Dear Prime Minister, 

As you are no doubt aware, government promises to make changes to British universal jurisdiction laws following the issue of an arrest warrant for former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni last December have justifiably come under fierce criticism from human rights organisations and legal bodies. Evidence found by the United Nations fact-finding mission into the brutal assault on Gaza last year led it to conclude that Israeli forces had committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. In addition, Israeli military planners had followed a doctrine of causing massive damage, destruction and suffering to the civilian population deliberately, which gave rise to individual criminal responsibility. As a senior planner of Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9, which claimed the lives of over 1,400 individuals, including 300 children, the testimony of the UN provided damning and irrefutable prima facie evidence against Ms. Livni.

The recent arrest of British journalist Paul Martin has caused waves of concern in the British media. He was detained on 14 February whilst attending a military court session, to provide testimony for a Gazan man, Muhammad Abu Mu’aliq who had been arrested on suspicion of collaborating with the Israeli security services. Unbeknown to Mr. Martin, during his interrogation Abu Mu’aliq had implicated the British journalist in the alleged collaboration. As with any other country, the importance of investigating claims of espionage were imperative to Gaza’s security and so Martin was arrested immediately. His initial detention of 15 days was extended to allow investigators time to ascertain whether or not the accusations of espionage were true.

Andrew Gilligan, Dispatches and "Islamic terrorism"
"Gilligan’s Island" was a sixties sitcom with an eponymous hero who was "bumbling, dim-witted [and] accident-prone". Andrew Gilligan had nothing to do with that programme, but one can’t help thinking about him as he seems to be everywhere at the moment; the London Evening Standard, the Daily Telegraph and, this week, Channel 4’s Dispatches.

Having sprung to prominence as a reporter on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4 Today programme, he exposed the "sexing up" of Tony Blair’s infamous dossier on Iraq’s "weapons of mass destruction". This episode, you may recall, led to the death – by "apparent suicide", according to evidence given at the subsequent Hutton Inquiry – of Dr. David Kelly who was revealed as Gilligan’s source by the BBC. That whole murky episode aside, Gilligan has developed a bit of a career in right-wing publications as an "expert" on Britain’s Muslims.

Dear Prime Minister,

We are aware that the government has come under enormous pressure from groups campaigning to change British laws on universal jurisdiction to facilitate the unimpeded travel to Britain by Israeli officials accused of committing war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. More specifically, Israel’s former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, whose role as a military planner in Operation Cast Lead provided prima facie evidence for her arrest and led to a warrant for her arrest being issued last December by Westminster Magistrates Court. In light of the cold-blooded murder of a Hamas official in the western-friendly state of Dubai last month by what is generally accepted to have been an Israeli death squad, sanctioned by your Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu and using purloined European passports, including those of British citizens, any promises to "fix" the law before the next general election should be reconsidered as a matter of state security.