A tale of two armies
TetleysTLDR: The summary
Britain operates a blatant double standard on foreign fighters. When Russia invaded Ukraine, British volunteers were treated as potential criminals: warned by ministers, stopped at airports and threatened with prosecution under the Foreign Enlistment Act, but British nationals serving in the IDF: an army accused by UN experts of war crimes and genocide in Gaza face no scrutiny at all. No warnings, no passport seizures, no investigations. This isn’t a legal grey area: UK law allows prosecution of any British citizen who commits war crimes abroad. Human rights groups have already submitted dossiers identifying British–Israeli fighters involved in Gaza operations, yet the government has done nothing. The silence is political, driven by fear of diplomatic fallout and accusations of antisemitism. The result is a corrupt hierarchy of accountability where allies get impunity and victims are ignored. If Britain won’t apply the law equally, its moral credibility is a joke.
TetleysTLDR: The long bit
There is a sickness at the heart of Britain’s foreign-policy establishment: a sickness that reveals itself not through what is said, but through what is suppressed. You can hear it in the studied silence from the Home Office, the evasions at the Foreign Office, the hollow legalism of ministers who know exactly what the law demands but refuse to act on it. The sickness is this: the British state has developed a two-tier system of moral accountability, one for those who fight for the 'right' allies, and another for those who do not.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, hundreds of British citizens attempted to join the Ukrainian International Legion. Whatever you think of foreign volunteering, their motives were largely clear: a sovereign nation had been invaded, civilians were being slaughtered, and the international system was failing to stop it. Instead of supporting these volunteers, or even merely tolerating them, the British state mobilised its full machinery of discouragement. Ministers lined up at the despatch box to warn that anyone travelling to fight in Ukraine risked prosecution under the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870. Police officers visited would-be volunteers at airports. Passports were seized. Families were warned that their sons and daughters could be criminalised for taking part in a conflict that the UK itself was arming, funding and cheering on from the sidelines. The message was unmistakable: Brits fighting abroad is dangerous, destabilising, and potentially illegal. That was the official doctrine: right up until the moment it became politically inconvenient.
Britain’s Selective Outrage: Why Volunteers for Ukraine Are Warned, But IDF Fighters Walk Free
The Silence Around IDF Fighters
Now look at what happens when British nationals fight in the IDF: an army whose actions in Gaza are under investigation by the International Court of Justice, and whose conduct has been described by UN experts as involving 'a significant risk of genocide'. Entire neighbourhoods have been erased. Hospitals levelled. Civil society decimated. Families buried alive in their homes and among the soldiers carrying out these operations are dual UK–Israeli nationals. Some were born here. Some live here. Some will return here.
- How many official warnings have been issued?
- How many police interviews?
- How many legal briefings?
- How many confiscated passports?
I think you all know the answer to that - it's zero
Absolutely none. The same government that treated volunteers for Ukraine as potential criminals treats participants in one of the most devastating military campaigns of the century as if they were gap-year students returning from a scuba course. There is no neutrality here. No even-handedness. No application of principle.
What we are witnessing is the most naked form of political selectivity: British volunteers for Ukraine were a problem; British volunteers for the IDF are an embarrassment that must be ignored.
declassifieduk.org the British-Israeli soldiers at risk of Gaza war crimes probe
The law Is crystal clear, and universally avoided
Let’s not pretend this is a grey area - the law isn't vague or 'complex' as government lawyers like to murmur into their sleeves. Under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, any British national who commits genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity abroad can be prosecuted in the UK.
Under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957, grave breaches of international humanitarian law: including targeting civilians, collective punishment and preventing humanitarian aid are prosecutable offences for UK nationals, even when committed overseas.
What this means in plain English is that any British citizen who takes part in war crimes abroad should face investigation. And the IDF isn't fucking exempt.
These laws have been applied aggressively when the perpetrator is Black or brown, Muslim or Arab, enemy or 'undesirable' they are rarely applied when the perpetrator is wearing the uniform of a British ally. This is not a legal failure, it is a moral collapse.
Andrew Scott, callsign 'Caesar' serving in the the mortar platoon in the 2nd battalion of the International Legion.
“If you travel to Ukraine to fight, or to assist others engaged in the war, your activities may amount to offences under UK legislation. You could be prosecuted on your return to the UK.”
UK Parliament Questions
The evidence exists, the will does not
Human rights organisations have already compiled detailed dossiers containing the names of British–Israeli fighters who participated in specific operations in Gaza. These dossiers include photographs, social-media posts, battalion deployment histories and testimony from survivors.
- They have been submitted to the Metropolitan Police.
- They have been sent to the Home Office.
- They have been placed in the hands of the international war-crimes units that Britain claims to support
And what has the government done with them? absolutely fuck all.
- Not a single meaningful investigation has been opened.
