FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
22/07/2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Melissa Garriga | [email protected]
BASES OFF CYPRUS Statement: David Lammy is lying. Britain is giving Israel intelligence.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy claims that no RAF surveillance data is being given to Israel. Yet, the Ministry of Defence has several times revealed that the surveillance flights are providing information to Israel for “hostage rescue”.
The Israeli occupation forces have themselves revealed this. One senior Israeli occupation official revealed that “the United States and Britain have been in Israel throughout the war, assisting Israeli intelligence in collecting and analysing information”. Another Israeli official said that the US and Britain have “been able to provide intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel cannot collect on its own”.
In October 2023, the Ministry of Defence posted a statement that “information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to the relevant authorities responsible for hostage rescue”. In September 2024, the Ministry of Defence again declared that the RAF gives Israel data “to support hostage rescue”. In November 2024, Minister of Defence Luke Pollard said “only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed” to Israel. In March 2025, Minister of Defence Luke Pollard said in Parliament that “the UK Government has been working with partners across the region to secure the release of hostages, including British nationals…in support of this, the Ministry of Defence has been conducting surveillance flights”.
The Ministry of Defence has multiple times revealed that they are flying surveillance flights over Gaza for Israel’s genocide, which they describe as a “hostage rescue” operation. But, when Britain shares intelligence with Israel or the US for “hostage rescue”, they have no control over how the data is used. So when Lammy says that the UK is not giving any military intelligence to Israel, not even for “hostage rescue”, he is flat-out lying. This blatant lie must not be forgotten in the long list of Lammy’s crimes, especially as it comes not even 24 hours after the UK signed onto a letter with 27 other countries calling for a ceasefire, and when Lammy described the suffering in Gaza as “grotesque”.
Lammy is right when he says “It would be quite wrong for the British government to assist in the prosecution of this war in Gaza". He’s wrong when he says “we are not doing that."
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