 In March this year, the UK's new military strategy declared Israel remains a key strategic partner. What does that mean? And where does it sit in relation to Israel and its continuing war on Palestine? With me to discuss that today is Mark Curtis, author of many fantastic books like Secret Affairs, Web of Deceit, Unpeople and The Great Deception. He's also the editor and co-founder of the classified UK who stated mission is to uncover Britain's role in the world by investigating UK foreign, military, intelligence and economic policies. Mark Curtis, welcome to Downstream. Thanks very much, very pleased to be here. Before we go any further, because this is such a hugely important topic, I just want to say if by the end of this interview you found it useful, it's added value, you've learned something about the Israel-Palestine conflict, I want you to do two things. One is to like the video, the other is to subscribe to the Navarra Media YouTube channel. But I don't want you to do either of these things unless you found it useful and added value, which I think you will because to be frank, Mark Curtis is the number one voice on these topics in Britain in my view. Now, on with the interview. Let's start from the top. That announcement in March by the British Army that Israel remains a key strategic partner. What does that mean in practice? Well, what we've seen over the last three years in particular is a significant deepening of military relations between the UK and Israel, particularly in the area of training, military training, particularly in the area of joint military exercises. It seems that around 2018, perhaps early 2019, there were decisions made to increase training and exercise relations between the two militaries. So for example, the British Army has trained some Israeli soldiers in the last couple of years. There's been significant exercises between the Royal Navy and the Israeli Navy in the Mediterranean, which is a controversial policy, highly controversial, given the Israeli Navy's participation and enforcement of the illegal blockade on Gaza. And particularly noteworthy, I think over the last couple of years has been the increase in joint exercises involving the two countries, Air Forces. So there was a series of training and exercise operations in 2019, including in the UK. As far as we know, it's the first time that the Israeli Air Force was invited to the UK to take part in joint exercises with the RAF, where the two Air Forces trained using fast attack jets and simulated ground attacks. So high level training, combat training among the two countries, Air Forces. What we've also seen in the last couple of years is very high level visits between the two countries' militaries. So for example, the Chiefs of Defense staff of the UK have visited Israel on at least two occasions in the last two years. There's also been a visit by the head of the Royal Air Force to Israel, who praised the so-called enduring partnership, as he called it, between the Royal Air Force and the Israeli Air Force. So all of this amounts up to heightened, deepened relations between the two countries' militaries. And obviously, this is going alongside an existing, very long-standing arms relationship, where both the UK has provided a range of arms exports and military equipment exports to Israel. And actually, Israel has also been a significant purchaser of British military equipment as well. And where does the deepened collaboration come from? Because you're saying this is in the last couple of years where it's actually, we're seeing a few unprecedented things. What's that in response to since 2017-2018? Well, I think the strategic situation has changed in a number of respects. I mean, I think one is probably Brexit, to be honest. I mean, I think that the UK has clearly been looking for all sorts of deepened relationships with a range of partners around the world. You know, it's signed new agreements with the Gulf States, for example. And I think the stepped-up relations with Israel, just like the stepped-up relations with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, for example, are all part of a kind of a new series of bilateral, deepening relationships that Britain wants to cultivate. But I mean, I also think that the strategic relationships and the strategic context has changed in the Middle East, where the Arab states are no longer major supporters of the Palestinians. And in the past, countries like the UK, certainly the European countries, even the US to an extent, have to kind of tread a fine line between being seen to support Israel for fear of offending the Arab states. Well, it's no longer really the case that the Arab states have invested a lot of time or money in defending the Palestinians. So it does lead countries like the UK freer to increase their support for Israel. And that is, I think, what we've seen in the last few years. Are there presently any UK military personnel in the occupied territories or in Israel? Yes. I mean, we don't have huge details on who is there and what they're doing there. But we know from a parliamentary answer the government gave a year or so ago that there are 10 UK soldiers stationed in the occupied territories. They apparently moved between Israel and the West Bank, what we subsequently found out through freedom of