Days after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, its top general flew to London, John McEvoy and Mark Curtis report.
Herzi Halevi, chief of the general staff of the Israeli military, center, on Sept. 28 as Israeli fighter jets attacked Beirut. Former Defence Minister Yoav Galant on left, Israeli Air Force General Tomer Barover on right. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By John McEvoy and Mark Curtis
Declassified UK
Israel’s top soldier, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, visited Britain three days after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes”.
Halevi was initially reported to have been included in the ICC’s arrest applications for the crime of having “deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza”. He was also forced to apologise in April after the Israeli military killed seven international aid workers including three Britons in Gaza.
The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant revealed on Nov. 21 include “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”, as well as “intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told Declassified: “As part of the concerted U.K. effort, along with allies and partners, to reach a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza, the Chief of the Defence Staff hosted his counterparts from Israel and other European partners”.
The spokesperson added: “Discussions included the UK calls for an immediate ceasefire in both Lebanon and Gaza and the need for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law while recognising Israel’s right to security”.
A ceasefire deal to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon was announced on Tuesday.
Special Diplomatic Immunity
U.K. Ministry of Defence main building in Whitehall, London. (Harland Quarrington/MOD, OGL v1.0, Wikimedia Commons)
It is unlikely that Halevi would have agreed to travel to Britain without being granted “special mission” immunity by the U.K. government.
The Ministry of Defence did not answer Declassified’s question about whether Halevi was provided such immunity on this occasion.
Following Israeli pressure, former Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government changed the law in 2011 to help Israeli officials to visit Britain without fear of arrest.
The U.K. government has since granted special mission immunity to at least seven Israeli officials who have been accused of serious violations of international law.
Those officials have included Netanyahu in 2015 and former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni 2014, 2015 and 2016.
As Israel’s chief of military intelligence, Halevi was also granted special mission immunity to visit Britain in 2015.
The U.K. government has continued to provide these certificates amid the genocide in Gaza, with former Israeli war minister Benny Gantz receiving immunity to visit Britain in March 2024.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in August that “random Palestinians have been used by Israeli army units in the Gaza Strip for one purpose: to serve as human shields for soldiers during operations.”
It quoted sources saying that Halevi was “among the senior officers aware of the use of Gazans as human shields.”
John McEvoy is acting head of investigations for Declassified UK.
Mark Curtis is the director of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.
This article is from Declassified UK.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
A fully signed up.partner to genocide…This is why the UK deep state and theZ..nists. had Corbyn clobbered.
At this point, I think we can call “human shields” as Standard NATO Tactics.
We’ve seen this over and over and over. And the connection between the occurrences is spelled N-A-T-O. From the NATO backed “rebels” in Syria. to the NATO backed ‘war for democracy and freedom’ in Ukraine, we have seen this over and over. Its standard tactics, and it is a part of their ‘integration’ with the ‘soft power’ of their giant media megaphones. The NATO forces set up their base in a residential area or a hospital, then if they get attacked, the media machine screams about the horrible crimes committed by the people who don’t want to be ruled by Wall Street and the City of London. This then justifies a new wave of atrocities and war crimes, in the same way that Pearl Harbor was used to justify an openly racist war against Japan, and eventually the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The land mines are deployed, the cluster bombs are launched, white phosphorus is fired, more civilians die, and NATO calls it ‘justice’ for their latest soft-power crime claims.
Stories about the use of human shields say only one thing …. “NATO was here!”
Kill British citizens working as humanitarian workers, and as a prize, receive a free state visit!
Forget the international warrants. Someone should be asking why this general who is in command is not arrested when he got off the plane for the murders of multiple British citizens? Of course, if King Chucky wasn’t ill, I rather suspect that he’d have given this general a “Child’s Play” award in honor of a fellow serial killer.
That the British elites let their citizens be murdered with impunity is of course no surprise at all. The Brit writer for the show ‘Succession’ got it right … its filed under “No Real People Involved.”
Britain is the nation that has constantly supported monarchy and other forms of authoritarianism, and has consistently attack democracy and gatherings of the people seeking justice.
Britain is the nation that opposed all three of the great people’s movements of European history. Britain spent almost a decade trying to crush the American revolution. Then Britain spent a decade and a half fighting against the French people and their cries for liberty and equality. Britain was the main opponent of both people’s movements. Britain then had royal boots on the ground opposing the people of Russia during the Russian revolution. Britain was a constant and violent fighter against democracy and the people having any say in their own nations. Britain spend decades fighting against anti-colonial movements.
Britain has a “democracy” that is rigged so that the rich an powerful always hold the power. The “winner takes all”system that America foolishly copied. The last time there was an inkling of a people’s movement in England, the military threatened to overthrow the government and the elites took over the Labour Party and made it into a copy of the Tories. We have all just seen a vivid example of “British justice” in the case of Julian Assange, with rigged courts huddling with American diplomats to make sure that every ruling did exactly what the crown and the elites wanted.
That Britain is welcoming authoritarian military leaders engaged in genocide is no surprise at all. Britain itself has been involved in this genocide up to their elite necks from the beginning. If there was really justice in this world, the British prime ministers and other officials who provide the weapons for genocide, who provide the ‘intelligence’ for genocide’, and who illegally obstructed justice and pressured the ICC would all be under charges and under sanctions themselves.
Someone in the comments section of an older article brought up “Hidden Histories” by MacGregor and Docherty who accuse England of starting the first world war.
Then, there’s Margaret Thatcher’s opposition to German reunification.
How well does each of these two qualify?
Israel is and has from the beginning been Britain’s pet project. By rights, all government officials involved in genocide, even in conjunction with another country should be named in the arrest warrants of the ICC.