UK
UK Lawyers for Israel say ‘war crimes’ dossier on British IDF soldiers is ‘publicity stunt’
Human rights lawyers to submit a dossier to police including allegations of indiscriminate killing of civilians
April 7, 2025 12:14
Human rights lawyers to submit a dossier to police including allegations of indiscriminate killing of civilians
April 7, 2025 12:14A team of British human rights lawyers are set to file a war crimes complaint against 10 British nationals who served with the IDF in Gaza, the Guardian revealed on Monday.
The report, prepared by a team of UK lawyers and researchers in the Hague, accuses the 10 Britons of intentionally killing civilians and aid workers by sniper fire and coordinating attacks on protected sites and on civilian areas, including hospitals.
Michael Mansfield KC, one of the lawyers who will submit the 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit, told the Guardian: “If one of our nationals is committing an offence, we ought to be doing something about it. Even if we can’t stop the government of foreign countries behaving badly, we can at least stop our nationals from behaving badly.
“British nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine. No one is above the law,” Mansfield said.
The suspects, who remain unnamed for legal reasons, include dual-nationals as well as officers, the newspaper says.
Submitted on behalf of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the British-based Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), the complaint covers alleged crimes committed in Gaza between October 2023 and May 2024, based on open-source evidence and witness testimony.
One witness at a medical facility allegedly saw corpses “scattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave”.
The witness added that a bulldozer “ran over a dead body in a horrific and heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead”, and said they saw a bulldozer demolish part of the hospital, according to the Guardian report.
But Jonathan Turner of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) said the complaint “has all the trappings of a publicity stunt.”
"It is also noticeable that the alleged crimes differ from the main allegations made by the prosecutor of the international criminal court, that Israel had used starvation as a method of warfare,” said Turner. “We showed that those allegations were totally false and we expect that these allegations are false too.”
Anne Herzberg, human rights lawyer and legal adviser of NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel organisation that reports on anti-Israel bias in NGOs, wrote on X that the war crimes complaint is “part of the campaign that seeks to stoke international division between Israel and its allies, and intimidate Jews and Israelis living in the UK who have relatives in the IDF or who were required to serve”.
The point is not only lawfare but is also part of the campaign that seeks to stoke international division between Israel and its allies, and intimidate Jews and Israelis living in the UK who have relatives in the IDF or who were required to serve.
— Anne Herzberg (@AnneHerzberg14) April 7, 2025
Israel has denied accusations that the IDF deliberately targets civilians in its campaign against Hamas in Gaza, arguing that the terrorist group embeds itself within civilian infrastructure to plan and execute attacks.
The IDF has been approached for comment.