information requests. And we know that there's a certain amount of training that goes on between the British military and forces on the ground. I think it involves both. It could involve both Israeli forces and forces of the Palestinian Authority. But it's actually not that clear what those programs are. I mean, with all of this, it should be said that the British government is not exactly advertised its military role. It doesn't want to advertise its military role. These are the Israel because of the fear of being identified as being on the side of the primary aggressor in this conflict. But it also doesn't really want to advertise its role in support of the Palestinian Authority security forces because it knows that the British reputation in the West Bank is not exactly great. And that many people identify Britain as being purely an ally of Israel. So what that's translated into is not very much information creeping out into the into the public domain. And I think that's a leitmotif of what's going on at the moment. We simply need to know more about the details of the military relationships that Britain does have in the region. And there's been no change in terms of accountability transparency since that deepening 2017-2018. Things have probably stayed the same. Have they deteriorated in terms of transparency? Have they got slightly better? Well, the most extraordinary thing, Aaron, is that last December, a military agreement was signed between the UK and Israel. It was advertised on Twitter by the Israel Defence Forces. And the British ambassador in Israel mentioned it in a tweet as well. But the British government has never made that military agreement public. We don't know what's in it. In fact, the British government has never even formally acknowledged that there is a military agreement. I can't find any mention of it by the British government on its website or anywhere else. So clearly there is a massive transparency gap. I mean, what is in that agreement? What is Britain pledging to do in terms of future military relations with Israel? I imagine it involves increasing training, increasing exercises. Maybe there's a chapter in there on increasing arms exports. We just don't know. But clearly that's a massive issue. And I think it's incumbent now on British MPs to be demanding that the government release the details of that military agreement and actually publish it, make it public so that we can scrutinize it. And what's the situation with regards to arms exports? Because you've already mentioned the fact that Britain exports, we know a kind of ballpark at the moment. It's about £500 million worth of arms exports have gone to Israel since about 2014, 2015. What kinds of technology are we looking at? Are we looking at rifles, transistors, high-tech, low-tech tanks, aircraft? What is it? Yeah, I mean, there's a certain amount of hardware, small hardware like pistols, rifles, machine guns, that sort of thing. There's no exports of big military equipment like war planes or warships, for example. But what there is making up that hundreds of millions of pounds worth of exports, as you say, is high-tech components and actually components for key military equipment that Israel uses in its combat operations. So components for military aircraft, components for drones and for tanks. And these things are, as I say, high-tech components that Israel is reliant on actually to make these systems function. Another particularly concerning aspect in my view about these exports of components is the submarine components that the UK is also exporting, because we know from various bits and information that come out over the years that Israel has maybe 60 to 80 nuclear warheads. It may even be more. And the submarines are one of the platforms that the Israelis use to house those nuclear warheads. So Britain is supplying components for submarines, which is in effect aiding the nuclear deployments of Israel. That's another area that we need to know more about, and which there isn't very much transparency about. So I think the importance of these arms exports is both in the actual kit and equipment that's exported, but also what's important is the signal that it sends. It sends a signal from Britain to Israel that Britain approves of the Israeli military. That's certainly the message that the Israeli military will get from receiving equipment. It's a very well-known thing in international relations that if you supply arms to a country, it's an indicator that you, in effect, approve broadly what you're doing, because you know that if you do something wrong that the sender of arms might disapprove of, they can cut off that relationship, that supply at any moment. As long as Israel knows that, the UK is continuing to supply it with military equipment, it knows that Britain is basically approving of Israeli military operations, and that's what raises concerns, particularly at the moment, where the British government has made absolutely no sign whatsoever so far that it's prepared to even look at its arms exports to Israel. In fact, even the Labour Party has been very, very coy about calling on the British government to end arms exports. I think they poured on the government to assess its arms exports, but there's no actual clear call to end arms exports. That's a real no-brainer