Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2024. © Richard Kemp

Israel’s leaders have announced that the focus of the war is now shifting northwards from Gaza to Lebanon. This follows a lightning bolt delivered to the Hezbollah terror army in which dozens of terrorists were killed and over 3,000 wounded when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded.

It’s not clear yet how this extraordinary event, perhaps the greatest single blow ever inflicted on a terrorist organisation, connects to the announced strategic shift.

But what we do know is that the IDF is reinforcing the divisions that have defended against Hezbollah’s daily attacks on the northern front for the past year. These reinforcements are coming out of Gaza, which is possible now because Hamas as an organised terror army has been destroyed.

Last week I drove with the IDF along the Philadelphi Corridor that forms the border between Gaza and Egypt. While Israel holds this terrain, Hamas cannot reconstitute. Although the fighting is far from over – there are still many hostages to free, terrorists to eliminate and tunnels to destroy – sufficient forces can now be released for the north.

The conflict may involve piling pressure on Hezbollah in the wake of the pager attacks to force them to cease fire and move north of the Litani river. If this fails, then a large-scale air and ground offensive may become necessary.

A struggle in the region won’t be easy, but it can certainly be won. We have seen the extraordinary achievements of the IDF in Gaza, fighting from the air, on the ground and beneath the surface.

In the past 11 months they have killed an estimated 20,000 terrorists against 340 IDF deaths. On probably the most complex battlefield seen in modern warfare, they have also achieved great success in minimising civilian casualties and maximising aid deliveries.

Much of this experience from Gaza will be applied in Lebanon. There are differences of scale, terrain, population and tactics, but Continue reading →

Article published in The Spectator, 31 August 2024. © Richard Kemp

The actions of the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, will deprive Israel of its sovereignty and undermine the West’s defence against terrorists and despots. The US must put a stop to it.

In a submission to the ICC last week, Khan doubled down on his demands to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. He was responding to a multitude of submissions made to the Pre-Trial Chamber contesting the arrest warrants he demands. Most of these submissions questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israel.

Israel, like the US and many other countries, is not a state party to the ICC. Before 2015, that placed Jerusalem outside the scope of the ICC’s legal powers, much as the court might have wished otherwise. That year, ‘Palestine’ became a member of the ICC, even though it is not a full member state of the UN. In order to secure jurisdiction over Palestine, and by extension over Israel too, the court unilaterally and without any legal authority decided on its boundaries: ‘the West Bank’, east Jerusalem, and Gaza. Of course borders can only be agreed by direct negotiation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which has not been achieved. That though is an inconvenient detail to be ignored by an ICC that wants Israelis in the dock at the Hague.

One of the main issues raised by those challenging Khan’s application, including the previous UK government, is that ICC jurisdiction over Israel violates the Oslo Accords. No matter, says the Prosecutor: the Rome Statute, which founded the ICC, overrides even that legally-binding bilateral treaty.

Khan objects to the restricted legal powers granted to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords, which effectively nullify ICC jurisdiction over Israelis in PA-controlled territory including Gaza. According to him, that can’t be so because it is not up to Israel as an ‘occupying power’ to impose legal restrictions on a sovereign people. He of course rejects the reality, so hotly debated for so many years, that ‘Palestine’ is not in fact a sovereign state and Israel cannot be an occupier of territory over which, since 1948, only Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 20 August 2024. © Richard Kemp

It looks like International Criminal Court justices will soon decide whether to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and Defence Minister. The very prospect of this is nothing short of outrageous.

Successive ICC Chief Prosecutors have long had Israel in their crosshairs, and Hamas’s October orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and kidnapping gave British lawyer Karim Khan, the current incumbent, the pernicious excuse to move forward. Not against the Hamas terrorist perpetrators, of course, but against Israel.

To make the point that everyone is equal under the law, Khan requested arrest warrants concurrently for Hamas and Israeli leaders. That obviously would have zero effect on Hamas, already designated terrorists around the world and with absolutely nothing to lose. A meaningless, symbolic gesture – you might think.

But it is far, far worse than that. Creating a false equivalence between arch terrorists whose currency is blood and suffering and the leaders of a democratic state defending their people from attack is nothing short of morally bankrupt. It is like indicting Osama Bin Laden and President George W Bush at the same time. Or dragging Winston Churchill into the dock at Nuremberg beside Heinrich Himmler.

