Britain’s Military Is Refusing To Give Details About Its Coaching Of Israeli Troops.

Six water companies overcharged customers between £800million and £1.5billion by “significantly or systematically” under-reporting the true scale of their sewage pollution of rivers and waterways, a tribunal has heard.
In the first environmental competition class action against water companies in England, lawyers argued that the privatised firms had abused their monopoly position to mislead regulators over the amount of sewage they were discharging from their assets over the past 10 years.
As a result, the companies, Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water, Severn Trent, Northumbrian Water and United Utilities, were able to charge customers higher bills than they would have been allowed to if they had provided the regulators with a true picture of their sewage pollution.
Professor Carolyn Roberts, a water resource specialist, is taking the action in the competition appeals tribunal and seeking to represent millions of consumers who she believes have been overcharged by hundreds of millions of pounds.
( Sandra Laville, 23.09.2024 )  ..  theguardian.com

Israeli officers operating in the Gaza Strip are ordering their troops to set fire to Palestinian homes without any legal approval, Haaretz reported.
According to information obtained by Haaretz, soldiers have destroyed “several hundred” buildings in this way over the past month.
In response to the reports, the army said that the destruction of buildings in Gaza was always done with official approval, and that claims of unauthorised destruction would be investigated.
An Israeli army commanding officer told Haaretz he did not know why some buildings were set alight.
“Probably there was information about the owner of the house, or they found something there. I don’t know exactly why the house was set on fire,” the officer was quoted as saying.
( Nadda Osman, 01.02.2024 )  ..  middleeasteye.eye

The Israeli Government Waged A Decade-Long Campaign To Protect Its Officials From Criminal Proceedings In Britain.
When retired Israeli general Doron Almog boarded his flight from Tel Aviv on September 11, 2005, he expected to soon step foot on British soil.
Minutes after landing at Heathrow airport, however, an Israeli embassy official boarded the plane and warned Almog to stay onboard.
An arrest warrant had been issued for the former army chief over alleged war crimes committed in Gaza, and British police officers were waiting at the immigration desk to seize him.
Almog remained on the plane for two hours before departing again for Israel.
UK counter-terrorism police had decided not to board the jet, fearing an attempt to do so might lead to a firefight on the tarmac at Heathrow.
The incident seemingly marked the first time that an arrest warrant had been issued in Britain for an Israeli national over abuses against Palestinians, and it sent shockwaves through the Knesset.
What followed was a decade-long campaign by the Israeli government to ensure that something like this could never happen again.
The campaign focussed on lobbying Britain to change its approach to universal jurisdiction legislation, which allows for the most serious crimes to be prosecuted in another country.
( John McEvoy, 19.09.2024 )  ..  declassifieduk.org

Israeli settler Yasmin Porat has claimed that Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli forces and not by Hamas.
This came in an interview by Porat with an Israeli radio station on October 15, 2023 where she said: “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. There was very, very heavy crossfire and even tank shelling.”
The 44-year-old mother of three stated that she and other civilians were held by the Palestinians for several hours and were treated “humanely”.
A recording of her interview with Haboker Hazeh (This Morning) radio programme on state broadcaster Kan was circulated on social media.
Porat also gave an interview to Israel’s Channel 12, where she described that one of the Palestinian fighters who spoke Hebrew said to her: “Look at me well, we’re not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm; you’re not going to die.”
Porat added, “I was calm because I knew nothing would happen to me,” noting that although the fighters had loaded weapons, she did not see them shoot any captives or threaten them with weapons.
She also said they provided them with water.
While the captives were waiting for the army to arrive, they were allowed to go outside to the lawn because of the afternoon heat.
Porat reported that the Israeli forces announced its arrival with a barrage of heavy gunfire that wounded fighters and Israeli captives alike.
( Middle East Monitor, 21.10.2023 )  ..  middleeastmonitor.com

