The ‘anti-Zionists’ are hounding British Israelis through the courts

Earlier this month, the chief magistrate at Westminster Magistrates’ Court made an order for costs after a failed private prosecution brought by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP). The ICJP had sought a summons against an unnamed British-Israeli dual national who had served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). It relied on the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870, a Victorian statute intended to prevent British subjects acting as ‘mercenaries’ in foreign conflicts and to protect British neutrality.

Reading the court’s judgement, it is clear that this case represented something disturbing. A private prosecution allows individuals or organisations to ask a magistrates’ court to issue a summons for a criminal trial. They can apply with evidence that they say establishes an offence. The court must then decide whether there is any proper basis for issuing the summons.

The proposed defendant was a reservist in the IDF who reported for duty on 8 October 2023, the day after Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel. In other words, there was no suggestion that he had done anything other than return to service in the armed forces of a country of which he was also a citizen.

The ICJP’s case was characterised by dishonesty and a poor understanding of the law. The ICJP initially requested that the application for a summons be anonymised by the court, only to later publicise the application on its own website. The judge found that this approach to anonymisation ‘may have been calculated to allow ICJP to control the narrative and enhance its public profile’. The judge warned that the courts should not be used to ‘expose individuals for wrongdoing that falls outside the scope of the criminal law’, as was clearly the case here.

The judge found that the Foreign Enlistment Act was never intended to criminalise dual nationals serving in the armed forces of another country of which they are citizens. If it were, this would mean that, say, a dual British-Indian national returning to serve in India’s armed forces could potentially face prosecution on their return to the UK. This is plainly not what the law was intended to achieve – in the words of the magistrate, it would be ‘an absurd extraterritorial overreach of UK legislation’.

The application was also based on selective and unreliable material. Unbelievably, one of the witnesses put forward as an ‘expert’ – Dr Mandy Turner – was a member of an ICJP WhatsApp group. This relationship had not been properly disclosed. The magistrate found that Turner was a ‘campaigner and an activist, committed to the political agenda pursued by this prosecution, rather than an independent expert’.

Turner also advanced claims that the court found to be demonstrably false, including the suggestion that Israel was to blame for the explosion at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City in October 2023, when a misfired rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad was actually responsible. The judge found there was no satisfactory explanation for an expert getting such important details wrong, and criticised Turner for ‘promoting an entirely false account’.

There were further disturbing details. The judgement revealed that the ICJP had written to the Metropolitan Police in 2022, inviting its Counter Terrorism Command to ‘open an investigation into British citizens who joined the IDF’. It did not candidly disclose to the court that it had previously made this request. The magistrate found that its failure to do so was ‘at best disingenuous’ and ‘at worst misleading’.

The judgement concluded with the finding that the application had been brought with the ‘dominant motive… to advance a political or ideological agenda’. These are strong, excoriating words from a judge – and they were more than merited.

This application should frighten all of us. The ICJP had clearly tried to criminalise British-Israeli dual nationals – first through calls for police investigations, and then through a private criminal prosecution. The case relied on partisan experts and failed to disclose relevant relationships and history. Had it succeeded, it could have opened the door to a legally sanctioned witch-hunt against British Israelis and other dual nationals.

Private prosecutions are an important safeguard in our justice system. They should not be allowed to become a means of intimidating people, manufacturing public suspicion or pursuing a warped political agenda through the criminal courts.

This case shows how vigilant we must be against overt abuses of the legal system to such sinister, hateful ends. The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians should hang its head in shame.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author. His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books. Order it here.