The High Level Military Group, ten former chiefs of staff, senior officers and cabinet ministers from Nato countries, of which I am a member, has submitted to the court a strong professional objection to Khan’s schemes. The HLMG, whose members are from the US, UK, Spain, France, Italy and Finland, were in Israel in July.

Among other military issues, we focused on Khan’s allegations that the Israeli ministers intentionally attacked civilians in Gaza and intentionally used starvation as a method of war. In our submission, Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 August 2024. © Richard Kemp

Vladimir Putin is not the only world leader who has been humiliated by Ukraine’s unexpected thrust into Kursk – the first major assault into Russian territory since the Second World War – though it has certainly achieved that. Despite his attempts to put on a brave face, the Russian president is undoubtedly rattled. On Monday, he was seen reprimanding senior officials over what they could and could not say about the incursion, no doubt concerned about the possibilities for regime destabilisation if it cannot be rapidly contained.

But this bold move also exposes the cowardice of Ukraine’s allies. Putin told his officials: “The West is fighting us with the hands of Ukrainians.” If so, they continue to be tied behind Kyiv’s back. If the Russian army manages to get its act together, it has the killing power to hurl Ukrainian forces back behind their own borders. Russian troops have been counter-attacking and will continue to do so with ever-greater ferocity. In the face of that, President Zelensky has appealed to his Western allies to allow long-range weapons to be used to defend his soldiers, for example to hit Russian airfields used to strike the advancing troops, as well as roads and railways to bring up reinforcements.

British Storm Shadow missiles could be a game-changer in this battle, but the Government appears unwilling to allow them to be used to their full potential. According to a No 10 spokesman: “There has been no change in the UK’s position… We are clear that equipment provided by the UK is intended for the defence of Ukraine.” What does Sir Keir Starmer think this attack into Russia is all about, other than the defence of Ukraine? How would the Second World War have worked out if the prime minister had not allowed British and American bombs to fall on German land?

Joe Biden is reportedly taking the same line as Starmer, refusing to permit much-needed ATACMS long-range missiles to support the Ukrainian offensive. This has been the wretched story throughout this war, with Western allies making policy not on the basis of Ukraine’s vital defensive needs but with an unfounded fear of Continue reading →

Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 7 August 2024. © Richard Kemp

In an audacious armoured assault into the Kursk region of Russia, Ukrainian armed forces have advanced further than either side in almost two years. The attack by at least two brigades took the Kremlin by complete surprise. Or at least it was launched and seized significant territory before any counter move could put a stop to it. So much for the supposedly transparent battlefields of the 21st century.

The advantages of surprise in war are transient but even after four days fighting, Russian forces have yet to contain the incursion. That’s hardly surprising given the thinly spread defences along this part of the border. So far local irregular forces and conscripts have been sent in and at least one battalion of reaction forces was apparently largely destroyed by what seems to have been a long-range missile strike.

So far Kyiv has not commented on its objectives for this new offensive; entirely right when it is so important to keep the enemy guessing.

Whatever the strategic rationale, this is a substantial investment in forces that could potentially be destroyed or cut off at a time when Ukraine is short of troops and failing to hold back steady Russian advances in Donbas. It is a huge morale boost at a time when the country had reached the lowest point since the earliest days of the war.

But important though that is, it doesn’t seem adequate justification to take such a risk. Militarily, this operation could be aimed at reducing pressure elsewhere on the front lines, by forcing the Russians to redeploy significant forces to deal with it, something that may already be in the pipeline.

Some have also speculated that Kyiv’s objective might be to seize the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. That would be a major prize, and the risks of fallout would severely hamper efforts to recapture it. But it is around 40km beyond the ground Ukraine is currently fighting on and almost certainly out of reach. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 7 August 2024. © Richard Kemp

Putin’s war against Ukraine and the West has spilled into Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, Kyiv claims to have supplied rebel groups in Mali with intelligence that led to an attack against Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in which 84 were reportedly killed.

Wagner fought in the war against Ukraine until its now deceased leader Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an abortive coup against the Kremlin last year. Since then they have expanded operations in the Sahel and central Africa and have now been re-branded from the name of Hitler’s favourite composer to a military unit he created in 1941, the Africa Corps.

