Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke with British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Monday and told her that he is concerned about antisemitic violence in the United Kingdom and about Lebanon’s failure to disarm the Hezbollah terror group.
The call came at a reportedly strained time in Anglo-Israeli relations and amid a spike in Jew-hatred, including an incident about a week ago in which four ambulances belonging to a Jewish rescue group were torched.
“Antisemitism in the United Kingdom, as well as in other countries, is spreading like wildfire and requires treatment at its roots,” Sa’ar stated in a post about what he and the British foreign secretary discussed.
“I drew the foreign secretary’s attention to the troubling fact that the Lebanese Foreign Ministry’s decision to expel the Iranian ambassador has remained on paper only. Just as the Lebanese government’s decision to disarm Hezbollah has also remained on paper only,” Sa’ar stated. “Just as the Lebanese army’s statement three months ago claiming it had achieved ‘operational control’ in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River was baseless.”
“In contrast, the 5,000 missiles, rockets and drones fired at Israel since March 2 are entirely real,” he stated. “Israel has the right to defend itself and will continue to act to protect its citizens.”
Under British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, London had imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel. Last year, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand recognized a Palestinian state over U.S. and Israeli objections. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the countries at the time of “emboldening Hamas” and being on the “wrong side of history.”
Sa’ar and Cooper have reportedly clashed of late, after she criticized what she said was “settler violence” in Judea and Samaria. Sa’r said that her rhetoric was part of a “hypocritical obsession against Jewish presence in the heart of our tiny land.”
A WhatsApp conversation from the left wing Green Party activists that leaked recently appeared to show them saying that Jews “murder, bomb and starve” children, the Telegraph reported. Another reportedly said that the arson attack on the ambulances was a “false flag” operation that Jews could have carried out. Those kind of claims are “straight out of Nazi Germany,” the Campaign Against Antisemitism told the paper, and the Conservative Party called the language “utterly appalling.”
Last week, British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that “today, Jews in this country are being forced to live a smaller life. They are hiding the signs of their faith. They are fearful as they send their children to school. Even when they attend a hospital appointment.”
Last year, British Jews recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom, a slight increase over 2024 and the second-highest tally on record. Last year’s total was 14% lower than the highest ever annual total of 4,298 incidents of Jew-hatred in 2023.
