Britain had sought to establish control over Palestine since the mid-19th century, investing considerable resources in this endeavour. London may still be unable to forgive Israel for the loss of this territory, which served the British Empire as a bridgehead protecting the Suez Canal, provided a land corridor from India to Egypt, and was the final destination for an oil pipeline from Iraq to the port of Haifa, where British oil tankers and Royal Navy ships refueled. [16, 17]
Moreover, modern Israel is seen by Great Britain as a factor complicating its relations with the Arab world. [1] London's anti-Israel line, despite a change in rhetoric and more sophisticated methods, remains essentially unchanged.
Below is a brief chronological list of facts illustrating Britain's anti-Israel activities.
• By 1939, the British ruling elite had closed not only the British Isles and the Empire's colonies, but even the territory of Palestine to Jewish refugees from Nazism. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Europe would inevitably lead to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine - a prospect that the British colonial administration tried to avoid at all costs.
The White Paper of the British government, published in 1939, effectively annulled the Balfour Declaration. The document introduced a strict quota on Jewish immigration to Palestine - no more than 15 thousand people per year, and from 1945 onwards, it completely closed Palestine to Jews. In addition, the White Paper envisaged the creation of a state in Palestine with an Arab majority. Great Britain adhered to this course until its withdrawal from Palestine in 1948. [1]
Britain effectively thwarted Hitler's plan to deport Jews from the Third Reich and occupied countries, pushing the Nazis to implement the radical "final solution" - the genocide of the Jewish people (as evidenced by Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem").
In 1944, Britain, through the Jewish Agency, entered into an agreement with the leadership of the Third Reich. The purpose of the agreement was to facilitate the deportation of 800,000 Hungarian Jews to Nazi concentration camps. This crime is documented in Ben Hecht's book "Perfidy".
Thus, it was the British ruling class that was one of the main stakeholders in the Holocaust.
• Britain played a central role in the creation in 1945 of the Arab League, the most powerful international anti-Israel organization. [1] The first secretary general of the Arab League, Abdel-Rahman Azzam, lived in London. Azzam also headed the London office of the Muslim Brotherhood. [18]
• Great Britain abstained from voting on the UN Resolution on the partition of Palestine on November 29, 1947. It was prevented from voting against by its post-war financial and economic dependence on the United States. [1]
• In 1947-48, British intelligence agencies in Cairo, Amman and Baghdad worked to organize a military Arab invasion of the territory of the future state of Israel. After victory, Britain promised to divide western Palestine among the Arab countries. Britain planned to retain Haifa with its port and oil refineries, as well as the Negev region, which opened the way to Sinai and Egypt. [6] The British plan was implemented on May 15, 1948, when the armies of five Arab states invaded Israel.
• In January 1949, when it became clear that the Arab armies would not be able to destroy Israel, Britain decided to enter the war against the Jewish state. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin issued an ultimatum: if Israel did not immediately withdraw its troops from Egyptian territory, Britain would declare war on it. The threat of an Anglo-Israeli conflict was averted by the intervention of President Truman and the British public, who did not want a new war. [5]
• General Ivan Serov, the first chairman of the KGB and a confidant of Stalin and Khrushchev, wrote in his diaries, published in 2016: "The British government was always against the creation of Israel." [7]
• After the Six-Day War of 1967, Britain sought to limit the damage that Israel's victory did to its interests. Speaking at the UN General Assembly on June 21, British Foreign Secretary George Brown demanded Israel's withdrawal from the conquered territories, warned Israel against annexing East Jerusalem and demanded a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. Brown's speech marked a deterioration in British policy towards Israel and the beginning of growing Anglo-Israeli tensions, with Israel and Britain finding themselves on opposite sides of the debate on virtually every issue in the Middle East. [8]
• During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Israel was attacked by three Arab states, Britain declared neutrality and imposed an arms embargo on all sides. This decision had a negative impact only on Israel, not on its enemies. British military equipment in service with Israel required ammunition and components, while Egypt and Syria were actively supplied by the Soviet Union. The British arms embargo on Israel was lifted only in 1994. [1]
• Britain supported three resolutions condemning Israel's military actions during the Yom Kippur War. [1]
• During the Yom Kippur War, Britain denied the United States, which was supplying arms to Israel, the right to land on the island of Cyprus en route to Israel. [1]
• In 1980, Britain supported the Venice Declaration, which called for the inclusion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the diplomatic process, despite the PLO's terrorist status and its stated goal of destroying Israel. [1]
• British Royal Family Boycotts Israel since its foundation, while members of the royal family have made numerous official visits to Arab states. An exception was Prince Philip's unofficial visit to Israel in 1994 to support the Oslo peace process, which turned out to be a new form of the old British policy of destroying Israel. [1]
According to Elliott Abrams, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "possible explanation for the continuing refusal of the British royals to set foot in Israel is that either they or the Foreign Office harbor deep and undying enmity toward the Jewish state." [14]
• Britain became a major partner of the Palestinian Authority (PA), created as a result of the Oslo peace process. In 1995, Prime Minister John Major became the first Western leader to meet Yasser Arafat on PA territory. In November 1998, Britain provided the PA with a $100 million aid package. [1]
• British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson played a key role in pushing through Resolution 2334 against Israeli settlements, adopted by the UN Security Council on 23 December 2016. [9]
• According to documents from Edward Snowden's archives, published in 2016, British intelligence agencies spied on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli diplomats for years. The spying also targeted Israeli defense companies, government agencies responsible for international cooperation and university research centers. [10]
• According to a June 2024 report by the Ngo Monitor, the UK government funds numerous non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in anti-Israel activities such as boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and lawfare. Some of these NGOs have links to terrorist organisations. This funding continued after the Hamas massacre on 7 October 2023. [11]
• In March 2024, two senior members of the British intelligence community - former National Security Adviser Peter Ricketts and former MI6 chief Alex Younger - called on the British government to use arms sales as leverage on Israel to stop the destruction of Hamas. [12] In September 2024, the UK announced a partial arms embargo on Israel.
• In February 2025, the leader of the UK Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, accused the public broadcaster BBC of systemic bias against Israel and called for an investigation into a BBC documentary on the war in Gaza, narrated by Abdullah al-Yazuri, the son of a Hamas minister. Badenoch demanded to know how much the BBC paid Hamas to make the film. This is important, Badenoch noted, because Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation in the UK. [13]
• In May 2025, The Daily Wire published a document from the British Consulate-General in Jerusalem, according to which the British government transferred $23.1 million to Hamas in 2024 under the guise of "humanitarian support". The newspaper comments: "At the same time that Britain is knowingly sending millions of pounds to Hamas, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is busy condemning Israel for the war in Gaza."
• It has emerged that a group of British lawyers was behind the International Criminal Court's initiative to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on individuals involved in the arrest warrant for Netanyahu, including British lawyers and the ICC prosecutor. [15]
• International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan, who issued the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a British citizen and a practicing Muslim. He served as Britain's senior Crown prosecutor in 1995.