Nicholas Soames, a British lawmaker and grandson of wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, has joined calls for the British government to stop arming Israel following an Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers, including three British nationals.
Soames, a member of the House of Lords, said the Conservative government halting arms exports to Israel would demonstrate it was “determined to show that we are not prepared to countenance these ongoing disasters.”
“This is not a fog of war issue with these [aid workers]. They were quite clearly [aid workers],” Soames alleged.
“[T]hese people were doing the most wonderful work to provide aid to starving Palestinians… I think it is the message that matters,” he added.
Soames is a longtime Arabist, a once-dominant but now marginal wing of the Conservative Party which tends to deemphasize support for Zionism in favor of building strong relations with the Arab nations.
His intervention comes as 600 British legal scholars, lawyers, and judges, including three former Supreme Court justices, have written a letter to the British government arguing it will be in breach of international law if it continues to arm Israel.