Britain’s Military Is Refusing To Give Details About Its Coaching Of Israeli Troops.
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has rejected a freedom of information request that would shed light on training it is providing to Israeli armed forces personnel in Britain.
The refusal comes as Israeli forces invade southern Lebanon, sparking a major new crisis in the Middle East.
The rejection is the first sign that Keir Starmer’s new Labour government has adopted the Conservative’s secretive approach towards the training.
( Mark Curtis, 01.10.2024 )  ..  declassifieduk.org

Pro-Israel Bias In Western Media Reporting.
Ten journalists who have covered the war on Gaza for two of the world’s leading news networks, CNN and the BBC, have revealed the inner workings of those outlets’ newsrooms from October 7, 2023 onward, alleging pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles.
In several cases, they accused senior newsroom figures of failing to hold Israeli officials to account and of interfering in reporting to downplay Israeli atrocities.
In one instance at CNN, false Israeli propaganda was put on air despite advance warnings from staff members.
( Al Jazeera, 05.10.2024 )  ..  aljazeera.com

British government officials and ministers connive with the BBC and the press during wars, to promote ‘propaganda’ to domestic and foreign audiences.
Britain’s media is failing to report the true extent of UK support to Israel amid the genocide in Gaza.
This is not the exception in Britain’s wars, but the rule.
When Declassified revealed three years ago that the UK military had a secret team operating in Yemen, no British media outlet picked up the story.
Neither are the UK press or broadcasters showing how the government has been avoiding peace prospects in Ukraine.
One reason the UK media fail to report independently is that they are regularly willing participants in Whitehall’s ‘media operations’, especially in wars.

Iraq  invaded Kuwait in August 1990, claiming it as a province under Baghdad’s control and brutally repressing its small population.
The U.S. and UK began a massive military build-up, deploying their forces to Saudi Arabia to prepare to oust Iraq from Kuwait.
Alongside this military planning went extensive media operations.
Soon after the invasion, prime minister Margaret Thatcher told her ministers to begin a “counter-propaganda” campaign against Iraq.
“The main targets for a propaganda effort should be the Iraqi people, other Arabs sympathetic to Iraq and the wider Muslim world”, wrote Simon Gass, adviser to foreign secretary Douglas Hurd.
Key themes would be that the crisis “is wholly Saddam Hussein’s fault because of the illegal and unjustified annexation of Kuwait” and “Saddam Hussein’s brutality”.
“All these themes need urgent amplification. Propaganda material will need to be disseminated”, Gass wrote.
( Mark Curtis, 24.09.2024 )  ..  declassifieduk.org

Britain Is The Least Accountable Of All The Western Intelligence Agencies.
The former partner of an MI6 whistleblower has described the “dangerous moral slide” of the UK’s intelligence services, comparing a 1996 assassination plot against then Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to his treatment during the 2011 uprising.
Annie Machon, former partner of the whistleblower David Shayler, said that British agents had worked alongside rebels in Libya in 1996 in a failed plot to try to kill the dictator, who took power in a 1969 coup.
Shayler was imprisoned twice for exposing the plot.
Yet in 2011, Machon said, “Gaddafi’s downfall in which he was captured and killed by members of an uprising was closely reported and filmed. The reporting of Gaddafi being pulled out of a drainpipe and buggered with a bayonet – nobody cared. It says something that what was a dirty secret in 1996 was openly reported in 2011. It’s a dangerous moral slide that we, as civilised nations, have taken in that time.”

Speaking at the Playful conference in London, Machon paid tribute to Edward Snowden, who revealed details of surveillance by the U.S’s National Security Agency (NSA), for revealing the extent of modern surveillance and the invasion of privacy.
Of the UK’s spy agency, she said: “GCHQ has prostituted itself the the NSA to the tune of million of dollars with no accountability or oversight – they tell the NSA ‘we can do stuff you can’t do’. We live in an endemic surveillance state now. Politicians say ‘we know the intelligence agencies are working within the law and protecting, not eroding, our freedoms’. But politicians don’t have a bastard clue what spies can get away with and Britain is the least accountable of all the western intelligence agencies.”
( Jemima Kiss, 24.10.2014 )  ..  theguardian.com