Book Review by Martin Shaw
Cross.posted from Declassified UK
As British people have turned against Israel’s destruction of Gaza, leading figures in its present and former governing parties still deny that Israel has committed even war crimes, let alone genocide.
Some of these denialists are hardened Zionists, others are opportunists, but the bottom line is summed up in the one-word title of Peter Oborne’s timely book. They have made themselves “complicit” (at the very least) in Israel’s monstrous crimes.
Oborne traces British complicity through Rishi Sunak’s unconditional backing for Israel after 7 October 2023, and Keir Starmer’s outrageous statement that Israel had the right to cut off power and water, to their joint opposition to a ceasefire.
Through a “cross-party cartel”, they “established the political foundation that would make Britain complicit” in massacres, indiscriminate bombing, torture and displacement.
This led to specific contributions to Israel’s genocide. Britain sold parts for the F-35 fighter jets that it used to kill civilians, and withdrew funding for UNRWA, the agency that provided Gaza’s humanitarian lifeline.
The RAF flew hundreds of reconnaissance flights, as Declassified exposed. The pretext of helping to find Israel’s hostages was quickly undermined as it became clear that Netanyahu was sacrificing them in his pursuit of endless destruction.
Above all, Oborne shows, UK governments unremittingly placed the lives of Israelis above those of Palestinians, accused critics of antisemitism, and blocked protest, culminating in the banning of the nonviolent direct-action group, Palestine Action, as a ‘terrorist’ organisation. The far right Reform UK also egged on this repression.
Accomplices
Complicity is not just a moral disaster; it has legal consequences, being specified as an international crime under Article III of the United Nations Genocide Convention.
Moreover, accountability is not only for international courts to decide: the Convention is incorporated into British law under the International Criminal Court Act of 2001.
How have we got into the position where British leaders – Sunak, Starmer and others – potentially face trial as accomplices in genocide?
Oborne starts with South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice, which ruled that the Palestinians faced “plausible” risks of genocide.
Despite this, Tory ministers and their Labour successors ignored the duty of genocide prevention that the judgment reinforced.
Far from trying to halt Israel’s assault on Gaza’s civilian population, both doubled down on UK military and political support for it.
The politicians could not have sustained their complicity had it not been for the mainstream media, the third element of what Oborne calls a “triple alliance”.
His thorough dissection of their pro-Israeli coverage, which often combined bigotry and ignorance with contempt for Palestinian journalists, is devastating.
However, by focusing on the BBC, the Daily Mail, etc., he leaves the more nuanced complicity of the Guardian and other liberal media for other researchers to attend to.
Conspirators
Complicit combines a first draft of the history of the last two years with a longer historical primer.
It explains how Britain’s role in Gaza was prepared by decades of protection for Israeli repression across Palestine.
There is a full examination of Israel’s support structure in the two main parties – Oborne’s own emergence from the fading Conservative Arabist milieu gives him a distinctive vantage-point.
Oborne rightly sees that Starmer deserves a chapter to himself. Following his involvement as a lawyer in a major international genocide case in 2014, he is uniquely knowledgeable about the crime among world leaders, and must therefore appreciate the precariousness of his and the UK’s positions.
If anything, Complicit understates this exposure. The Genocide Convention itemises “conspiracy” as well as “complicity” as a specific crime.
The UK has clung so closely to Israel’s genocidal leaders, frequently consulting them about its deadly cooperation in their military actions, and openly boasting about it, that conspiracy is also a plausible charge.
Indeed, British-Israeli collaboration can be seen as a branch of the much larger US-Israeli conspiracy, which in 2025 has seen Trump take over the higher management of the genocide.
As I argue in my own new book, this integrated involvement makes Gaza stand out, even in the long history of British and Western complicity with genocide across the world.
Starmer and the other villains of this piece are hoping that none of this will come to court quickly.
Political careers are short, legal timelines are often long. But a reckoning is coming, and everyone who reads Complicit will come away determined to bring that day nearer.
Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza, is available to order from OR Books
ISBN-13 : 978-1682194522
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