A History of Abandoning Its Ally During A Crisis
Britain’s newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer found himself at the center of a firestorm this week, after his foreign secretary announced a partial arms embargo against Israel in parliament.
The embargo marks Britain’s latest reversals of Middle East policy—all of them catering to pro-Arab demands—since Labor won office in a July landslide victory.
The British government has now restored funding to UNRWA, a proven terrorist organization masquerading as the U.N.’s humanitarian agency for “Palestinian refugees.” The new government has also dropped its opposition to an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The embargo, which includes important components that go into F-16 jets, as well as naval systems and targeting equipment, marks a major change to British foreign policy since Oct. 7, 2023.
Approximately 350 British UK export licenses for the sale of weapons and military equipment to Israel have been approved since Hamas’ horrific massacres of Israelis on Oct. 7. Thirty of those were suspended by Prime Minister Starmer’s government last Monday.
“Let us be clear what the Labor government has done,” former security minister and Conservative opposition leader Tom Tugendhat explained at a recent Conservative Leadership Campaign. “On the day that the Israeli government discovered the bodies of more hostages, on the day they had to share that news of grief and trauma with families … the British government decided that it was the right day to stand against Israel’s right to defend itself.
“That is remarkable. And it will be a decision that has been heard not just in Washington and Tel Aviv but around the world,” Tugendhat warned. “If we are not willing to stand by our allies when they are literally discovering the bodies of their murdered citizens, what is the point of an alliance?”
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson echoed these remarks in a strongly worded statement on social media: “Hamas is still holding many innocent Jewish hostages while Israel tries to prevent a repeat of the 7th October massacre! Why are Lammy and Starmer abandoning Israel? Do they want Hamas to win?”
Former foreign secretary James Cleverly accused foreign minister Dave Lammy of “damaging two of our most important relationships at a crucial time – the United States and Israel—and it won’t even have the impact he wants.”
Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said the announcement “beggars belieft” and “will serve to encourage our shared enemies.” He railed against the timing of the decision, “at the very moment when six hostages murdered in cold blood by cruel terrorists were being buried by their families.”
The embargo decision has severely strained Britain’s relationship with Israel. Netanyahu’s office lashed out at the Labor government, saying their “shameful decision will not change Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that savagely murdered 1200 people on October 7, including 14 British citizens.”
“Instead of standing with Israel, a fellow democracy defending itself against barbarism, Britain’s misguided decision will only embolden Hamas,” the prime minister said.
“Just as Britain’s heroic stand against the Nazis is seen today as having been vital in defending our common civilization, so too will history judge Israel’s stand against Hamas and Iran’s axis of terror,” the statement continued. “Israel will win its war against Hamas – ‘with or without British arms.’
Report: Embargo was Secretly Imposed Weeks Ago to Forestall Opposition
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, the director of UK Lawyers for Israel, Natasha Hausdorf, revealed that the UK Labor government implemented the embargo weeks ago, only announcing the ban after it was a fait accompli.
The government had publicly stated it would hold off on imposing the weapons ban until a “comprehensive review” of the Gaza situation could be made. Secretly, however, it implemented the suspension immediately, according to the Jerusalem Post article.
The maneuver circumvented the storm of opposition that might have hampered the government from carrying out its aims.
Hausdorf slammed the Labor government for issuing pronouncements about Britain’s support for Israel being “unshakeable” while knifing the Jewish state in the back. She noted the damage to the government’s credibility, “revealed as speaking from both sides of its mouth.”
“In seeking to win back extreme voters whom Labor lost to rival parties,” the writer said, the government has chosen “the easy fix”—“taking an aggressive stance towards Israel and pursuing policies which reflect the party’s troubled history of antisemitism.”
Keir Starmer has now become the sixth British prime minister who in recent history have restricted arms sales to Israel during a time of high-stakes Middle East conflict.
Since the Yom Kippur War (1973), three previous Conservative prime ministers have banned arms exports to Israel. Now Keir Starmer is the third Labor prime minister to do so.
Britain Halted Weapons Supplies to Israel During Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur war broke out on October 6, 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched a two-front surprise attack against Israel, tragically catching the government off-guard.
Oil-producing Arab countries enforced an embargo on the United States and other countries supporting Israel. More than 2,600 Israeli soldiers were killed by the time the war was over in late October.
Edward Heath was the Conservative prime minister of Britain at the time. Rather than offering unequivocal support to Israel as an ally would do, Heath halted weapons supplies both to Israel and its Arab opponents, outrageously defending this approach as “genuinely even-handed.”
British Prime Minister Heath did something even more reprehensible So as not to antagonize Britain’s Arab oil-providers, he refused to allow US planes supplying Israel with weapons to use Britain’s military bases.
Israel’s foreign minister at the time, Abba Eban later described Britain’s policy as an “especially harsh blow” to Israel—not due to the number of weapons being withheld but because of its psychological impact on other governments.
