Is the UK complicit in Israeli abuse of Gaza flotilla activists?

Hear no evil, see no evil, punish no evil: The British Government’s policy on Israeli aggression against its citizens

I picked up my friend, Cerie Bullivant, from Stansted airport on 23 May 2026. He had arrived there from Occupied Palestine via Turkey. The weeks prior, he was on the latest Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) with hundreds of others from all across the globe, attempting to break Israel’s siege imposed on Gaza.

Of course, at arrivals, I wasn’t the only one waiting for their friend or loved one. Others had gathered with welcome home banners, flowers and chocolates. That was to be expected. Conspicuously, though (probably by design), there were somewhere around ten to fifteen police officers also lurking. Perhaps that was also to be expected.

Given the events that had occurred during the week leading up to the GSF members returning to Stansted, one would have been forgiven for thinking the British Government had totally forgotten their citizens to rot in Israeli detention centres.

The previous week had been tense. The flotilla was intercepted, those on board were kidnapped, taken to Occupied Palestine on an Israeli cargo ship and then the now infamous Ben-Gvir video went viral. Throughout all that, there was silence from the British Government and the Foreign Office (FCDO). Yet, here was the constabulary throwing them a welcome home party. Oh, and they were armed too.

Tempted as we may have been to believe that they were there to ensure the safety of their returning citizens, they quickly dispelled that notion. The folks from the Global Sumud Flotilla had organised a press conference at one of the hotels next to the airport. While waiting for all the flotilla members to arrive, word came that the police had gone to the hotel to intimidate them into cancelling the GSF’s conference room booking. Thereby, halting the press conference.

While all that was ongoing, Cerie and I spoke about his experience. He told me that when he and the others landed in Turkey after being tortured by the IDF in Israeli detention centres, he attempted to speak to someone from the British consulate to tell them what he had witnessed. He approached three different consulate staff to tell them about sexual assaults that he had witnessed, hoping they would do their duty and take his statement so an investigation could be launched.

Three times, the consulate staff stared blankly at him before walking away briskly without taking a statement. As of writing, no one has contacted Cerie for a statement.

Back to the previous week, once we heard the flotilla had been intercepted, several activists independently got together and began to organise activities and campaigns to highlight their plight. We emailed MPs, emailed and called the FCDO, spread the news through WhatsApp and Signal groups, created hashtags and organised demonstrations outside Downing Street. Throughout all this, we heard nothing from the MP’s and the FCDO beyond boilerplate responses.

That is, until Yvette Cooper, the current Secretary of State, tweeted that the FCDO had been in touch with the families. She certainly hadn’t contacted Cerie’s family, at least. A charitable interpretation of her tweet could be that the families had contacted the FCDO themselves, to which the FCDO responded with a template response, and Cooper thought that was good enough.

The FCDO and British Consulates have a duty to raise concerns of torture or ill treatment of British Citizens to the local authorities where those atrocities were reported to have taken place. In this case, that would be Israel. Yet at every opportunity, it seems the FCDO and the police colluded to do the exact opposite. Both abroad and when the flotilla members had returned, it didn’t matter the locus of operation. The same policy of silencing individuals and the GSF as an organisation persisted from Turkey to Britain, across different state actors.

To be sure, Yvette Cooper did “condemn” the actions of Ben-Gvir. Though given the thoroughly minced words, one could be forgiven for thinking that what Cooper was in fact doing was to provide cover for the Israeli aggression. Her condemnation focused on Ben-Gvir and his actions, which she said, “violate the most basic standards of respect and dignity in the way people should be treated”. An odd way to talk about human rights abuses.

The focus on Ben-Gvir and not on the whole machinery of Israeli oppression is diplomatic cover. Ben-Gvir, someone already sanctioned by Britain, is an easy target for platitudes dressed as forceful diplomacy. Meanwhile, the IDF gets away without a mention. This does beg the question, though: if Ben-Gvir is sanctioned, what exactly are the consequences of those sanctions in light of his – and the police, who we can assume were acting on his orders – treatment of Flotilla members?

It emerges then that not only is the British Government ignoring Israel’s hostility as it pertains to their citizens, but it is also wilfully looking the other way. The walking away from testimony, the absence of support for families, and, most clearly of all, the shutting down of a press conference.

This is not passivity, not inaction, not failure of process. This is an active, if unstated, policy of abandoning British citizens who act on their moral convictions to stand up to a genocidal state. There is a word for this. Collaboration.

Nadeem Dawud studied History at Oxford and King’s College London, where he completed a Master’s in World History and Cultures. His interests lie in decolonialism, anarchism, and building resilient communities. A long-time activist in the UK Muslim community, he now focuses on grassroots projects that speak locally but resonate globally, and he co-hosts the Boys in the Cave podcast.

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