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.