British MP Jeremy Corbyn has called on Health Secretary Wes Streeting to help expose Britain’s “complicity in genocide” in Gaza, following the publication of a private letter by Streeting in which he admitted Israel committed war crimes in the Palestinian territories.
Mr Corbyn, a former Labor leader, wrote to Mr Streeting on Thursday, criticizing the British government’s continued support for Israel despite abuses acknowledged in a private letter by the Health Secretary herself.
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Mr Corbyn’s letter said: “The publication of these messages reveals a shameful failure to say publicly what we privately knew to be true: that this government was complicit in war crimes.”
“It is now public record that you decided to serve as a minister in a government that was providing military, economic and diplomatic support to a state that was violating international law.”
Mr Street, a vocal critic of Corbyn and an ardent supporter of Israel, had voluntarily released text messages between himself and former British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, an associate of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a series of messages published by Sky News on Monday, which aimed to show transparency about Streeting’s relationship with Mandelson, the Health Secretary last year claimed he supported recognizing Palestine as a state.
“I think morally and politically we need to join France,” Street wrote in July 2025.
“Morally, because Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes. Their government speaks the language of ethnic cleansing, and I have met our health workers who describe the most appalling and gruesome scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.”
UK government position
The admission of Israeli war crimes contradicts public statements from Mr Streeting’s government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Corbyn’s letter, signed by his Independence League colleagues, pointed to the London government’s position that Israel’s actions during the genocidal war in Gaza “put them at clear risk of breaching international humanitarian law”.
The letter said the “discrepancy” between Mr Streeting’s private confession and the government’s position was aimed at blocking the policy impact of acknowledging Israel’s well-documented war crimes.
“Once the government acknowledges that Israel is committing war crimes, continuing to provide military or political support amounts to an admission by the government that it knowingly aids and abets these war crimes,” it reads.
The Labor government recognized Palestine last year and imposed sanctions on far-right Israeli government ministers, but critics say Britain has not done enough to hold Israel to account for its violations.
During the Gaza War, Britain conducted military surveillance flights over Gaza, which London claimed were aimed at locating Israeli prisoners of war within the Gaza Strip.
Although the British Ministry of Defense insists the spy planes had “no combat role”, human rights activists say the policy amounts to direct involvement in Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians.
Amnesty International UK said on Tuesday that Mr Street was “right” to admit Israeli war crimes.
“What is terrible is that the prime minister and his government continue with business as usual, despite overwhelming evidence from the United Nations and human rights organizations of war crimes and genocide,” Christian Benedict, the group’s crisis response manager, said in a statement.
Mr Corbyn asked Mr Streeting why he had not resigned from the government and whether he would cooperate with the International Criminal Court’s investigation into London’s complicity in alleged war crimes in Gaza.
“Today, school children are being taught about the worst crime against humanity in history,” the letter said.
“They are being asked to consider how these crimes could have happened. And they will know the names of the politicians who failed to stop them. For the foreseeable future, our history books will shame the government ministers who could have prevented the genocide in Gaza but chose to remain silent.”
Starmer vows to stay
Mr Corbyn led Labor from 2015 to 2020, during which time the party faced persistent accusations that it condoned anti-Semitism. His supporters say the allegations were a crisis designed to undermine his support for Palestinian rights.
Street, long seen as a rising star on the party’s right, became one of Corbyn’s most prominent critics at the time.
Mr Starmer succeeded Mr Corbyn as leader in 2020, only to have him suspended from the party months later over accusations of anti-Semitism, which led to the purge of many officials critical of Israel from the Labor Party.
Mr Corbyn retained his parliamentary seat as an independent candidate in the 2024 vote, when he won a landslide victory over Labor and came to power.
Last year, he co-founded the socialist party Everyone’s Party. He also helped found the Alliance of Independent Parliamentarians, a group of pro-Palestinian MPs who oppose austerity in the country.
Despite a landslide victory in 2024, Labor is losing support on the left to independents, the People’s Party and the Greens, and its popularity has plummeted amid the cost of living crisis and growing anti-immigration rhetoric on the right.
The Labor government is also reeling from the release of the latest files on Epstein in the US last month, which further show the close ties between the sex offender and Mr Mandelson, whom Mr Starmer appointed as ambassador to Washington.
Mr Starmer has rejected calls to resign over the scandal and vowed to “never walk away” from his role.
