Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged his “unbreakable” support for Israel and condemned Iran for its “despicable” attempts to smuggle missiles to “terrorists.”
On Mr Cameron’s first visit as Prime Minister to the country, he revealed he has Jewish ancestry and pledged to his “rock solid” to the Israeli people.
In a speech peppered with Hebrew to the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, Mr Cameron vowed to keep “hate preachers and anti-semites” out of Britain, citing the refusal to grant entry to Britain to Dieudonne, the French comedian known for his inverted Nazi salute which was copied by the West Brom footballer Nicolas Anelka.
In comments that will delight Prime Minister Netenyahu, Mr Cameron condemned the British boycott movement, including trade unionists and academics, of being “amateur politicians”.
Crucially, he also declared Israel to be the Jews’ historic “homeland” – a status the Israelis have insisted the Palestinians recognise before any Palestinian state can be granted.
Mr Netenyahu has accused European leaders of turning a blind eye to “Iranian support for terrorism” in the wake of recent nuclear talks, most recently when a ship carrying Iranian-supplied missiles was allegedly intercepted.
But Mr Cameron insisted he was not “starry-eyed” about Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani, saying he understands how “narrow and vulnerable this land is” and the terror felt by Israeli civilians.
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“A vulnerability that just this week has seen the interception of the Klos C ship – yet another despicable attempt by the Iranians to smuggle more long-range rockets into Gaza. A vulnerability that has too often seen nearby Palestinian schools being named in honour of suicide bombers.” He added: “I will always stand up for the right of Israel to defend its citizens.”
The Iranian nuclear programme presents a threat to the entire world, he added. He said the root cause of terrorism in the Middle East is not Israel but the solely the “warped and barbaric ideology” of Islamist extremism that wants to establish a caliphate across the Middle East.
The United Nations is guilty of hypocrisy by ruling Israel has violated international law, the Prime Minister declared, saying last year the General Assembly passed “three times as many resolutions on Israel as on Syria, Iran and North Korea put together.”
