I've never been prouder of Israel... and more ashamed of Britain
Not only are we failing to defend our ally but we are emboldening our enemies
I can’t think of a time when I’ve felt prouder of Israel and more ashamed of Britain.
Last night, ten Israelis lost their lives in indiscriminate Iranian missile strikes, six of them in Bat Yam, a working class area south of Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, Israeli forces battled not just the tyrannical regime in Tehran but also the jihadis in Gaza – a young sergeant, Noam Shemesh, was killed in action there yesterday – and the Houthis in Yemen. This is Israel’s greatest hour of need in living memory. What is Britain doing to help? Nothing.
It was all the more ironic given the RAF flypast for the King’s birthday yesterday. Does Keir Starmer have Israeli blood on his hands? Would the Tornadoes that he has failed to dispatch in Israel’s defence have managed to shoot down the rockets that claimed the lives of, say, Shadaa Hatib, an Arab law student who was killed along with her mother, sister and another relative in Tamra in the Galilee?
Would stauncher support for the Jewish state have demoralised Hamas long ago, forcing them to accept defeat and release the hostages, ending the war before sergeant Shemesh fell? Perhaps making such connections would be a step too far. Right now, however, I’m in no mood to hold back.
Let’s be clear: Israel is fighting our battles. Yesterday, Iran threatened to strike British and American targets as well as Israeli ones. In April, Tehran came very close to carrying out a mass atrocity on British soil, with its agents only thwarted within hours of the attack in a major counter-terror operation.
Scores of Iranian abduction and assassination plots have been foiled by the security services on our shores in recent years. IRGC thugs have stabbed journalists in London and threatened dissidents in Glasgow with guns.
Yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that the nuclear bombs which Iran was producing were to be handed to a range of terror groups for use against Western targets. Is anybody confident that Britons would not have been among them? Quite obviously, Israel is taking the hits on our behalf.
Today, the Foreign Office advised citizens not to travel to the Jewish state. Let’s stay out of this one, chaps! Only we’re not staying out of it, are we? Thousands took to the streets of London to protest in support of the Ayatollah and demand that Hezbollah and Hamas are taken off the security blacklist.
I wonder how they would have responded to footage of a crowd greeting a speech by Khamenei in May with chants of “Death to America! Death to England! Death to the hypocrites and the infidels! Death to Israel!” Actually, I know how they would respond. They would join in. After all, only yesterday they were chanting “UK, US, go to hell,” outside Parliament.
Little wonder that while the Israelis gave a range of other countries a heads-up before they hit Iran, they did not inform “unreliable” Britain. This isn’t a party political point. This morning Philip Hammond, the former Conservative foreign secretary who helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear agreement, told Trevor Phillips on Sky News that “the Israelis are standing in the way of a new deal” with Iran. How dare the Jews interrupt the smooth running of diplomacy with their pesky demand to survive?
Indeed, when the Tories were in power, the Jewish Chronicle revealed that British universities had been helping Iran to develop cutting-edge drone technology with a military application. During Prime Minister’s Questions, Rishi Sunak announced a probe. Whatever his intentions, this immediately entered the long grass and has now been entirely forgotten.
This is a lethargy that festered under the Tories and has been transmuted under Labour into true betrayal. Starmer’s obsession with punishing Israel for its departure from his finger-wagging edicts has blinded him to Britain’s true enemies. With such leadership as this, is it any wonder that society is eating itself?
Our cloud-cuckoo stance was vividly symbolised by the narcissistic Western activists who attempted to enter Gaza via Egypt only to be beaten up by Egyptian police this week. If you missed it, the video of a Welsh “nurse” weeping on his knees before a row of Egyptian riot police – “I believe the people of the Arabic nations have a white heart” – is well worth a laugh.
In a parallel universe, Britain, the European powers and the United States would have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel from the start of the war in Gaza, demanding again and again that Hamas release the hostages and surrender, while expressing any concerns about casualties behind closed doors.
A coalition of international forces could have been sent into action, as they were when we defeated Islamic State. Either way, we would also have stood firm against the Iranian menace, proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at home, imposing stringent snapback sanctions and joining Israel in the military operation.
At the very least, our pilots would right now be playing their role in Israel’s defence, helping to ensure that civilians do not lose their lives and Holocaust survivors don’t have to be stretchered out of damaged apartment blocks. One can dream. What do we have instead? Keir Starmer.
The Prime Ministers growing hostility to Israel has had only one effect: Emboldening its enemies. Hamas, which is all but defeated in Gaza, is teetering on the verge of accepting a deal in which many hostages would be released. But when it sees Britain sanctioning Israeli ministers, suspending trade talks and describing Israel – not the jihadis, Israel – as “appalling”, they are encouraged to keep fighting in the hope that international pressure will stop the onslaught.
The dynamic with Iran is even more serious. As Bernard-Henri Lévy has pointed out, although Israel is managing the war impressively so far, unpredictable consequences are always just around the corner. What would happen if, God forbid, Moscow and Beijing were to join the fray on the side of the Ayatollah?
“Either USA & Europe support Israel with all their strength,” Lévy wrote, “or the totalitarian Axis (Russia, China, radical Islamists like Pakistan, one day Turkey) will come to Tehran’s aid. Then, we will enter another world, a new era in our history.”
I’m not saying this scenario is a likely one. But it’s worth thinking about. It underlines the growing polarisation of the world, and we’re still not sure which side we’re on.