of an issue, I think, at this time for the UK to hold arms exports. But as I say, it's only one part of the relationship. The training and the exercises and the high-level contacts between senior military officers is also really important. Has there ever been any kind of conditionality attached to military exports, which can apply with some exports to some countries that they can't be used for certain purposes? Has there ever been applied to Israeli exports to Israel? As far as we know, there's no restrictions on how Israel is able to use the equipment supplied by Britain. We know from a parliamentary answer given by the government a couple of years ago, actually, that the government does not apply so-called end-use restrictions on Israel, which means that the British are saying to the Israelis, you can use your equipment coming from the UK anyhow you like. Also important to note is that there's no evidence that the British government has assessed the impact on the Palestinians of British military equipment. That would be another thing that the government should be doing if it was in any way concerned about the impact that its equipment might have in Gaza or the West Bank. There's no evidence the government is doing that. We're clearly a long way from that point at the moment. The British government hasn't even condemned anything that Israel is doing. It's condemned the Palestinian side. It's not actually condemned Israel. It's adopted this both sides. Both sides should avoid escalation. Both sides should de-escalate. There's no condemnation of Israel. The messages coming out of London will clearly be regarded by the Israeli side as being that Britain is encouraging them and supporting them to continue their military operation. What kind of countries do we export military hardware to technology to where there are end-use stipulations? Can you provide a few examples of where that is the case? Actually, the British government is very lax on any end-use restrictions being placed on its arms exports. The traditional response when the government is asked by this is that it's not the proper role of the government to impose such restriction. What it says is that if they see that the equipment is being used that might undermine the British arms export controls, then they will reassess future arms exports. Actually, there's hardly any ability to insist on military equipment only being used for purpose X rather than purpose Y. Of course, this is a huge gaping hole in the British arms export regime because it means that basically any equipment that goes to a regime that's repressing human rights could be used to suppress human rights. That's something which the British government denies. They like to pretend that if we supply military equipment to human rights abuses, that's all right, provided that they don't actually specifically use a piece of military equipment that we are providing. That's nonsense actually because the mere fact that we are supplying human rights abuses obviously encourages them and helps them in all sorts of ways to actually promote repression. That actually is what British arms exports are actually about. What Britain does in the cases where it supports regimes like in Egypt or in the gold states is it's actually supporting the repression. It's not that we're supplying arms despite the repression going on. It's that we're supporting these regimes to maintain control over their populations and the types of military equipment that's being supplied to them are often directly helping them to do that. It can be surveillance equipment. It can be tear gas canisters. It can be rifles or pistols that can be used by the police or the army. This is equipment that directly helps repressive regimes keep control of their populations and keeps in power regimes that continue to buy British weapons and continue to promote economic friendly policies that Whitehall wants to see promoted. The whole industry is a scandal. Was there any use conditions ever applied to exports to Saudi Arabia? Just to give some context to our audience. How lax are these things? One would presume given Saudi Arabia's military presence in Yemen for instance that surely that there these things would be applied. Or is it just purely tokenistic by your estimation anyway? As far as I know there's never been any serious arms export restrictions placed on particularly Saudi Arabia. The hardware that's been sold to the Saudis over the last five years has been sold in the full knowledge that this equipment is going to be used in Yemen. That's absolutely clear. The aircraft, the missiles, the components and then all of the training and the maintenance that takes place in Saudi Arabia by Royal Air Force and VAE Systems personnel to keep the Saudi Air Force flying and to keep them bombing. All of that is being done completely consciously. And the British know exactly what they're doing and it's a British war as I've been arguing for six years now since the war flared up in 2015. This is not simply a Saudi war that Britain is supplying the Saudis military equipment to. It's actually a British war where ministers are acting in the full knowledge that their personnel in the military and in corporations who are subcontracted by the military like VAE Systems in Saudi Arabia are a formal part of