‘Death run’: New film shot in Cyprus reveals UK military help to Israel during Gaza genocide
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrives at the RAF base in Akrotiri on the southern coast of Cyprus on 10 December 2024
Imran Mulla reports in Middle East Eye on 11 December 2025:
A new documentary by Declassified UK has revealed fresh details about Britain’s military cooperation with Israel during its genocide in Gaza.
Published on YouTube on Thursday evening, Britain’s Gaza Spy Flight Scandal follows Declassified’s Phil Miller and Alex Morris to Cyprus in September, where they filmed outside the UK’s airbase, Royal Air Force Akrotiri, just a 40-minute flight from Tel Aviv.
From there, RAF planes have conducted hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza throughout Israel’s war on the besieged enclave.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has repeatedly insisted the flights are solely in support of “hostage rescue”. But they have been shrouded in significant secrecy, and it has emerged over the past two years that Britain has shared intelligence with Israel and has captured footage of Gaza on days that Israeli attacks have killed British citizens.
This new film makes a series of important revelations.
It features the first footage of an American spy plane – leased by the RAF – taking off from the base to fly over Gaza. Earlier this year, after hundreds of RAF flights over Gaza, it emerged that the British military had begun hiring American contractors to carry out the flights.
The film finds that there have been as many as 116 more surveillance missions, carried out by the American contractors, than were previously known about. Declassified cites sources who say the spy planes were able to produce high-resolution footage of Gaza through their radar imaging systems and share it with Israel in real time.
Footage from day of Israeli attack on UK citizens
The film examines the case of James Henderson, a former royal marine who was riding in a World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza when it was hit by an Israeli strike on 1 April 2024.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence holds footage of Gaza from the day Henderson was killed along with six other international aid workers, taken by an RAF plane. But it has refused to publish the tape, citing national security exemptions.