While fighting an attritional war against Russian aggression, Ukraine has been hamstrung by lily-livered restrictions on use of Western supplied munitions to go on the offensive inside Russian sovereign territory. Nevertheless Kyiv has taken the fight to the Russians wherever it can, using its own drones as well as ground forces. That has had limited effect but has diverted some Russian defensive assets away from the front as well as providing an important boost to Ukrainian morale.

Meanwhile Kyiv has sought military opportunities even further afield, perhaps in an echo of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive which sent military operatives to establish a “second front” in Europe before D-Day was even a possibility. Since at least last year, Ukrainian special forces have endeavoured to damage Russian military capabilities by attacking elsewhere in the world.

In May, General Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence, said: “We conduct operations aimed at reducing Russian military potential anywhere where it’s possible”. That includes Sudan, where Russian mercenaries are supporting the rebel Rapid Support Forces which have been fighting against government troops since last spring. Moscow’s primary purpose was to secure gold supplies facilitated by the rebels to fight the war in Ukraine, circumventing Western sanctions. Working to disrupt those supplies, Ukraine has provided the embattled government forces with drones and military training, and Ukrainian special forces have reportedly carried out attacks against Russian mercenaries. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Mail, 6 August 2024. © Richard Kemp

For a seafaring nation that once counted itself among the world’s great naval powers, the state of Britain’s submarine fleet is both an outrage and a humiliation.

It could also leave us open to catastrophic acts of sabotage by our enemies, with cables, pipelines and wind farms particularly vulnerable.

The global economy could not function without the 800,000 miles of undersea fibre-optic cabling criss-crossing the world’s oceans that are responsible for carrying 97 per cent of international communications and $10 trillion of financial transfers every day.

In a digital age, these cables have never been more essential and, if they were to be disabled, the world would be plunged into a devastating depression. As a report published by the Policy Exchange think-tank put it: ‘Short of nuclear or biological warfare, it is difficult to think of a threat that could be more justifiably described as existential than that posed by the catastrophic failure of undersea cable networks as a result of hostile action.’

It added: ‘In the words of the managing director of one major telecoms firm, “Cascading failures could immobilise much of the international telecommunications system and internet… The effect on international finance, military logistics, medicine, commerce and agriculture in a global economy would be profound … Electronic funds transfers, credit card transactions and international bank reconciliations would slow…such an event would cause a global depression.”’

Such an outcome is all too possible given how vulnerable these cables are. While they are engineered to the ‘five nines’ standard – meaning they are reliable 99.999 per cent of the time – they are highly vulnerable to attacks by enemy forces.

Typically just over an inch in diameter, they consist of fibre optics – strands of glass as thin as a hair – in the centre, surrounded by galvanised steel wire armouring and then, on the outside, a plastic coating. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2024. © Richard Kemp

Labour is in denial over the danger to this country from Iran, and appears to be prioritising conciliation of its own anti-Israel supporters above our national security. There is surely no other explanation for the Government threatening an arms embargo on Israel as it fights a seven-front war directed from Tehran. If proof were needed of Iran’s controlling hand in this widespread regional aggression, the Islamic Republic’s permanent mission to the UN has now threatened that its proxy Hezbollah will soon be striking deep into Israel and will deliberately attack civilian targets.

That might be nothing new for Hezbollah or Iran, but such a blatant announcement of planned war crimes shows how emboldened the regime has become. It is being strengthened by the appeasement of its leaders and the condemnation of the country it is attacking by much of the Western media, international bodies such as the UN and by governments like ours.

The message being delivered by the rumoured decision to freeze new contracts for military equipment is that Israel is committing war crimes. Why else would you deny your ally munitions in a time of war? Yet Labour knows this isn’t true. The Defence Secretary, John Healey, and the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, were both in Israel this week, and the Attorney General had been there a few days earlier. All were briefed in detail on the reality of Israel’s military operations, which they know anyway because Britain’s military chiefs and diplomats are in close contact with the Israeli government and armed forces.

It increasingly appears that the Labour Party and its supporters are less changed than many hoped after Jeremy Corbyn’s days as leader. Mollifying anti-Israel supporters now seems to transcend sticking up for our most important ally in the Middle East and, by doing so, supporting our own national interests.

The Government’s stance is also a counterbalance to the Royal Air Force’s probable role in defending Israel if the expected large-scale attack comes from Iran and its proxies in the coming days. RAF jets are preparing now to take to the skies to help intercept the missile Continue reading →