Colonel Richard Kemp

Colonel Richard Kemp CBE is a retired British Army officer who commanded British forces in Afghanistan (2003) and served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Macedonia, Iraq, and Cyprus. He has also served in UK government intelligence roles. He testified before the United Nations Human Rights Council Special Session on Gaza in November 2009, where he stated that the IDF had done more than any army in the history of warfare to reduce civilian casualties — an assessment grounded in his direct operational experience commanding troops in comparable urban warfare environments. He has spoken and written extensively on the IDF's compliance with international humanitarian law, Hamas's use of civilian infrastructure as a war crime, military proportionality, and the genocide accusation against Israel. He is British and not Jewish, making his assessments particularly resistant to dismissal as partisan. His credibility derives from direct combat command experience, intelligence briefings across multiple conflicts, and a career-long application of the same military-legal standards he applies to Israel.