IDF: The Chief of the General Staff, LTG Herzi Halevi, conducting a situational assessment in 2024
Britain’s most senior military personnel made at least a dozen official visits to Israel during the Gaza war, newly published government data reveals.
The trips, largely unpublicised, almost entirely took place as Israeli forces barraged Gaza and international calls for an arms embargo intensified.
The scale of these visits is revealed in recent Ministry of Defence (MoD) expense records and senior staff travel disclosures covering November 2023 to March 2025.
They detail the costs of visits by officers ranked two-star and above and senior MoD civil servants, including Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton and General Sir James Hockenhull.
Together, the trips cost more than £18,000, excluding several Royal Air Force (RAF) flights recorded as ‘nil return.’
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the London-based research charity which analysed the material, found that Britain’s defence establishment maintained regular contact with Israel’s armed forces throughout the conflict.
The findings expand on Declassified’s earlier reporting, which identified five such visits as well as a meeting by Major General Zac Stenning.
These additional records show that senior British officers continued to travel to Israel well into 2025, meeting their counterparts even as accusations of war crimes mounted.
One of the most sensitive visits was made by Shimon Fhima, the MoD’s director of strategic programmes, who travelled to Israel shortly after the January 2025 ceasefire, for meetings described as ‘regarding Directed Energy Weapons’.
Fhima’s directorate oversees the UK’s high energy laser and electromagnetic weapons programme. These are technologies central to Britain’s pursuit of so called next-generation capabilities and could be used to shoot down missiles.
Fhima’s trip, however, raises concerns about the UK benefiting from Israeli weaponry technology honed in what has been described as the ‘Palestine Laboratory’.
A long-serving MoD technocrat with a background in engineering and procurement, Fhima has been a prominent advocate for integrating advanced science and dual-use technologies into national security policy.
The first post 7 October 2023 engagement regarding Israel did not occur in Tel Aviv, but in the United States.
On 28 November 2023, Lieutenant General Charles Walker travelled to Virginia for a trilateral meeting with American and French officials to discuss Ukraine and Israel. This trip is not included in our tally of twelve visits.
A week later, on 6 December, Admiral Radakin flew to Tel Aviv with then defence secretary Grant Shapps on a RAF flight.
On 28 December, General Hockenhull made a UK–Israel bilateral visit. This was one day before South Africa filed its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Air Chief Marshal Knighton followed on 9–11 January 2024, spending £3,344 on an overseas visit to Tel Aviv.
Ten days later Radakin returned to Israel to meet the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, to “discuss future operations in the region”. By that point, the bombardment of Gaza had already claimed around 25,000 lives.
On 13 February, Hockenhull hosted Israeli Major General Eliezer Toledano in London for tri-service meetings. The following month, Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland, Chief of Joint Operations, travelled to Tel Aviv for “MoD-directed meetings” on 18–19 March.