![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785390370_274_.webp\")
<\/p>\n
Daniel Berke, director of UK Lawyers for Israel. Credit: Courtesy.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Section 4 was never repealed, leading A\u2019s lawyers to take seriously the threat of prosecution.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a subject of the Crown. He was serving in a the army of another country and it was claimed that Israel was at war with Lebanon, Syria, and the alleged \u2018State of Palestine,\u2019 with whom Britain is at peace. On this basis, the private prosecutor seemed to believe they had a compelling case\u2014and it was clear to us we had a fight on our hands,\u201d Berke said.<\/p>\n
On closer inspection, Berke and his team found that the act did not apply in this situation. Soldier A didn\u2019t join the army of a foreign country, but a country of which he is a citizen. He is a dual national serving the army of one of his two countries.<\/p>\n
The judge accepted this line of reasoning. \u201cThe FEA was enacted in 1870 with a clear purpose: to prevent British nationals from acting as mercenaries in foreign conflicts and to safeguard British neutrality. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe binary distinction drawn by the Act is between British subjects and foreign subjects. A dual national does not fit neatly into this binary framework. For a dual national, Israel is not a \u2018foreign state\u2019\u2014it is the state of his other nationality,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also argued that Israel was not at war with Syria or Lebanon or what the prosecutor wrongly suggested is a de-facto \u2018State of Palestine.\u2019 Israel was in armed conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah; organizations which have been proscribed as terrorist organizations by the UK,\u201d Berke said.<\/p>\n
Goldspring concurred on this point as well.<\/p>\n
What troubled the judge most was the disingenuousness of the prosecution\u2014\u201cthe profound and serious breaches of the duty of candor owed to this Court.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a private prosecution, Berke explained, the defendant isn\u2019t notified that an application for a summons has been made, mainly so the suspect isn\u2019t tipped off or doesn\u2019t flee the country. Because the defense is not notified, the highest duty of candor is expected of the prosecution as the only side present. The prosecutor must submit all relevant material, even that which would reduce the likelihood of a summons.<\/p>\n
The ICJP did not put its \u201cdefense hat\u201d on, as Goldspring put it in his ruling. Fortunately for soldier A, due to the seriousness of the charges, the judge ordered that the defendant be notified of the summons. This enabled Berke and his team to present evidence the prosecution had failed in its duty to submit.<\/p>\n
Perhaps most egregious was the prosecution\u2019s failure to include statements by government ministers over many years and many administrations that serving in the IDF did not constitute a breach of the 1870 Foreign Enlistment Act. These statements included the current conflict in Gaza.<\/p>\n
It was clear that the prosecution knew the government\u2019s position, having included a reference to one in a footnote. \u201cDespite this knowledge, the Applicant did not see fit to inform this Court of any of these statements in its application, its case summary, or its skeleton argument. This is a serious and inexcusable omission,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n
What Goldspring found \u201cmost troubling\u201d was the \u201cexpert witness\u201d brought by the prosecution. Quoting from a 1995 case that, \u201can expert witness should provide independent assistance to the court by way of objective, unbiased opinion,\u201d the judge learned that the independent expert, Mandy Turner, was nothing of the sort, a fact the prosecution hid.<\/p>\n
It took the defense, the judge noted, to reveal that Turner belonged to an ICJP WhatsApp group, and that her public statements and online posts showed that she was \u201ca campaigner and activist committed to the political agenda pursued by this prosecution, rather than an independent expert.\u201d <\/p>\n
There were numerous falsehoods in Turner\u2019s report, Berke said. She referred to the Oct. 2023, Al-Ahli hospital bombing as an Israeli air force attack even though it has since been determined it was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. \u201cShe was still presenting it as something that had been done by Israel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Berke expressed the hope that the ruling would disincentivize further such cases, especially as Goldspring ordered ICJP to pay all of soldier A\u2019s legal costs. The judge also ordered the group to attach a full copy of his judgment to any and all future court applications it might make in England and Wales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(July 30, 2026 \/ JNS) An effort to prosecute a dual British-Israeli citizen for serving in the Israel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-566395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}