The British example affected other European countries and encouraged them to take a similar approach, helping to isolate Israel, he wrote.
Today Britain supplies around 1% of the arms used by Israel, with the U.S. and Germany as the primary suppliers, but Eban’s reflections about the fallout of Britain’s treachery is still relevant.
PM Margaret Thatcher Denounced Israel for Blowing Up Iraq’s Nuclear Reactor
Known by some as Britain’s most pro-Israel prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in office from 1979-90, had served in Edward Heath’s cabinet during the 1973 war and went on record as opposing an embargo on Israel.
But Thatcher’s support for Israel blew hot and cold. She took a number of destructive actions against Israel beginning in 1981, following the Israeli bombing of Iraq’s Osirak’s nuclear reactor.
Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had begun work on a nuclear reactor in the 1970s. He signed a deal with France to build two nuclear reactors – Tamuz 1 and 2. Israeli intelligence determined that Osirak could produce atomic bombs of the size used against Hiroshima within five years of becoming operational.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin led the country at the time. He and his cabinet felt a nuclear Iraq under the maniacal Saddam Hussein who publicly advocated for the annihilation of the Jewish state, would constitute a catastrophic danger. Begin made the decision to bomb the nuclear reactor while it was still under construction.
On June 7, 1981, 14 fighter jets took off from Etzion airport in Israel. At approximately 5.30 pm, 8 of them struck and destroyed the larger of the two nuclear reactors in the operation codenamed “Operation Opera.. [See Sidebar]
Thatcher, along with many world leaders including the United States, condemned Israel for the airstrike. But after the first Gulf War in 1990-91, world opinion shifted, with many leaders retroactively agreeing that the Israeli attack prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons.
[A decade after the Osirak strike, Washington did a 180 degree turnaround, offering Israel belated praise for its courageous action. Following the first Gulf War, US defense secretary Dick Cheney sent General David Ivry, IAF commander during Operation Opera, a satellite photograph of the bombed-out reactor taken days after Israel’s raid.
The photograph was inscribed: “With thanks and appreciation. You made our job easier in Desert Storm.”]
Thatcher Decreed Arms Ban During 1983 Israel-Lebanon War
The next year, following rocket and artillery barrages from southern Lebanon, Israel sought to wipe out PLO positions in that region, leading to the Israel-Lebanon war.
Reacting to the murder of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in a Lebanese refugee camp by Christian Phalangists who were sent by Israeli forces to root out terrorists in the camp, Thatcher imposed an arms embargo on Israel that lasted for 13 years, until 1994. She also withdrew an invitation to Israel to attend a British Army Equipment Exhibition.
According to a historical account by Middle East Eye, when Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wrote to Thatcher asking her to reconsider, the prime minister did not even respond.
[In parliament last Monday, Foreign Minister David Lammy noted that he had not gone as far as Thatcher when justifying his decision to suspend “just” 30 arms exports out of around 350.]
Tony Blair Imposed All-Out Embargo During Second Intifada
Tony Blair, Labor prime minister from 1997 until 2007, headed a largely pro-Israel government and aligned Britain with the United States’, staunch support for Israel. In April 2002, during the Second Intifada, however, rumors that Britain had secretly imposed an arms embargo on Israel were confirmed.
The embargo applied to military equipment that could be used in Israel’s offensive in the West Bank and included even purely defensive equipment like gas masks and bullet-proof vests—while British companies continued selling weapons and other products into the Arab markets.
Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor, also imposed restrictions on arms sales to Israel in December 2008. This was after Israel, enduring relentless rocket and mortar assaults from Gaza, launched a military operation against Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Strip.
Nevertheless, Brown’s government revoked export licenses for weapons on Israeli navy missile boats because they were being used during the assault.
As with Tony Blair, the move was kept secret until Israeli officials revealed it, enabling the British government to sneak in the embargo as a “done deal” without risking having it derailed by negative public opinion.
Pro-Israel Cameron
David Cameron served as Conservative prime minister himself from 2010 to 2016. He was such a firm supporter of Israel that left-wing Haaretz suggested he was the “most pro-Israel British PM ever,” the Middle East Eye reports.
Yet even Cameron’s backing for Israeli military action was not unconditional.
Following Israel’s Operation Brother’s Keeper against terrorists in Gaza in 2014, after Hamas kidnapped and murdered three teenagers, the British government announced it would suspend some of its arms exports to Israel if hostilities resumed.
The move came after prolonged demands from the Liberal Democrats, the other party in the governing coalition, to suspend arms exports to Israel. Cameron had resisted those demands up to a point, insisting that Israel has a “legitimate right to self-defense.” In the end, he capitulated.
A decade later, during the current Gaza-Israeli war when he served as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s foreign secretary, Cameron consistently resisted calls to suspend arms sales to Israel despite reports saying Israel had broken international law.