the Saudi war machine. The British government has pretended for six years that they're not a party to the conflict. They've tried to position themselves as just being a kind of a backer of Saudi Arabia as though they're a kind of a neutral bystander almost at times. They've tried to position themselves calling on both sides to halt the conflict, which is absolutely absurd and then completely pulling the wall over the eyes of the British public. We are part of the war. The Saudi war machine could not keep going if it wasn't for the aircraft that Britain is maintaining, if it wasn't for the pilots that have been trained by the British. If it wasn't for some of the arms exports that we are providing for the Saudis. We are very complicit in what is the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and we have been six years and it's a total travesty of the way that the British media failed to describe this as a British war. There's been reports, fairly sporadic reports even on British arms exports to the Saudi Arabia. What there hasn't been is very much exposes of the broader relationship, the broader military support that the UK provides to the Saudis because if you look at that, I think you have to conclude this is a British war in Yemen and British ministers are complicit. Yeah, the thing that I've noticed in the last 10 years really since we've been doing Navarra media and this is what makes you a brave person as YD classified UK is such an important project is that you will get outstanding investigative journalism from the Sunday Times or the Financial Times occasionally and it's not even necessarily politically partisan. They may go after a conservative MP but what you will never, ever, ever, ever get is really hard hitting, enlightening journalism, uncovering the truth about Britain's role for instance in Yemen, generally speaking. It's the one thing that's really not permitted in our public discourse is genuinely intelligent critique of the military industrial complex in this country now and our relationship, a very strong military and political relationships to tyranny is quite frankly like Saudi Arabia and other places which okay it's not Saudi Arabia but Israel as well which has immense failings. Is that a fair assessment? Do you think British military and foreign policy is the thing that really nobody can talk about? Yeah I actually think that is right. In fact I don't think that the British media really cover Britain's role in the world at all. If you look at it, when you look at the number of issues that are simply are not covered so we're talking mainly about the British military relationship with Israel which has been completely erased from media reporting. I mean there's literally no reports at all in the media on the extent of that military relationship which is why we wrote this article and published this article the other day to document it because no one else is doing that but it's actually not just Israel. I mean if you look at the UK's military relationship with Egypt for example, no one is documenting the extent of that either. Neither are they documenting the extent of the relationship with a country like Oman in the Gulf which many people might think is some small obscure country but actually is a major British military and intelligence ally that is crawling with British military and intelligence officers where there are three secret GCHQ spy bases. No one is writing about this. There's loads of other cases as well. If you look at media coverage of the British military basically most of it comes from the Ministry of Defence itself. It's journalists writing up press releases half the time and I literally mean half the time. Well I think half the time is sorry to interrupt you. I think half the time is probably a bit to complementary to the 95% of the time. It feels like the sky or the times or the telegraph or even sorry to say the Guardian. It does feel like you say these people are effectively press officers. They're not sort of trying to get two sides of the story from diverse sources. They're not saying I want multiple sources to corroborate this particular point. Like I said they're just repeating out verbatim what they're told by the Ministry of Defence. Yeah that's absolutely right and in fact you know I've tried to document that actually in the last couple of articles I've done before for Declassified doing analysis of the media it is really shocking. I mean there are particular outlets which are truly shocking. I mean I have to say Sky News and The Daily Express are probably the most ridiculous when it comes to simply parroting what the MOD tell them to write. I mean it literally is acting as a platform for the MOD. But it is true also of the rest of the media as well. I think this is where we have to understand how the corporate media actually works. I mean my analysis is that their role is not to report the news. It's not to inform the public and they just sort of make a few mistakes by admitting to tell the public about a few things. The role is basically to communicate the priorities of the state to the public. So it's actually very unlikely for them to report the truth about what Britain is actually doing in the world. It would be very unusual for them to do that. And sure enough it almost never happens. You're