- Not a single official has acknowledged the possibility that British nationals might have contributed to unlawful killings.
- Not a single question has been posed by a minister who isn’t already terrified of the headlines.
This is not ignorance.
This is avoidance so deliberate it is nothing other than complicity.
There’s the question no one in Westminster seems remotely interested in asking: what about the British volunteers who went off to fight for the IDF and are now quietly filtering back home? Are we to seriously believe they’re all undamaged ‘law-abiding' and ’beyond scrutiny? Do we really want people who’ve done fuck knows what in a war zone, who’ve trained, fought, possibly killed, maybe committed atrocities and operated within a military repeatedly accused of war crimes just wandering around our High Streets without any investigation into their suitability to return to civilian life? This isn’t about collective punishment or knee-jerk hysteria, it’s about the obscene complacency of a system that treats extreme violence abroad as morally invisible once it’s carried out by the ‘right’ people under the ‘right’ flag. And yet the public are expected to swallow this on trust, while being policed, surveilled and criminalised for far less.
According to the Times of Israel, more than 10,000 IDF soldiers are suffering from PTSD and mental health issues Times of Israel
What's to say there aren't fuckers like this walking our streets unchecked? 
The real reason for the double standard
Why this silence? Why this chasm between what the law demands and what the state actually does? This answer is because the British government is terrified of the political consequences of treating Israeli war crimes with the same seriousness it applies to everyone else’s. It fears accusations of antisemitism, despite the fact that accountability for war crimes is a legal duty, not a racial attack.
And of course it fears diplomatic fallout with Washington, because it fears exposing how deeply British political culture has entangled itself with an unconditional support for Israel’s military actions even at their most extreme. Britain is not a neutral actor.
- It is an enabler.
- It is a shield.
- It is the state that looks the other way when atrocities are committed by those it considers “strategic partners”.
And it is hardly surprising, the amount of hard cash that finds its way into the back pockets of politicians and political parties from the Israel lobby to pay for looking the other way.
Let's face it when British politicians are funded by Israeli interests, the Israelis aren't doing it for sharp wit and sparkling personality.
When the state picks and chooses whose war crimes matter, it is not upholding human rights.
It is enforcing a hierarchy of human suffering.
Boris Johnson in Israel with British IDF troops.
“…you shouldn’t go to Ukraine…” the same Boris Johnson, warning Brits against leaving to fight.
Consequences of looking away
This double standard is not a mere technicality. It has real effects, brutal ones. Every Palestinian who watches a British passport-holder participate in the destruction of their neighbourhood sees clearly that 'British values' stop at their border.
Every British volunteer discouraged from defending Ukraine learns that legality has less to do with justice and more to do with geopolitics.
And every survivor of war crimes committed by allies learns that the UK’s commitment to human rights is not universal, it is conditional, selective, and deeply corrupted. A legal system that punishes the powerless and protects the powerful is not a justice system. It is an accomplice.
It is far easier to arrest grannies with placards than it is to address its own complicity in war crimes.
And no amount of sugar coating can hide the outright shame of our Politicians and police for their cuntish behaviour.
And whilst we are at it, lets throw the BBC into the mix. Their radio silence on the hunger strikes is fucking shameful.
What Must Happen Now
If Britain wishes to claim even the faintest shred of credibility, it must:
- Open immediate investigations into British nationals who fought in Gaza, using existing war-crimes legislation.
- Issue explicit warnings, the same warnings given to Ukraine volunteers to all UK nationals considering joining the IDF.
- Acknowledge publicly that British citizens can be complicit in war crimes, regardless of the uniform they wear.
- Reaffirm that international law is indivisible it cannot apply only to Britain’s enemies.
- Confront the political lobbies and diplomatic pressures that have made accountability impossible.
Anything less is cowardice dressed up as diplomacy.
The Choice Facing Britain
In the end, this is not a legal question, it is a moral one. Does Britain believe in accountability or does it believe in selective impunity? Does it uphold the rule of law, or the rule of political convenience? Does it care about human beings, or only about strategic alliances? If the law is not applied equally, then it is not a law at all.
And if Britain refuses to investigate its own citizens for war crimes then it cannot call itself a nation of justice. Until these questions are answered honestly and until the state has the courage to follow where the evidence leads Britain will remain what it has quietly become: a place where the powerful are untouchable, the victims invisible and the law a prop wheeled on stage only when politically useful.
- Prosecute the war criminals
- Free the hunger strikers
- Drop the ridiculous fucking charges against pensioners branded as terrorists
- Stop conflating antisemitism with accountability for those fucking out of control Israeli cunts.
- Investigate our own politicians for complicity in war crimes, they've more than earned a day out at the Hague
Tetley is a left of centre writer and retired musician based in the UK. A former member of the Labour Party, he writes political analysis exposing Britain’s authoritarian drift, the criminalisation of protest, and the erosion of civil liberties.
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