London conference: ‘Stop funding the Zionist killing machine’ and end complicity in Gaza genocide

A compelling and deeply moving press conference, convened in London yesterday, laid bare the scale of destruction, suffering and starvation in Gaza and the complicity of the British government in Israel’s genocide. Hosted by the British Palestinian Committee and the UK Gaza Community, the event gathered British Palestinians, parliamentarians, doctors and frontline aid workers, alongside live testimonies from Gaza demanding an end to British collusion and accountability for the war crimes perpetrated by Israel.

Testimonies from Gaza revealed further the daily horrors of life under Israeli siege, with Palestinians sharing how “fetching food has become a battle for survival.” The event exposed not only the scale of starvation and devastation in Gaza, but the role of the British government in sustaining it. Speakers condemned the controversial Israeli run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) for turning aid into a tool of ethnic cleansing and warned that UK arms exports and political support make Britain complicit in what they repeatedly called genocide.

Labour MP Steve Witherden delivered a searing indictment of the UK government’s role. “A civilian population is being forcibly starved and still the weapons flow,” he said. “I posed the fundamental question in Parliament: if not to the courts, then to whom is my government accountable for our complicity in genocide?”

Witherden has recently led an adjournment debate in Parliament calling for an immediate suspension of all arms exports to Israel. He condemned the Labour government’s inability to carry out any meaningful action and criticised the lack of transparency in arms licensing, pledging to submit a formal letter demanding clarity on the discrepancies between official statements and export data. “There is a red line,” he warned. “And the British people are far ahead of this government on where that red line is.”

The member of parliament for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr mentioned the Ten-Minute Rule Bill brought forward by Jeremy Corbyn. The motion calls for an independent inquiry into the UK’s role in the Gaza genocide, including arms exports and broader complicity in Israeli war crimes. “This week in Parliament, Jeremy Corbyn’s motion cast its first reading,” Witherden said. “Voices in Parliament are speaking out. We will continue to expose this complicity, demand accountability, and fight for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people.”

Two frontline doctors provided harrowing accounts of their experience in Gaza. Dr Mustafa Alachkar, a British-Syrian psychiatrist currently in Gaza with Medical Aid for Palestinians, addressed the press conference live via video link. “The people of Gaza are surrounded by disorder and by sick circumstances from every corner” said Alachkar. The occupation is the illness. Genocide is the illness. And the world’s inability to stop it is sick and sickening.”

Alachkar’s voice broke as he described the daily terror of displacement and bombardment: “Every time people think they’ve seen the worst, something worse follows. Genocide has no limits.” He described mass hunger, children dying from starvation, and families being annihilated in airstrikes. “This is not a metaphor. People are actually hungry. Gaza has become a place where people wipe away their own tears each morning, just so they can help their children smile for a moment.”

Dr Rossel Mohrij, a British plastic and reconstructive surgeon who volunteered in Gaza at Nasser Hospital in December, described how she had to carry out operating without anaesthetic, antibiotics, sterile dressings or basic equipment. “We used cooking forks to dress wounds. Vinegar to disinfect. Children came in too traumatised to speak, with shattered bodies and shattered lives.” Mohrij described the devastation of a single night when a bombing near the hospital brought in a flood of the dead and dismembered. “We stood in a morgue of broken faces and missing limbs. One child, eight or nine years old, had his name scrawled across his chest in permanent marker—he had lost 19 members of his family.”

Mohrij recalled patients who would have survived under any normal conditions, but died for lack of the most basic resources. “Even if we saved them, who would carry them through the rubble? There are no wheelchairs, no prosthetics. She described how many of the wounded were children who were severely malnourished. “We did our best,” Mohrij continued mournfully, “but our best wasn’t enough. And that is the guilt we carry.”

Palestinians in Gaza joined via video link to share first-hand accounts of the unimaginable situation in Gaza. Hind Hassan Mousa, a teacher with the UN Palestine relief agency UNRWA, described watching her students faint in classrooms from hunger. Her voice trembling, she pleaded, “Stop funding the Zionist killing machine. We are starving and dying. Regain our trust. Regain your humanity.”

Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, also joined live from the besieged enclave. He described the aid blockade, the collapse of the health system, and the starvation sweeping through the territory. “We are not just facing famine. We are facing the destruction of civilian life in all its forms—food, water, medicine, hospitals,” he said.

Al-Shawa denounced the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which he described as a militarised aid scheme designed to serve Israels mission of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. “People walk for hours to reach fenced military distribution points, where they are often shot at,” he said. “The aid is not neutral, it is being used to control, humiliate, and kill.”

Ahmad Abu Riziq, founder of Gaza Great Minds, which teaches children in tent schools amidst the rubble, described the daily struggle of finding food. “I am speaking to you hungry,” he said. “People sleep with empty stomachs. We survive on a can of beans a day. This is not just about food, it’s about dignity.” He described the loss of schools, the death of students, and the collapse of everything that once allowed children to dream. “We cry in the morning, so we can help our children smile in the afternoon,” he said. “We are not numbers. We are people. And we need the world to stop this war on our lives.”

Basem Farajallah of the UK Gaza Community spoke of the pain of watching family members starve. “Every British Palestinian has close relatives in Gaza,” he said. “This is a death journey. Starvation has been imposed on an entire people. The UK must impose a full arms embargo and demand accountability for every war crime committed.”

British Palestinian, Ali Mousa, described the situation in Gaza as a representation of how “humanity has collapsed”. He described Gaza’s annihilation as “a chapter even hell could not have written.” For Wafaa Shamallakh, a British Palestinian medical interpreter and mother, the past 20 months have been a period of relentless grief, rage and disbelief. “Genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation—these are the realities my people face,” she said. “But these words have lost their meaning. We’ve become numb to them.”

Host, Dr Sara Husseini, director of the British Palestinian Committee, closed the press conference stating, “This is not just about ending a genocide abroad. It is about ending complicity at home.” She accused the UK government of facilitating war crimes through arms sales, diplomatic protection, and political indifference. “What happens in Gaza affects British Palestinians too. This government is not a bystander, it is an active enabler of genocide.”

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