AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

The British Labour Party is holding its annual conference in Liverpool. This is British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband speaking earlier today.

ED MILIBAND: And I want to say to the millions of people in this country, and indeed elsewhere, who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: We hear you. You were right. …

We call out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank. We call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza. We call out Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. And we match words with action. We will ban the import of goods from illegal settlements. We will disrupt the supply lines of British finance, British construction and British services for illegal settlements. And when it comes to the attempt to destroy the two-state solution, this party, this movement, this government says: We will not let you succeed.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband speaking to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool earlier today. He spoke a day after police arrested more than 50 protesters outside the conference for holding signs reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Under U.K. law, Palestine Action is proscribed, or banned, as a terrorist organization.

Well, we turn now to Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed. That’s the name of a documentary that aired Thursday night on Channel 4, examining how the British government responded to Israel’s war on Gaza. It’s based in part on unpublished internal government documents. This excerpt looks at the role of David Cameron, Britain’s former Conservative Prime Minister.

RAMITA NAVAI: In January 2024, David Cameron was questioned about the government’s response to the crisis by the Foreign Affairs Committee. By this point, over 23,000 Palestinians had been killed, and Israel had blockaded Gaza for three months.

BRENDAN O’HARA: If Israel have the power to turn the water back on that they turned off, surely, that is a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law.

DAVID CAMERON: Well, I — I’m — I’m not a lawyer. My view is they ought to switch it on, because the north of Gaza, the conflict is now effectively over there, and so —

ALICIA KEARNS: So, you’ve never had a piece of paper put in front of you by a Foreign Office lawyer that says that Israel is in breach of its international humanitarian commitments under international humanitarian law?

DAVID CAMERON: Look, I — I — the reason I don’t answer this question, I can’t recall every single bit of paper that’s been put in front of me. I see — I look at everything. I mean, of course, there are lots of things that have happened where you think, “Well, surely that is — that was something that shouldn’t have happened.” And so, I don’t want to answer that question.

RAMITA NAVAI: Now Dispatches can reveal what legal advice David Cameron had received. Only a month before giving evidence in Parliament, he had been sent two separate assessments concluding that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was a possible breach of international humanitarian law. An email confirms he carefully considered all the information in one of them.

BRENDAN O’HARA: Have you been made aware or seen any evidence or have reasonable grounds to believe that Israel has breached international humanitarian law?

DAVID CAMERON: I’ve seen lots of things that have been deeply concerning.

BRENDAN O’HARA: Have you received legal advice?

RAMITA NAVAI: David Cameron evaded those questions 10 times.

AMY GOODMAN: The documentary Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed also features former British Foreign Office official Mark Smith, who resigned in protest over arms sales to Israel. These are his words in his own voice, though he’s portrayed on screen by an actor.

MARK SMITH: We’ve all seen the aerial footage of entire neighborhoods literally flattened to the ground. They’ve destroyed the vast majority of all residential buildings in Gaza. I’ve never seen anything like it in my career, in my life.

RAMITA NAVAI: He had been a lead officer on arms sales assessments during the Saudi-led war in Yemen. He was now working as a diplomat representing the U.K. and Ireland, and was shocked by the handling of Gaza.

MARK SMITH: And the nature of the assessment is such that you can kind of make it say whatever you want, and that is why the system is broken.

RAMITA NAVAI: Because of the scale of destruction, he was concerned about possible war crimes, and even genocide.

MARK SMITH: So, even without being on the team and having access to the assessments being made, I could see, on the news, in broad daylight, with the naked eye, the most appalling attacks taking place on a daily basis. Almost every single school and almost every single hospital in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed. How are we justifying our arms exports? If there is even a question, whether domestically or internationally, that a state that you are selling arms to might be conducting a genocide, then the time to be discussing whether they might be in breach of IHL is way gone.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s British Foreign Office official Mark Smith, who resigned over Britain’s policy towards Israel.

