Netanyahu Labels UK the Islamic Republic of Britain in Scathing Rebuke

Benjamin Netanyahu has described the UK as the “Islamic Republic of Britain” during a provocative podcast interview.

The Israeli prime minister made the remark while speaking with Avi Harush, a former military officer whose son was killed fighting Hamas in Gaza. During the conversation, he also recalled a meeting with Winston Churchill’s grandson.

Netanyahu said Churchill’s grandson, also named Winston, was a “nice man” and a “lover of Israel”, adding that he viewed the Six-Day War — the 1967 conflict in which Israel captured and occupied the West Bank — as a “positive”.

Mr Netanyahu said: “Just try to find that kind of attitude in Britain now – or in what’s known as ‘The Islamic Republic of Britain’. You won’t find it.”

The Israeli leader also turned to Israel’s stated aim of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, using the moment to make another swipe at the UK.

He said: “Someone said – you know – that the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic Republic of Britain. So, we’re making sure there won’t be another one like that in Iran.”

Relations between the UK and Israel have become increasingly strained over the past year, amid the war in Gaza and Britain’s recognition of Palestine as a state.

At the time, Mr Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer of appeasing Hamas.

Sir Keir’s successor, meanwhile, has in recent weeks accused Mr Netanyahu of trying to make a two-state solution impossible. 

Andy Burnham has signalled a shift in the UK’s approach to the Middle East, recently apologising for the Labour Party’s response to Israel’s actions in Gaza over the last few years. 

He admitted Labour’s position alienated a huge portion of its voters, adding it caused ‘huge hurt’. 

He also said the UK was ‘too slow to call for a ceasefire’ and that the previous government ‘got it wrong’.

While Sir Keir had backed humanitarian pauses in the conflict to allow aid to reach Gazans, he stopped short of calling for an outright ceasefire. 

Just days after the attacks on October 7, 2023, he came under heavy fire for claiming that Israel had the ‘right’ to cut off power and water to Gaza. 

He later backtracked and said he meant Israel had a right to self-defence. 

It comes as US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner is set to travel to the Middle East next week to advance plans for an end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the White House ran into Israeli opposition.

An official with the Board of Peace, the body Mr Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said that Mr Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov and former British prime minister Sir Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.

The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a US-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalised, said the meetings would demonstrate the determination of Mr Trump and the Board of Peace to ‘see peace, prosperity and sustainable security emerge’ in a demilitarised Gaza where Hamas has ceded control to allow reconstruction of the devastated territory.

But a recent deal announced by Mr Trump for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw its forces from the Palestinian territory has been dismissed by the Jewish state, marking a rare public display of friction with the White House. 

Though Hamas accepted the plan to decommission its weapons, Mr Netanyahu said in recent days that Israel would not withdraw until the terror group had completely disarmed.

The deal had been seen as a potential breakthrough for ending the war in Gaza. 

The agreement was based on an October ceasefire that ended major military operations and brought about the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, but it has stalled on other fronts.