A British court last week dismissed an attempt to privately prosecute a dual British-Israeli citizen for serving in an IDF reserve unit after 2023, and ordered the anti-Israel group that sued the defendant to pay his legal costs.
Paul Goldspring, chief magistrate of England and Wales, wrote in his ruling as a Westminster Magistrates’ Court judge that the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) had a “fundamentally flawed” interpretation of the law, and that ruling in favor of their lawsuit could have criminalized British Commonwealth citizens serving in the armed forces of countries such as India, Pakistan and Cyprus.
The ICJP relied on the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 in alleging that the defendant had committed an offense by traveling to Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, to rejoin the IDF. The court rejected the argument, finding that the defendant was already an IDF reservist fulfilling an existing legal obligation under Israeli law rather than “enlisting” in a foreign military.
The ICJP committed “profound and serious breaches of the duty of candor,” the judge ruled, saying it failed to disclose longstanding U.K. government policy recognizing that dual nationals may serve in the armed forces of their other country of nationality.
Aurèle Tobelem, a trustee of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a nongovernmental group that represented the defendant, called the ruling a “step in the right direction” but added that the British judiciary’s response to anti-Israel lawfare was still lacking.
“The British judiciary right now have the tools available to them,” Tobelem said, referring to legislation, “but should be much stricter with how they enforce the law against anti-Israel agitators and people who would wish to commit harmful acts upon Jews,” he told JNS.
A recent case that critics said eroded their trust in the British judiciary when handling anti-Israel militants was the acquittal in February of six anti-Israel activists of burglary even though they admitted to breaking into a factory belonging to Israel’s Elbit Systems defense manufacturer, where several police officers were assaulted.
In many cases, people who are targeted by anti-Israel lawfare in the U.K. cannot reasonably expect a just outcome today, Tobelem told JNS. “Not unless there are significant campaigns to raise awareness, not only about those who break the law, but what the law actually is.
“The greater the public outcry, the greater the incentive to actually rule in accordance with the law, which is unfortunately what’s going on right now. We have judiciaries that are taking an extremely lenient approach” to anti-Israel lawfare and hooliganism, Tobelem said.
