Benjamin Netanyahu says UK decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel ‘shameful’ amid growing backlash – UK politics live

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Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, has posted a thread on social media describing the British government’s decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel as “shameful”.

Days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, the UK government suspended thirty arms licenses to Israel.

This 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.

Hamas is still holding over 100 hostages, including 5 British citizens. Instead of standing with Israel, a fellow democracy defending itself against barbarism, Britain’s misguided decision will only embolden Hamas.

Israel is pursuing a just war with just means, taking unprecedented measures to keep civilians out of harm’s way and comporting fully with international law.

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.

With or without British arms, Israel will win this war and secure our common future.

Good morning. The Hamas massacre of Israelis on 7 October last year, and Israel’s brutal war in Gaza that has been going on ever since, has had very little impact on the internal politics of the Conservative party, but it has caused endless problems for Labour. Keir Starmer’s initial response, including an interview in which he seemed to say Israel had the right to cut off water supplies to Gaza as part of its retaliation (it took him a while to clarify that that was not what he meant) horrified pro-Palestinian voters, and Labour lost one byelection, and at least four seats at the general election, as a direct result of the backlash in Muslim communities that had previously been solidly Labour.

Now Labour is in office it is in a position to make policy on the Israel/Gaza conflict, and yesterday David Lammy, the foreign secretary, announced that some arms sales to Israel are being suspended.

But if Lammy, Keir Starmer and other Labour ministers thought that this relatively modest rebuke to Israel would go down well in the UK, today they are learning that that has not been the case. Pro-Israeli opinion is outraged, and pro-Palestinian campaigners are saying that Lammy should have gone very much further.

Here are some of the developments overnight and this morning.

• Boris Johnson, the former Tory prime minister, has accused Labour of “abandoning Israel” and suggested they want Hamas to win the war. He posted this on X.

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?

• The UK’s Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvi, has said the announcement “feeds the falsehood that Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law” and said the timing of the move “beggars belief”. He posted this on X.

It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licences, at a time when Israel is fighting a war for its very survival on seven fronts forced upon it on the 7th October, and at the very moment when six hostages murdered in cold blood by cruel terrorists were being buried by their families. As Israel faces down the threat of Iran and its proxies, not just to its own people, but to all of us in the democratic west; this announcement feeds the falsehood that Israel is in breach of International Humanitarian Law, when in fact it is going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it. Sadly, this announcement will serve to encourage our shared enemies. It will not help to secure the release of the remaining 101 hostages, nor contribute to the peaceful future we wish and pray for, for all people in the region and beyond. Britain and Israel have so much to gain by standing together against our common enemies for the sake of a safer world. Surely that must be the way forward.

• John Healey, the defence secretary, has said that the UK’s support for Israel’s right to self-defence remains “unshakeable” despite the announcement. He told Times Radio:

As I said to the defence minister Yoav Gallant yesterday when I spoke to him before the announcement, we have a duty to follow the law, but this does not alter our unshakable commitment to support Israel’s right to self-defence and to the defence of Israel if it comes under direct attack again, just as UK jets back in April helped intercept Iranian drones and missiles that were targeted directly at Israeli civilians.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

10.30am: Tom Tugendhat, the former security minister, launches his bid for the Conservative leadership.

11.30am: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.

Afternoon: Shona Robison, finance secretary in the Scottish governments, makes a statement to MSPs about spending cuts.

4pm: The six Tory leadership candidates – Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Priti Patel and Mel Stride – address Tory MPs on after another in a private hustings meeting at Westminster.

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