right to say that there are occasionally good investigations that do genuinely challenge particular aspects of British military policy or foreign policy. Occasionally they break through the media but it's very rare. And they do pale in comparison to the number of articles that just writing up the press releases. And that's why what we are all trying to do in the world of independent media that's what makes it so important. Because for me the corporate media is unreformable. They're about making money as profit making corporations and they are about promoting the interests of the British state. That's what they're about. They're never going to become providers of genuine public information to the public. They're never going to provide a public service. It's only us independent media that have the capability of doing that. And that's why it's really important that people follow us and support us. I just want to stick to that point for a moment about the media. Because of course you do see it very often, too often sadly, too frequently sort of conspiracy theorists who say, you know, British media doesn't cover what's going on in Israel. There's Palestine, the occupied territories, particularly over the last week because the media is controlled by Zionists. Now, you can say that. And I would say that's quite a dubious errant and almost certainly racist thing to say. You know, you try to be charitable as somebody said it once, twice, repeatedly, had they been corrected. But generally, I think that's a very, very unhealthy way to frame things. But like you say, actually, it's also just completely wrong. And there's a much more profound structural explanation at work here. So if you could just distill it in a minute, really, why is the British media so bad at reporting the Israel-Palestine crisis? Yeah, I mean, one way is to say that they're bad at it, because they're not reporting the truth. And the other way is to saying they're actually doing a very good job because I think that their role is not to report the news. I actually think that their role is to defend the power of the state and is to communicate to the public the views of the state and is not to reveal and challenge what the UK governments do in the world. And that is not to suggest that it all works like a conspiracy. It's absolutely not a conspiracy. But what anyone will tell you that has worked in a mainstream newsroom is that you soon learn to know where the red lines are, the things you can say and the things that you can't say. And after a while, you self-censor so that if you were to say that, well, actually Britain doesn't give a hoot about democracy or human rights around the world. If you were to say that and then write an article showing that, you'd never get it published. The only articles that you can publish are the ones that say that Britain does support human rights in the world or does support democracy in the world. These are certain red lines that you're not allowed to cross. And at the end of the day, are these structural reasons why the media behave the way that they do. They are ultimately profit seeking corporations that don't want to upset the status quo. As we saw in the massive demonization campaign of Jeremy Corbyn for four years to do anything to prevent an alternative government coming to power that just might upset the apple cart in promoting domestic economic neoliberalism and awful foreign policies. Nothing could be done to upset that. And the media was prepared to throw out all pretense at covering anything independently in order simply to stop Jeremy Corbyn being elected. And for me, that was a key moment. It showed where their political and political interests really lay. So the role of the media is not actually to report the news. It's to communicate the primary messages of the state to the public. And that's why we see so many articles that do parent media releases that do simply take comments from the foreign secretary, the defense secretary, with no balancing comments, with no critical comments, where they're simply prepared to offer themselves as these platforms for the state to say whatever it likes to the public. Yeah, what you said about self-censorship then Mark is just so true. You know, you or I could be a young person again, you know, early 20s want to be a journalist, you are a freelancer and you might have a really, you know, rising profile for this person and really sharp, super informed, good writer, great to work with. What a fantastic person. We want to bring them into the fold. And you say the wrong thing. And quite frankly, you get blacklisted. I mean, we all know that. And we're not talking here about the times and the mail. You know, we are also talking about liberal media and the self-censorship thing is just so powerful because if you want a career in the media, there are a number of things you simply can't say. And one of them before 2019, if you are a young aspiring person in the media, one of the things you generally shouldn't say is Jeremy Corbyn might be the prime minister, you know, which is why 2017 was just such a shock because nobody was basically able to say that in print or broadcast media. And when it when it almost happened, it was like, wow. And then you have a year of sort of self appraisal. Oh, my God, we got it wrong. And of