'Death run': New film shot in Cyprus reveals UK military help to Israel during Gaza genocide
A new documentary by Declassified UK has revealed fresh details about Britain's military cooperation with Israel during its genocide in Gaza.
Published on YouTube on Thursday evening, Britain's Gaza Spy Flight Scandal follows Declassified's Phil Miller and Alex Morris to Cyprus in September, where they filmed outside the UK's airbase, Royal Air Force Akrotiri, just a 40-minute flight from Tel Aviv.
From there, RAF planes have conducted hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza throughout Israel's war on the besieged enclave.
The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has repeatedly insisted the flights are solely in support of "hostage rescue".
But they have been shrouded in significant secrecy, and it has emerged over the past two years that Britain has shared intelligence with Israel and has captured footage of Gaza on days that Israeli attacks have killed British citizens.
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This new film makes a series of important revelations.
It features the first footage of an American spy plane - leased by the RAF - taking off from the base to fly over Gaza.
Earlier this year, after hundreds of RAF flights over Gaza, it emerged that the British military had begun hiring American contractors to carry out the flights.
The film finds that there have been as many as 116 more surveillance missions, carried out by the American contractors, than were previously known about.
Declassified cites sources who say the spy planes were able to produce high-resolution footage of Gaza through their radar imaging systems and share it with Israel in real time.
Footage from day of Israeli attack on UK citizens
The film examines the case of James Henderson, a former royal marine who was riding in a World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza when it was hit by an Israeli strike on 1 April 2024.
Britain's Ministry of Defence holds footage of Gaza from the day Henderson was killed along with six other international aid workers, taken by an RAF plane. But it has refused to publish the tape, citing national security exemptions.
Henderson's father, Neil, tells Declassified in the film that he "can't understand how that footage can affect British security".
He describes the MoD's refusal to release the footage as "an insult".
"If it was released, it would give us a far better understanding of what was happening on the ground," he said.
"I think it would prove that the Israelis were watching them…I really do believe they were deliberately targeted."
In August, Middle East Eye asked the MoD under the Freedom of Information Act whether it holds video footage taken by RAF planes of two Israeli attacks in Gaza on British citizens or volunteers working for British charities.
The MoD refused to disclose the information, again citing national security and defence exemptions.
One of the Israeli strikes MEE asked about killed eight volunteers working for the UK charity Al-Khair Foundation in March this year as they were setting up tents for displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza's Beit Lahia.
'They're off on a death run'
Another significant issue surrounding the surveillance flights is the MoD's contested claim that the intelligence is solely to aid hostage rescue efforts.
Former RAF technician Steve Masters, interviewed in Declassified's film, points out that the UK cannot control how Israel uses the intelligence it is given.
He says footage shared with Israel "could have just as easily been used for general target acquisition".
Another focus of the film is discontent in Cyprus over the RAF base and its role assisting Israel. Declassified covers a protest by local Cypriots against the base.
Cypriot politician Melanie Steliou, who takes the reporters around the British base, says: "The thought that every time a plane leaves, people could be dead and children could be dead… It’s heartbreaking and infuriating.
"And they’re taking off from here! They’re off on a death run."
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