As they attacked the Iranian nuclear sites, the Israelis were executing a move that had long been foreseen by numerous Western leaders over the years.
To be candid, it’s not just anticipation that the rest of the global community has had about this Israeli response. Many governments, whether in secret or openly, have been wishing for it.
In a single remarkable operation, the Israelis dealt a severe blow to the Natanz enrichment facility and caused significant harm to two others. They eliminated six of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists and a remarkable number of the country’s top military officials.
They blew up radars and smashed early warning systems and destroyed anti-aircraft arrays – so that Iran will be even more vulnerable to the next attack; and in some cases it is obvious that the Israelis were getting help from inside Iran. We don’t yet know how badly they have retarded the Iranian nuclear programme – but we know this.
The Israelis are finally making a concerted attempt to halt Tehran’s race to the Bomb – and they are right to do so: for the sake of their own country and the world. It was only the previous day that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) blew the whistle on Iran. For the first time in 20 years, the agency ruled that Tehran was in flagrant violation of its obligations not to enrich uranium, under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Israel hit about 100 targets in Iran, including nuclear facilities and military command centres, killing senior figures
The IAEA produced new and shocking evidence of the speed with which they were producing the stuff of warheads, and the places it was being made. The Iranians were so advanced in their preparations, said the agency, that they could go into the final sprint – with a viable device only months away.
There are good reasons why Israel could not allow that sprint to begin. Since the fundamentalist revolution of 1979, the Iranians have been officially committed to the destruction of the state of Israel ‘from the river to the sea’. In 15 years’ time, according to the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Israel will not exist.
So what would you do, if another country was theologically devoted to vaporising your own country, and that country was about to avail itself of a nuclear weapon? What would any democratically elected leader do?
If you want further evidence of the murderous intent of Iran towards Israel, look at the massacres of October 7, 2023, the slaughter and torture of more than 1,000 Israelis in their homes – performed by Hamas, but inspired and orchestrated by Iran. The Israelis have been perfectly within their rights to try to neutralise an existential threat, and the truth is that virtually every other country in the world, to a greater or lesser degree, is happy to hold their coats while they do it.
No one really wants the ayatollahs to be waving nukes around; not even the Chinese; not even the Russians. Which is why the global reaction has been on the whole cautious, if not actually supportive. Washington has strongly backed the Israeli strikes, while stressing – in the hope of avoiding reprisals – that the US was not itself involved. The French and the Germans and other European countries have noted Israel’s basic right to self-defence.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is accused of being weak in his leadership
There is one country, though, that stands aloof: one country that wrings its hands, and moans about the risk of ‘escalation’; one European country that thinks there is some kind of moral equivalence between Israel and Iran; one country that seems by its whole posture to deplore what Israel has done, and that is of course the country in which so many of us are living right now.
I mean Starmer’s Britain; or perhaps we should call it Hermer’s Britain since it is apparently on the advice of our ineffably woke and lefty Attorney General Lord Hermer that the Israelis cannot officially be said to be acting in self-defence.
Oh really? Why the hell not? The Israelis are trying to diminish the destructive power of a country that is hell-bent on destroying them. If that isn’t self-defence, I don’t know what is. And it isn’t just selfish. It’s public-spirited.
Taking out Iran’s nukes: that’s not just in Israel’s interest. It’s in all our interest. Why the hell can’t this mealy-mouthed Government just come out and say what they know to be true? Well, I think we all know the reason for that.
It is because Labour policy on Israel is nothing to do with geopolitics, or the national interest, or even simple right and wrong. It’s all about managing the sad and growing anti-Israel feeling on Labour backbenches; and recognising the growing importance of Muslim votes in Labour cities; and appeasing the ineradicable virus of anti-Semitism that has infected the rank and file of the Labour Party.
I hate the war in Gaza as much as anyone, and wish it would stop. But almost two years after October 7 there is one thing that would end the violence, end the Israeli bombardments, and end the suffering of the Palestinians. But Hamas utterly refuses to do it. All they have to do is release the hostages: all the bodies of the dead, and all the terrified Israelis still being kept in their tunnels.
Neville Chamberlain with Hitler in the run up to the Second World War
Why won’t they do it? Why won’t they stop this nightmare? Because they are a crazed Islamist death cult, committed to the eradication of Israel, and to the elimination of all Jews not just in Israel but around the world.
They know that the Israelis have no choice: they have to try to get back the hostages, and to ensure that there will not be another such attack on innocent Israelis; and that means trying, however painfully, to change the agenda of the government of Gaza – which is, I remind you, the total abolition of Israel.
Of course, Hamas refuses to change or compromise because they positively need the war, and welcome the martyrdom. They welcome the casualties that Israel is inflicting, and they welcome Western outrage, because they cynically understand that every dead Palestinian child weakens support for Israel in Western governments and breeds the kind of ugly anti-Semitism we have seen on our streets.
That’s why they won’t give back the hostages or change their demands about Israel, and in the case of the UK, sadly, the strategy of Hamas is plainly starting to work. Israel is a democracy, an ally, a crucial intelligence partner of this country. And at a time when Israel is facing a threat from people who want to wipe that country off the map – Starmer and Hermer actually put sanctions on Israel!
This is a government that is psychologically addicted to surrender of the national interest. They are taking us back into the tractor beam of EU law. They are surrendering on Gibraltar, allowing Spanish officials to check British troops arriving in British territory. They have funded tax cuts in Mauritius with their insane £30 billion surrender of the Chagos Islands.
At a time when Putin wants to destroy Ukraine, and Xi wants to conquer Taiwan, and Iran wants to eliminate Israel, we need a government that will take defence seriously, and stand up for democracy.
Instead, we have the most abject and craven government of the past 100 years. They are so weak they make Neville Chamberlain look positively robust.
