Benjamin Netanyahu has branded the UK as the ‘Islamic Republic of Britain’ in an explosive new interview.
Speaking to Avi Harush, an ex-military officer whose son died fighting Hamas in Gaza, on his podcast, the Israeli leader was speaking about meeting Winston Churchill’s grandson.
He said Churchill’s grandson, whose name is also Winston, was a ‘nice man’ and ‘lover of Israel‘ who saw the Six-Day War, the 1967 conflict that saw Israel capture and occupy the West Bank and part of Jerusalem, as a ‘positive’.
Mr Netanyahu said: ‘Just try to find that kind of attitude in Britain now — or in what’s known as ‘The Islamic Republic of Britain’. You won’t find it.’
The Israeli prime minister also made reference to his nation’s goal of stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, while making a joke at the UK’s expense.
He said: ‘Someone said — you know — that the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic Republic of Britain. So, we’re making sure there won’t be another one like that in Iran.’
The relationship between the UK and Israel has already become more and more tense over the past year, amid the war in Gaza and the UK’s recognition of Palestine as a state.
At the time, Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer of appeasing Hamas.
Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured) has branded the UK as the ‘Islamic Republic of Britain’
Sir Keir’s successor, meanwhile, has in recent weeks accused Mr Netanyahu of trying to make the two-state solution impossible.
Andy Burnham has signalled a shift in the UK’s approach to the Middle East, recently apologising for the Labour Party’s response to Israel’s actions in Gaza over the last few years.
He admitted Labour’s position alienated a huge portion of its voters, adding it caused ‘huge hurt’.
He also said the UK was ‘too slow to call for a ceasefire’ and that the previous government ‘got it wrong’.
While Sir Keir had backed humanitarian pauses in the conflict to allow aid to reach Gazans, he stopped short of calling for an outright ceasefire.
Just days after the attacks on October 7 2023, he came under heavy fire for claiming that Israel had the ‘right’ to cut off power and water to Gaza.
He later backtracked and said he meant that Israel had a right to self-defence.
It comes as US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner is set to travel to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into Israeli opposition.
An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said Mr Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.
The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a US-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, the official said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalised, said the meetings would demonstrate the determination of Mr Trump and the Board of Peace to ‘see peace, prosperity and sustainable security emerge’ in a demilitarised Gaza where Hamas has ceded control to allow reconstruction of the devastated territory.
Palestinians walk among tents and the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israel-Hamas war along the coastal road in Gaza City, Thursday, August 13, 2026
Internally displaced Palestinians walks along side a donkey cart past the rubble of buildings and home destroyed by the Israeli military, in Khan Yunis southern Gaza Strip on August 11, 2026
But Israel has dismissed a recent deal announced by Mr Trump for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw its forces from the Palestinian territory, marking a rare public display of friction with the Trump administration.
Though Hamas accepted the plan to decommission its weapons, Mr Netanyahu said in recent days that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas had completely disarmed.
The deal had been seen as a potential breakthrough for ending the war in Gaza.
The agreement was based on an October ceasefire that ended major military operations and brought about the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, but it has stalled on other fronts.