course, now four years later, we're back to square one, pretend it never happened at all. Going back to Israel, obviously, you've already mentioned that Israel is a nuclear power. It did so secretly. I mean, that was one story which was broken by the British media was by the Sunday Times in the 1980s about Israel having an independent nuclear capability. What was the role of Britain in helping Israel accomplish that? Because obviously, it's a very small cluster of countries that have that status. Did we help them along? Did we hinder them? Did we obstruct them? Did we say, please don't do that? Did we encourage them? Yeah, there have been some sporadic reports that have appeared in the media over the years, actually, about the ways in which the British did help Israel acquire an atom bomb, going back to the late 1950s. Some declassified files were released a few years ago showing that Britain exported quantities of heavy water, for example. And then in the 1960s, there were further exports of things like plutonium and uranium to Israel, which seemed to have contributed to Israel's ability to eventually manufacture nuclear arms. But these are very sporadic reports. There hasn't been very much that's come out. In fact, there were some stories a couple of years ago that the declassified files on some of these issues had been lost as well, which is another low motif in how the government likes to deal with transparency issues, that it loses declassified files or can't find them or actually destroys them illegally, which is another theme in how the government tends to regard its legal requirement to open up its formal government documents to the public. So clearly, there's been some kind of role that the British have played over the years in enabling Israel to acquire nuclear arms. And of course, this is ironic, should we say, generously in the light of the government's absolute commitment to stop Iran, for example, developing a nuclear weapon. Yes, would it be a good idea for the future of the world for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons? Well, no, it wouldn't, I don't think. But it's grossly hypocritical for the states that have enabled countries like Israel and Pakistan is another one as well, to acquire nuclear weapons, and who themselves have nuclear weapons, and who are increasing their nuclear weapons. And say in the case of Britain, which has just announced an increase in the number of warheads, massive hypocrisy for them to now say to any other state, actually any other state, that they shouldn't be able to acquire nuclear weapons. I mean, Britain has no right to have nuclear weapons. It has no more right to have nuclear weapons than Burkina Faso, Iran, or Greenland. And yet that's not the way that the ministers behave. And it's not the way it's reported, either, it's coming back to the media. The media also report these things as though it's somehow all perfectly acceptable for us to have nuclear weapons, because we're one of the good guys, we're one of the responsible states in the world. But of course, all those nasty rogue states out there, no, they can't have nuclear weapons, because they're not like us, they're the bad guys. No, I'm afraid that international relations is a bit more gray and not so black and white than that. Yeah, and the whole commitment to, you know, quite and quite non-proliferation, while you're selling uranium and plutonium to a country that wants to manufacture nuclear weapons, I mean, it's clearly, again, you know, we return to that word time after time, hypocritical. So what's Whitehall's policy in relation to Israel's illegal settlements, for instance, you know, we hear lots of hand wringing, when conflict kind of flares up, but what's the default government position on these settlements, given that they're illegal under international law? Yeah, well, if you look at the government's declared position on the settlements, it's actually quite a strong position. I mean, the government consistently says that the settlements are illegal, and that the UK is opposed to those settlements because they are illegal. I mean, it's also very clear that it regards Gaza as being an occupation, and the West Bank as being an occupation. So, you know, its declared position is actually in line with international law, and the settlements are clearly illegal. The blockades, the blockade of Gaza is clearly illegal. So the government has a declared position, which is okay. The problem, of course, comes with all the other things it's doing in the context of claiming to be opposed to the occupation. I mean, whilst you're arming and jointly exercising with and training the occupying power, that is not going to send anything like a message that you are going to put into practice, your declared opposition to the occupation. And in fact, what the UK is doing is illegal under international law because the UN resolutions are very clear that in the way that countries should deal with Israel, they have to clearly discriminate between Israel and the occupied territories, recognizing that the occupied territories are occupied. So they can't continue to deal with the occupying power as though it is not occupying another territory. But that is not how the UK deals with Israel. There's nothing that the UK does to sanction Israel for its