The Fool on the Hill: A letter to John Cooper MP on gaza

I've written another letter to my (Conservative) MP about Gaza. In the lead up to the debate on the petition 'Urgently fulfil humanitarian obligations to Gaza' a lot of us are going to have to do something similar. I'm posting this so that you can take advantage of the research I have done, but please, write your own letter to your own MP. Multiple copies of the same letter have much less effect than an equal number of different letters.

Also, I haven't hit all the beats here: there's something I meant to write, that in the moment I forgot, and I'd be grateful if other people managed to get it into their letters.

These are the points that I missed:

Keir Starmer has confirmed the government will be “taking forward” plans to airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children who need medical assistance [source].

Both of these proposals are bad. Airdropping aid is bad for three reasons:

1. It's dangerous.
   1. People running to reach the aid risk being hit by falling packages;
   2. fights are likely to start among desperate people trying to get to small amounts of aid in chaotic situations;
   3. it's likely to create new killing zones in which Israeli forces can target civilians.
2. It's wasteful.
   1. Aid may fall into the sea;
   2. packages may split on landing, resulting in contamination;
   3. packages may fall in inaccessible locations, causing people to take unnecessary risks in reaching them.
3. It undermines the role of the legitimate aid agencies such as UNWRA and UNICEF, and thus aids Israeli war aims.

But the proposal to evacuate children is much worse. If children are to be evacuated, are their adult carers (if they have any — over 17,000 Gazan children have lost both parents as a result of Israel’s bombs and bullets [source] — and over 23,000 have lost one parent) also to be evacuated? If so, how are families to be kept together — are they also to be evacuated? In any case, what guarantees have we that those evacuated will be allowed to return to their homes?

Israel's war aims seem to be ethnic cleansing and genocide: to create lebensraum in the south. Is the UK seriously proposing to assist Israel in achieving their goal by shipping out all those families with children?

We clearly must not do so. We clearly must, with our allies, put in medical staff to care for those children in Gaza; and, because the Israelis have an established policy of assassinating medical staff in Gaza we must, with our allies, put in ground forces to protect those medical staff — ideally third-country ground forces since, given our history, the Palestinians have little reason to trust the British; and to provide them with facilities to work, we must send in civil engineering contractors to urgently reconstruct the bombed and shattered hospitals.

Anyway, those are the points I missed — and they're probably better directed at Labour MPs than at Tories. The points I made follow.

Standingstone Farm
Auchencairn
DG7 1RF

30^th July 2025

Dear John Cooper

You'll recall that I wrote to you previously about Gaza on the 29th October 2024. I'm writing to you now to urge you to participate in the debate arising out of the petition to 'urgently fulfil humanitarian obligations to Gaza'.

I'm grateful for your reply to my previous correspondence, but would note that I was not seeking to defend Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel on 7th October 2023. That attack was clearly indefensible. However, to claim that what Israel has been doing in Gaza (and, incidentally, though to a lesser extent, on the West Bank) over the subsequent months has been 'self defence' or, indeed, proportionate, is... specious. One does not 'defend' oneself by having snipers selectively shoot children, or by targeting hospitals and their medical staff.

Forgive me if I quote Martin Griffiths, a British diplomat who served as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs from 2021 to 2024:

"My grandchildren will be learning in school about who did what in the worst crime of the 21st century. Who was complicit in that crime. I am absolutely convinced what's going on in Gaza is genocide because the thing speaks for itself. Obviously final determination, any pursuit of accountability which is absent today lies with the International Court of Justice. But we can with confidence and we should with conscience say, tell it what it's like. and that is a genocide. There's no question anymore. We don't need any more investigations." [source]

Which brings us, as Griffiths says, to the matter of who is complicit in this crime.

It is perhaps arguable that, in the early aftermath of the October 7th atrocity, the savagery of the Israeli response was not yet apparent, and that in the closing months of the Sunak administration, the UK government was too dysfunctional and in too great disarray to make difficult foreign policy decisions.

The same excuse cannot be said to apply to the Starmer administration.

Between 3^rd December 2023 and 27^th March this year, the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) conducted at least 518 Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance flights from its base in Akrotiri, Cypress, over the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The aircraft used were Shadow R1s. As these aircraft are unarmed, and as Israel has complete and effective air superiority in the theatre, it is impossible that these missions could be flown without active Israeli cooperation.

So what are they doing it for? The government is coy.

Sir Keir Starmer said in an address to the air force personnel in Akrotiri

We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing here... for reasons that are obvious to you [source]

In the Chamber, Luke Pollard, speaking as Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence), claimed

...our mandate is narrowly defined to focus on securing the release of hostages only. [source]

So, 518 flights over a territory of 365 km², over a period of fourteen months, solely for the purpose of identifying the location of fewer than 251 people all of whom are believed to be in underground bunkers, all while targets were being acquired for killing tens of thousands of civilians. Does this sound remotely plausible?

Under Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him [source]

So, if intelligence arising from the Shadow R1 flights is being shared with the Israelis and is being used by them to target civilians or medical staff, then the government is exposing the crews of those aircraft to risk of prosecution under international law.

On 30^th June this year, the English High Court ruled that the government was acting lawfully in continuing to supply parts for F35 jets into a pool from which Israel draws. In the course of its evidence, the government produced advice to the Foreign Secretary that

there was therefore a clear risk that military equipment exported to Israel which might be used in that conflict might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of [International Humanitarian Law]. [source]

As Jeremy Corbyn said in the Commons on the 4^th June this year,

By justifying the continued licensing of those parts, our Government are admitting their complicity in what are, quite clearly, war crimes. [source]

Article VIII of the Genocide Convention requires its Contracting Parties — of which the UK is one — to

take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.

The UK has not done so in this instance, and is derelict in its responsibility. The UK is also responsible, under Article IV to VI of the convention, for prosecuting and punishing persons complicit in genocide who are within its jurisdiction

whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals [source]

The UK has not (yet) done this either.

There can be no question that the UK has had reasonable grounds to consider whether a crime of genocide was in progress since at latest 20^th May 2024, when International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan issues warrants for the arrest of senior officials of both the Israeli government and of Hamas.

So flights flown from Akrotiri after that date, and the supply of armaments after that date (including the ongoing supply of F35 parts) at the very least require a criminal investigation to see whether they meet the test of complicity in genocide.

It is part of the UK's international humanitarian obligation to see not merely that the genocide is stopped, not merely that those suffering are succoured, not merely that the damage to civilian infrastructure is made good, but also to see that justice is done; and that justice must not apply only to those of the culpable who are Israeli, but also to those who are British.

I look forward to reading your speech in this debate.

Sincerely

Simon Brooke

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