Sunak and Cameron left office in July, however, after Sunak suffered a crushing defeat at the polls. They were replaced by the aforementioned Kier Starmer and Foreign Minister David Lammy who were quick to reverse some of Sunak’s key policies regarding Israel.
With Friends Like These…
The new Labor government has been wooing Arab voters by adopting pro-Palestinian positions and shafting Israel at every turn.
All while hypocritically declaring its undying friendship for the Jewish state. With a straight face.
“Throughout my life, I have been a friend of Israel, a liberal, progressive Zionist, who believes in Israel as a democratic state and homeland for the Jewish people, which has both the right to exist and defend itself,” intoned Foreign Minister David Lammy in the same breath that he announced the arms embargo on Israel.
Why would a lifelong “friend” do something so destructive as cut off weapons supplies during a war, you wonder?
Well, as Lammy explained it, it’s because there’s a “risk” –not anything confirmed, just a risk—“that certain UK arms exports to Israel could be used to commit or enable serious violations of international humanitarian law.” So, the government really had no choice. There’s a law. It’s called “Export Controls Act,” Lammy informed Parliament.
And Britain, of course, is nothing if not a law-abiding country.
Shooting Themselves in the Foot?
Former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, still one of the key security voices in the Trump circle, told the Guardian that Britain, by imposing an arms embargo on Israel, is endangering its future role in the “F-35 project,” as well as facing the risk of US congressional counter-embargos.
The F-35 fighter jets are made in part by British arms firms and are used by Israel’s air force in its military campaign against terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.
“The F-35 is a joint project and it is going to continue to go to Israel no matter what Turkey, Britain or any other country does,” O’brien said in the interview. “You would hate to see a situation where the UK is no longer a partner in the F-35 project or other advanced platforms, because of a very ill-advised arms embargo on Israel. It would be shooting themselves in the foot. ”
He said a British arms embargo poses a potential risk “for a serious rift—whether it’s a Harris or Trump administration—between the UK and the US. And I would tread very carefully.”
“An arms embargo would almost certainly lead to congressional action to put a counter-embargo on any UK sales in the US,” Obrien predicted.
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Little Known Miracle Aided Israel’s Attack at Osirak Nuclear Site
On June 7, 1981, the Israeli Air Force, under the command of the Menachem Begin government, surprise-attacked and destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor outside of Baghdad, Iraq.
Code named Operation Opera, 14 fighter jets took off from the IAF’s Etzion Airbase in the Sinai desert, flying across some 1000 miles across hostile Jordanian, Saudi and Iraqi airspace before reaching their target.
The operation pushed the F-16 fighter-bombers to the limit of their fuel capacity. The pilots maintained a low speed on the way to the nuclear site to conserve fuel—not the safest way to fly across enemy territory—and flew at very low altitude to avoid radar detection.
King Hussein of Jordan, reportedly on vacation in Aqaba, noticed the Israeli aircraft heading east. Suspecting they were on their way to Iraq, he ordered his people to warn Baghdad. But in a miraculous twist, the king’s message failed to reach the Iraqis who, if forewarned, could have foiled the surprise attack.
The strike against the reactor lasted under two minutes, with the IAF successfully accomplishing its mission with no loss of personnel or aircraft.
On June 19, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the attack. The United States not only voted for the resolution, but announced it was suspending the delivery of additional F-16s to the IAF. As mentioned above, the United States would later do an about-face after Desert Storm, and thank Israel for having taken out Iraq’s nuclear reactor.
The attack on Osirak deepened hostility toward Israel in the Middle East and further isolated Israel at the time. But many in Israel and around the world saw the bombing as “a life-saving operation.” It demonstrated that even temporarily halting an enemy’s march toward the bomb can buy vital time and create a window for other positive developments to occur.
And if all other avenues in preventing nuclear proliferation have failed, what is the alternative? To await the inevitable?
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‘I felt Safer in Israel Than I do in this Country’
Mike Freer, a Conservative MP in the British parliament, who represents a constituency with a significant Jewish population, announced in 2004 that he would not be seeking reelection because of threats to him and his family over his support for Israel, reported JNS.
Elaborating on his decision, Freer revealed that he had started wearing stab-proof vests when interacting with voters. If that strikes anyone as overcautious, the memory of a brutal attack on a Parliamentarian in 2021 offers perspective.
In that incident, Conservative MP, Sir David Amess, was stabbed to death by an Islamist in a meeting with voters. And in 2017, an Islamist terrorist mowed down pedestrians before stabbing an unarmed police officer to death outside the gates of Parliament.
Shortly after the heated controversy over the Gaza motions in Parliament, Jewish Conservative MP Andrew Percy gave a powerful speech in the House of Commons in which he said he had just returned from Israel, and that “I actually felt safer in Israel than I do in this country.”