occupation policies. And we know that it's specifically refused to even engage in the debate over the possibility of applying sanctions over Israel. If you look also at the policy on illegal settlement goods, the goods that are being produced illegally by Israeli firms in the occupied territories and then being exported out of the country, these are illegal exports. And what the government has said is that even though it's opposed to the occupation, it does not make those exports illegal. What it says is that it allows individual consumers and individual companies to decide whether to engage with, whether to buy those exports. Again, I think there's a strong argument to say that that policy is actually illegal under international law, not making those illegal exports illegal is illegal. But none of this is being discussed. None of it is being discussed in the press on television. It's all just taking place in some kind of vacuum, as though no one wants to discuss this. No one dares to discuss it. And going back to what you were saying before about what you and I were both saying before about South censorship, the brave journalist that starts talking about illegal British policies towards Israel, the chances of them getting published are approximately zero. But this is the reality of what's going on at the moment, a whole range of illegal, unethical, unlawful policies that the government is just simply getting away with. Yeah. I mean, I have to say, I'm sure you had it a bit further back than I did. In the last five years, I've had people say to me, don't write or comment about Israel, Palestine, or about UK foreign policy, because it's really going to hold you back and your career back. And I said, well, I don't want to career. I didn't help start Navarra Media for career. I did it because there's a huge gap in our public conversation about things that really matter to many, many, many people, as we saw over the weekend with the demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine. But it's a thing. And for people to say it so overtly to you over a drink, it's not even something they sort of skirt around. It's said very directly, you shouldn't do this because it's not your own self-interest. Well, screw my self-interest. In terms of the government's sort of stated position, and again, how hypocritical that is, how big a distance there is between practice and what they're actually saying, has that changed at all? Because obviously the situation between Israel and Palestine has really deteriorated, I think, since 2008-9. I mean, it's increasingly clear, probably just by virtue of the media we now consume. But there's a growing part of the population are quite aware of the facts on the ground. Has that in any way sort of been reflected in changes to government policy at all? One bit? Well, I think what it's done is it's made the government very wary that their official position on Israel has to be seen to be upholding the international consensus, which is that the Israeli settlements are illegal. If Britain were to suddenly say, well, actually, no, we're a bit iffy now about maybe there's another interpretation of this, maybe the occupation can be... I think the government knows it can't get away with that. So it has to keep up this declared position of supporting international law, even though it's plainly obvious that it's not actually implementing that in practice. I mean, also what it's doing, and this comes on also, I think, is relevant to what you're asking, is the government incessantly talks about the two-state solution. So this is the solution that the UK wants to see in Israel and Palestine. And it knows that this is the language of the international community. Of course, what is actually the case is that the two-state solution's been dead for a very long time. There is no prospect of a coherent, contiguous Palestinian state, given the extent of Israeli settlements throughout the occupied West Bank. It's a complete fantasy. Everyone in the foreign office must know that the two-state solution is a complete fantasy, but it remains the formal declared position, because to withdraw from that would be seen to be very, very controversial. And I think the public pressure and the support for Palestine, which is actually quite large, I think, throughout the country, is certainly among a strong part of the population, I think. The government just couldn't get away with it. It couldn't be seen to be so overtly withdrawing from its position of supporting international law, even though in practice it doesn't pay any heed to that. So I do think that public pressure has probably kept up the need for the government to be seen to be supporting these legal positions. But unfortunately, behind the scenes, what it's been doing is moving away from that by stepping up relations with the occupying power, particularly military relations. So it's an entirely hypocritical strategy that it's got away with because the media hasn't exposed them. Yeah. So that hypocrisy at the heart of this whole thing just becomes more and more obvious because the stated position is so impracticable and so outlandish, given the facts on the ground. Final question. The Labour Party, despite Iraq and Afghanistan, likes to think of itself as the progressives with the nice guys, particularly