We’re joined now by Ben De Pear, executive producer of Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed. He’s produced four films on Gaza since October 7th, including Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. The BBC refused to air that film last year. Channel 4 picked it up, and it then won a BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Oscars. Ben De Pear served as editor of Channel 4 News for 10 years.

We thank you so much for being with us, Ben. Talk about this piece that came out, this documentary, on Thursday night. And what are these Gaza secrets, where you got them?

BEN DE PEAR: Well, it’s extraordinary to hear Ed Miliband today at the Labour Party conference rewriting U.K. policy. I heard just now — you played the clip — that he’s calling what happened in Gaza possible war crimes, or war crimes even, and that is a long way forward from where his predecessor was and where this government has been and the previous government.

Our film focused on the process by which the Foreign Office, our government, assesses Israel’s conduct, its military behavior in Gaza, because not only are they an ally of the United Kingdom, but we also sell them weapons. And we are the signatory of a number of international treaties, including the Genocide Convention, which means if there is even a risk of a genocide taking place, you are meant to take action as a fellow country under that Genocide Convention. You’re meant to stop the genocide, not aid it, not sell weapons. We’re also signatories of the arms treaty, which is that you do not sell arms to a country that may be committing war crimes.

And when we got these documents from inside the Foreign Office, they were the assessments written by a team who were watching hundreds of videos, the sort of videos that you and I watched on our phones, that the whole world watched on their phones, of civilians being killed, schools being bombed, hospitals, like our last film, being attacked, the whole health system taken out, journalists being killed, over 200 of them. Obviously, 73 — 74,000 people have now been killed in Gaza, but 21,000 of them are children. So, in its scale, there’s not been a bombing campaign like it this century. This century.

So, we were looking at how our country, which prides itself on having an ethical foreign policy and as being one of the supporting members of the United Nations on human rights, was able to keep selling arms. And basically, what we found was a doctored process, where assessments were coming to ministers that were saying these are possible war crimes, but fairly neutral. And then the ministers were saying, “We don’t see any cause for concern here” — certainly, David Cameron said that — “We can keep signing them off.” And even as he was — sorry — publicly saying, “We are going to take tough action against what Israel is doing,” privately they were signing off these weapons sales licenses so that we could continue selling arms to Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Sometimes on the same day.

BEN DE PEAR: Yes, yes. There was one bombing of the World Central Kitchen in which six aid workers were killed. Three of them were British. And that was on the 1st of April. On the 2nd of April, David Cameron came out saying — demanding that the Israelis take action, they do a proper investigation. And on the 3rd of April, he was signing the latest weapons sales license so that we could continue selling them weapons. It’s quite extraordinary the level of duplicity that was going on in order for us to keep selling Israel arms.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip that’s related to the bombing of the World Central Kitchen. This is from Britain’s Gaza Secrets [Exposed]. It focuses on that attack, where World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza were killed — it was seven of them — in April 2024.

RAMITA NAVAI: Neil and Trish Henderson’s son James had served in the Royal Marines in Afghanistan. From February 2024, he was working for World Central Kitchen, a charity delivering food to civilians in Gaza.

TRISH HENDERSON: We could see what was happening in Gaza, but you think, “If they’re doing humanitarian work, then they’re going to be safe.”

NEIL HENDERSON: They should be —

TRISH HENDERSON: They should be safe.

NEIL HENDERSON: Yeah, and they should have been safe. They should have been safe.

TRISH HENDERSON: Yeah, he wasn’t out there fighting a war. He was out there trying to help people.

RAMITA NAVAI: James entered Gaza just before famine was declared by the UN. As a security adviser, he was responsible for the team’s safety along routes coordinated with the IDF.

NEIL HENDERSON: He said, “No matter where you go, all you can hear is drones all the time.”

TRISH HENDERSON: “When I finish on the phone to you,” he said, “I’m going to go up and put some more World Central Kitchen stickers on the roof.” And that was the last time I spoke to him.

RAMITA NAVAI: On the 1st of April, James and two other British veterans, John Antony Chapman and James Kirby, were driving in an aid convoy. At 11 p.m., an Israeli drone fired on them. Seven aid workers were killed, including the three Brits.

