Is Britain an ally or an enemy of Israel?

Spectator

5 days ago

Even as the British parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) published its stark warning yesterday that the Islamic Republic of Iran's Quds Force orchestrates spy rings on British soil, the UK continues its public ostracisation of Israel, the very country on the frontline of seeing down that exact threat.
Britain must choose. Not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between honesty and hypocrisy
Earlier this week, an Afghan-Danish spy working for Iran was arrested for photographing Jewish and Israeli targets in Berlin. The intelligence trail ran through Israel, Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK. Israel's cooperation helped foil an operation with chilling echoes of the Iranian regime's 1980s and 90s terror campaigns in Europe, such as the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar in France, the murder of Salman Rushdie's Japanese translator, and Hezbollah-linked attacks tied to Iranian agents. And yet we in Britain are punishing our ally, Israel, with symbolic slights, even as it helps protect European citizens.
Britain must choose. Not between Israelis and Palestinians, nor between compassion and realism, but between honesty and hypocrisy. For too long, successive UK governments have sought to conceal the depth and strength of their alliance with Israel behind a veil of diplomatic ambiguity and theatrical moralising. In doing so, they not only insult a vital ally but also betray the British public by failing to explain, with clarity and confidence, why our alliance with Israel is essential – economically, militarily, and morally.
In May, Foreign Secretary David Lammy declared with great theatrical indignation that he was suspending UK-Israel trade negotiations, condemning Israeli ministers in apocalyptic tones, while still quietly affirming continued security and intelligence cooperation. As he stood up in the Commons, all bluster and rage, I thought back to a moment less than two years before; I had been in Israel, travelling with then Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch as she diligently worked towards that exact free trade agreement, paving the way to greater collaboration between the UK and Israel. As we toured the Teva pharmaceuticals factory, she told me how it represents just one example of the mutual benefits to both countries of our close ties: the Israeli company's generic medicines save the NHS around £2.7 billion every year, and it employs 1,200 people in the UK across four sites. But in 2025, Lammy declared the trade talks frozen.
Yet only today the British Embassy in Israel quietly released a glowing statement (aimed at the Israeli press), touting Britain's new Industrial Strategy and hailing Israel as a premier partner in eight high-growth sectors, from AI and clean energy to life sciences and digital innovation. One in eight medicines used in the UK originates from Israeli firms, it boasts. Over the last five years, more than 300 Israeli companies have expanded into the UK creating around 4,000 jobs and over £906 million in investment. Israeli investment in the UK last year alone created nearly 900 jobs and injected £173 million into our economy. Britain exports aircraft engines and automobiles to Israel. Israel delivers biotechnology, software, and cyber expertise to Britain.
The relationship is not just strategic, it is indispensable. But while Britain embraces it in practice, it condemns it in public. Israel is treated by British politicians not as a respected friend, but as a secret mistress, visited in the dark, denied in the daylight. This duplicity is neither moral nor mature. It is cowardice, dressed up as conscience.
Worse still, it empowers precisely the voices that seek to undermine both countries. By indulging and appeasing the anti-Israel theatrics of certain backbenchers and media ideologues –those who confuse Hamas propaganda with human rights advocacy – the UK government lends legitimacy to a worldview in which the Jewish state is uniquely villainised.
Nowhere is this split-personality approach more absurd than in the UK's recent decision to sanction Israel's Finance and National Security Ministers, at the very moment it is deepening trade ties and drawing on Israeli expertise in security. The Finance Minister is targeted while UK-Israel economic cooperation thrives. The National Security Minister is blacklisted even as, in the words of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and ex-head of international terrorism at the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee, the UK continues to rely on Israel's unmatched security know-how. Earlier this month as we sat together in a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv, Kemp told me just how much Britain still learns from Israel.
The ISC's report on Iran is categorical: Iran is executing or sponsoring kidnapping plots, assassination attempts, cyber-attacks, and propaganda operations within the UK. MI5 and counter-terror agencies have thwarted at least 15 credible plots since 2022. British-Iranian journalists have been targeted. Families of BBC Persian staff harassed in Tehran. British Jews are in danger. All this, while Britain dithers on whether to proscribe the IRGC, the military arm of a regime that openly boasts of its ambition to destroy both Israel and the West.
Meanwhile, Israel confronts these threats head-on. Not with bluster, but with courage, skill and competence. It has created a society that is both free and secure, pluralistic and resilient. It is a state where secularism coexists with vibrant religious life, where Arab citizens serve in the judiciary and military, and where corruption is prosecuted even at the highest levels – unlike in Britain where free spectacles, clothes, wallpaper, concert tickets, dresses and much more are no more than tabloid fodder. A nation of just ten million has produced more start-ups and lifesaving medical innovations per capita than nearly any other country on Earth, ranking among the top globally for Nobel laureates per capita. It has absorbed refugees from every continent, forged a national identity from extraordinary diversity, and shown that multiculturalism need not mean fragmentation.
Contrast this with Britain's own drift. Struggling with incoherent policing, demoralised armed forces, a fraying social contract, and a political class paralysed by its own post-colonial neuroses, the UK seems ever more inclined to lecture its allies instead of learning from them. We issue pious calls for ceasefires with no strategy, no plan, no understanding of the enemy. We demand de-escalation while offering no alternative to surrender. We condemn Israel for confronting jihadism while failing to contain it ourselves.
Enough. Britain cannot afford to berate the very partner that helps it survive in a perilous age. Nor can it outsource its moral compass to the loudest street protestor, the scariest religious fanatic, or most sanctimonious backbencher. It should stand up, speak clearly, and state the truth: Israel is our friend, a model, and an essential ally. The time for double-dealing is over. We must stop whispering our friendship and start declaring it with pride.