when it comes to the global south and the global poor. Are there any real differences historically between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict? Have Labour been any better? Have they been any worse? I mean, my view is looking generally at Britain's foreign policy since the Second World War, which is the area I've spent most of my life really, analysing. I don't think you can make a case that Labour's foreign policy has actually been more progressive than the Conservatives generally, let alone on the case of Israel and Palestine. In fact, there's certainly been episodes in British government history and governments in British history since 1945 where Labour has been worse than the Conservatives. Actually, on the question of Israel-Palestine, I think Labour has generally been just as bad as the Conservatives in tending to side strongly with Israel militarily. And what we've seen now with Lisa Nandi, the Shadow Foreign Secretary's comments, calling on the government to assess these arms exports and failing to unequivocally condemn the massive bombardment of an occupied territory by Israeli airstrikes, hundreds of them. Failure to condemn that just absolutely shows the complete moral bankruptcy of the opposition party in the UK that they're just as supportive of the primary aggressor in this conflict, Israel, as the government. And actually, that is consistent with Labour's policy over the last certainly 20 or 30 years when it comes to Israel. I mean, Tony Blair's government, very supportive of Israel in the attacks on Gaza, for example, in the years following year 2000, constant arms sales, constant military support to Israel at that time. So we're not seeing any changes now. We're seeing a Labour party that's actually just behaving completely consistently with its historical record. And for that reason, it's all the more worrying for that reason. So I feel that we have a real problem with our political class when it comes to Britain encouraging our country to act ethically abroad. Whether you go back to the vote in Iraq that was supported by most MPs, go back to the war in Libya, the British intervention in 2011, which was supported by most MPs in the entire political class, go back to arms exports generally, supported by virtually the entire political class. Look at the Saudi, the British Saudi war in Yemen, supported by virtually the entire political class. We have a massive problem in this country that our elected representatives simply don't have the same values as the British public in my view. I don't think the most members of the British public, if they knew what the British complicity was in the current war in Gaza, if they knew what the extent of British complicity in that was and in the British relations, military relations with Israel over the last years, I don't think they would tolerate that. And I don't think that they would accept what is going on in their name if they knew about it. And the fact that our politicians are not representing us as a public is one of the biggest issues that we face. I keep talking about the need to democratize our governance system because we have a secretive, unaccountable, authoritarian, elitist decision making system in this country. When it comes to foreign policy making, very hard to influence it. Decisions made by ministers surrounded by a few of their mates are not accountable, not even transparent. We don't know what they're doing most of the time, can't influence them even if we did. This is not democracy. We need a fundamental transformation in the way that the UK has governed. Otherwise, we're just going to see more episodes like the war in Yemen, like British complicity in Israeli military action now. It's just going to go on and on and on. Well, that's a great place to finish on, Mark, and really appreciate you coming on. And I have to say, I mean, maybe people are out there, you might be atheists, agnostic, but I really think what you're doing declassified is God's work. If there is a creator who cares about all human beings, I think you're doing really remarkable stuff. And I think even though, of course, Navarro focuses on a range of topics, as you sort of alluded to there, I think on foreign policy in particular, independent journalism is so critically necessary because there's just so little pushback against the prevailing orthodoxy in the status quo. So I hope you keep on doing it, and I hope the declassified continues to grow. Thanks for making time for us today here on Navarro Media, Mark. Thank you very much indeed. Thanks a lot, Aaron. Cheers. So I said at the top of the interview that if you found it useful, you learned something, could you do two things? Like and subscribe. We really appreciate it because it helps us find an even bigger audience. If you've already liked the video, if you've already subscribed to our YouTube channel, do one more thing too. Go to navarromedia.com forward slash support. As Mark said, independent media has never been more important on foreign policy, but pretty much everything else that matters too. If you agree, go to navarromedia.com forward slash support, make a one-off payment, or become a rolling supporter. Michael Walker is back with Tiske Sauer tomorrow evening. This has been downstream. I've been Aaron Bostani. Have a good night.