NEIL HENDERSON: I always remember Trish just crying out to me, “It’s Jim.” You know. And then you realize, you know, that he was one of the seven. That whole day is just a blur, really, in that sense. Just…

RAMITA NAVAI: Killings of the aid workers in the World Central Kitchen strike triggered an international outcry.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: The devastating Israeli airstrikes that killed World Central Kitchen personnel yesterday bring the number of aid workers killed in this conflict to 196, including more than 175 members of our own U.N. staff. This is unconscionable, but it is an inevitable result of the way the war is being conducted.

DAVID CAMERON: I welcome what the Israeli foreign minister said yesterday to me about a full, urgent and transparent inquiry into how this dreadful event was allowed to happen. And we want to see that happen very, very quickly.

RAMITA NAVAI: But that same day Cameron was publicly demanding answers from the Israelis, behind closed doors he signed off the latest approval of weapons exports to Israel, without waiting for Israel’s investigation to be completed. This was just two days after the drone strike. This letter outlines his decision, which was based on the fifth IHL assessment. “The Foreign Secretary … does not recommend the suspension of any extant export licenses to Israel.”

AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from the documentary Britain’s Gaza Secrets [Exposed], that just aired on Channel 4. Even the case of the killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and her family, the British office concluded there was insufficient evidence to show there had been a breach of what’s called IHL, international humanitarian law. Finally, on this, before we go to your previous documentary, Ben, where you got a lot of the documents that you base Britain’s Gaza Secrets [Exposed]?

BEN DE PEAR: There was a court case taken by Al-Haq through an organization called GLAN, where they were trying to stop the U.K. government selling arms to Israel. And so, in that, there was disclosure of the assessments that were being made. And we managed to get hold of these, because they’re court documents. But we happened to be the only people who had actually bothered looking through them in any detail journalistically.

AMY GOODMAN: And we only have a minute left, but I want to go to your recent film on Gaza that you produced, Gaza: Doctors Under Fire. The BBC pulling the film weeks before its scheduled broadcast, Channel 4 aired it instead. It then won a BAFTA. During the award ceremony, you and your colleague, the correspondent on the piece, Ramita Navai, blasted the BBC.

RAMITA NAVAI: We refuse to be silenced and censored. And we thank — thank you. Thank you. And we thank Channel 4 for showing this film.

BEN DE PEAR: We also want to dedicate this award to Jaber Badwan and Osama Al-Ashi, the two journalists on the ground who made this film for us. They did so amongst a killing spree that killed over 250 of their colleagues, journalists in Gaza. So, I’d like a round of applause for them, please. And finally, just a question to the BBC: Given that you dropped our film, will you drop us from the BAFTA screening later tonight? Thank you. Bye.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Ben De Pear and Ramita Navai at the BAFTA ceremony, their acceptance speech. Ben, did the BBC air your speeches when they ran just within the next hours?

BEN DE PEAR: They did. They did, actually. And they were very fair to us. They showed our clips of the criticism of them. They came under huge pressure, especially from the government here, over Gaza. The BBC is a brilliant journalistic organization. They caved in a little bit during the first year and a half of the Gaza war. And they became under, I would say, unacceptable government pressure, and they didn’t, perhaps, react in the way they should. But I see positive signs now, especially that our own government is now criticizing Israel openly and taking a very firm stance, or a firmer stance, you will see the BBC perhaps given the space to do the coverage that they’ve normally done over many years.

AMY GOODMAN: Ben De Pear, executive producer of Britain’s Gaza Secrets [Exposed] and Gaza: Doctors Under Fire. He’s produced four films on Gaza since October 7, 2023. He served as editor-in-chief of Channel 4 News for 10 years, has been in Gaza 10 times over the last 20 years.

Coming up, Sharon Weinberger, author of Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: Billy Bragg singing “Tomorrow’s Going to Be a Better Day” in our Democracy Now! studios in New York.