Britain’s most senior military personnel made at least twelve official visits to Israel during the Gaza war, newly published Ministry of Defence (MoD) records show. The trips, largely unpublicised at the time, took place as Israeli forces carried out heavy bombardments across Gaza and international calls for an arms embargo intensified.
The records, covering the period from November 2023 to March 2025, detail travel by officers ranked two-star and above, as well as senior civil servants, including Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, and General Sir James Hockenhull. Together, the trips cost more than £18,000, excluding several RAF flights recorded as “nil return.” Analysis by the London-based research charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) revealed that Britain’s defence establishment maintained regular and ongoing contact with the Israeli armed forces throughout the conflict.
The trips were not limited to routine diplomatic meetings. One particularly sensitive visit was made by Shimon Fhima, the MoD’s director of strategic programmes, who travelled to Israel shortly after the January 2025 ceasefire for meetings described as “regarding Directed Energy Weapons.” Fhima’s directorate oversees the UK’s high-energy laser and electromagnetic weapons programme, technologies central to Britain’s pursuit of next-generation defence capabilities. The visit raised concerns among critics that the UK could be benefiting from Israeli military technologies honed in what some have described as the “Palestine Laboratory.”
Britain’s engagement with Israel during this period began with a trilateral meeting in the United States. On 28 November 2023, Lieutenant General Charles Walker travelled to Virginia to meet with American and French officials to discuss developments in Ukraine and Israel. The first visit to Israel itself took place on 6 December, when Admiral Radakin flew to Tel Aviv alongside then-defence secretary Grant Shapps. This was followed by General Hockenhull’s UK–Israel bilateral visit on 28 December, one day before South Africa filed its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Visits continued throughout 2024, including Air Chief Marshal Knighton’s trip from 9–11 January, costing £3,344. Ten days later, Radakin returned to Israel to meet the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, to “discuss future operations in the region.” By that point, bombardments in Gaza had already claimed around 25,000 lives.
Additional visits saw Hockenhull host Israeli Major General Eliezer Toledano in London for tri-service meetings on 13 February 2024. Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland, Chief of Joint Operations, travelled to Tel Aviv on 18–19 March for MoD-directed meetings. Around the same period, Air Marshal Paul Wyatt, Director-General for Security Policy, conducted consultations with Israeli and American officials in both Tel Aviv and Washington, with combined expenses exceeding £4,000.
Air Marshal Harv Smyth, the MoD’s director of space, visited Tel Aviv for a single day on 2 July 2024, while Air Vice-Marshal Philip Robinson made a visit in January 2025. Three more high-level trips followed: Major General Philip McNee, the Surgeon General, met with Israeli military officials between 9–13 February 2025; Major General Zac Stenning travelled from 2–5 March for discussions on “integration and campaigning”; and Smyth returned later that month for another visit to Tel Aviv and Israel’s North Command. Photographs released by the Israel Defence Forces confirmed an additional meeting between Radakin and Halevi in August 2024. Radakin and Stickland have since retired. In November 2024, the MoD invited Halevi to London, granting him temporary legal immunity to prevent potential arrest for alleged war crimes under universal jurisdiction laws.
Officials insist that these visits were part of standard diplomatic engagement intended to support security and stability in the Middle East, particularly in the aftermath of ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. However, the visits coincided with ongoing UK arms exports to Israel and a mounting civilian death toll in Gaza, raising questions over the UK’s moral and strategic position.
Roy Isbister, who leads Saferworld’s work on conventional arms, described Britain’s stance as “a moral failing of massive proportions.” He said: “I can only shake my head when comparing the government’s attitude to those protesting a genocide to those carrying it out. The UK government’s insistence on supporting the Israeli military machine despite its actions in Gaza and the West Bank is not only trashing the UK’s self-declared position as a champion of the ‘international rules-based order,’ it is a moral failure of historic significance.”
The new records expand on previous reporting, which had identified five official visits, as well as a meeting by Major General Zac Stenning. They demonstrate that senior British officers maintained frequent and high-level engagement with the Israeli military even as accusations of war crimes mounted. Critics argue that this continuous contact, alongside the UK’s ongoing defence exports, undermines Britain’s international reputation and raises profound ethical questions about the role of its armed forces in the conflict.
An MoD spokesperson said: “As part of the concerted UK effort to support security and stability in the Middle East and to achieve a peaceful resolution following ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, we conducted defence engagement in the region alongside partners and allies to deescalate tensions in the Middle East.”
