Middle East trying to force Israel to surrender, to this farce of an arms sales ban. It will have absolutely no effect on the course of the war, and is simply a performative measure to continue putting international pressure on Israel.
Israel is our ally. It is unconscionable that the British government is abandoning them at their hour of greatest need. It laughs in the face of the exceptional civilian protection measures Israel has undertaken. We should, instead, be doing the opposite. We should back Israel to the hilt. They are fighting this war not just for 7 October, but for the values of the West in facing down murderous Islamic extremism. Iran is the foundation of everything Israel faces. They threaten not only Israel, but all of us, too. Shame on this government for aligning themselves with Iran, Hamas, and the other malign international actors who threaten our very way of life.
