Children read a very popular story about a monkey’s judgment between two quarrelling cats over a piece of cake. The story goes:
“Two cats quarrelled over a piece of cake because they could not divide it equally. They went to the monkey to distribute it fairly. The monkey tilted the weighing machine so that both sides could never be equal. Each time, he would eat a piece to balance them, and in the process, the whole cake was eaten by the monkey.”
The diplomatic altercation between Israel and the UK seems to mirror this tale.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a podcast on an army radio, sarcastically referred to Britain as the “first nuclear Islamic Republic.” London reacted sharply, calling the comment completely unacceptable. This uncalled-for sarcasm echoed the language of far-right politicians and commentators in the Western world, who have made unfounded claims that parts of Britain have come under Islamic law due to immigration—thereby fuelling Islamophobia. Netanyahu also mentioned how Winston Churchill’s grandson and namesake vocally supported Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
“Would you find this now?” Netanyahu asked.
He further stated:
“Someone once said that the first Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons would be the Islamic Republic of Britain. We are making sure that there is not another one here in Iran.”
Israeli spokesperson David Mencer, in a BBC interview on August 14, 2026, tried to downplay Netanyahu’s comments, saying,
“He was quoting someone else.”
Mencer added that U.S. Vice-President JD Vance had previously made those remarks, and Netanyahu was merely quoting him.
At the risk of repetition, the first reference to Britain as an Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons was indeed made by JD Vance in 2024. As reported in The Guardian on July 14, 2024, Vance—then an Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate—addressed the National Conservatism Conference, saying:
“I have to beat up on the UK—just one additional thing. I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about one of the big dangers in the world, nuclear proliferation, though the Biden administration doesn’t care about it. … What is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon? Maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK, since Labour just took over.”
In response, the then-Treasury Minister of the UK, James Murray, said:
“I don’t know what he was driving at with that comment, to be honest. In Britain, we’re very proud of our diversity.”
One wonders why Netanyahu made such a sarcastic comment about the UK at this point in time.
First, Britain is one of the European countries that recognized Palestinian statehood in 2025, which infuriated Israel.
Second, the new Prime Minister of Britain, Andy Burnham, has remarked that his predecessor Keir Starmer did not put enough pressure on Israel to halt its offensive in Gaza. Shortly before taking office, Burnham told The Guardian that Labour had been wrong in the early months of the conflict, when Starmer resisted demands for an immediate ceasefire. He described the suffering of Gaza’s residents as a “scar on our collective conscience” and said the British government had not done enough to pressure Israel. He further asserted that there was “growing evidence” that war crimes had been committed but argued that any formal determination should be left to international courts. Burnham stated that Britain should examine further sanctions against those allegedly involved in violence in Gaza, as well as measures targeting trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“That is why we need to do more, which includes looking at further sanctions, both on those involved in violence in Gaza, but also looking at steps to ban trade in goods with illegal settlements,”
he said. He also criticized the sharp rise in settler violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, accusing Netanyahu’s government of seeking to make a two-state solution impossible. Britain had previously restricted some arms export licenses to Israel under Starmer but continued permitting the transfer of F-35 components, arguing that excluding Israel from the multinational supply chain would jeopardize the wider aircraft programme.
It is well known that Israel remains the most politically contentious issue facing the Burnham government. Anti-Israel demonstrations have gathered in London, demanding that Burnham impose sanctions and take a more confrontational stance toward Israel. Slogans reading “End the Genocide” called for an immediate halt to British military cooperation with Israel. Burnham continued, adding that Westminster must put more pressure on the Israeli government, stating that it is “completely unacceptable” that innocent Palestinians, including children, continue to be killed.
Third, Britain considers that oil and gas supply from Iran weighs more heavily given the prevailing circumstances. NATO remains divided regarding actions and pressures against Israel at the UN. While the alliance as a whole does not take a collective official position on UN sanctions, individual members hold starkly contrasting positions. France, the UK, and Denmark, for instance, have grown increasingly critical at the UN, condemning West Bank settlement expansion, genocide, the humanitarian blockade, and relentless violence. Turkey, a NATO member, is fiercely critical of Israeli military action in Gaza and objects to any cooperative NATO framework involving Israel. The only odd one out is the US, which stands rock-solid behind Israel and has repeatedly criticized NATO allies for their reluctance to play a greater role after the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, 2025, and Iran subsequently restricted shipping through the key Strait of Hormuz.
Spain refused to allow its air base to be used by the US for the attack on Iran. Similarly, the UK insisted that greater involvement in the war or the current US blockade of Iranian ports were not in its national interest. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was reported to have commented:
“We are not counting on Europe, but they need the Strait of Hormuz much more than we do and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and getting a boat. This is much more their fight than ours. Europe and Asia have benefited from our protection for decades, but the time for free riding is over.”
The audacity of US imperialism is perhaps the source of strength for Israel to pass such a sarcastic comment about the UK. If one compares the presence of Muslim populations in the UK and Israel, one finds that Muslims constitute only 5.6% of the UK’s total population, whereas in Israel they constitute approximately 18 to 21 percent. Despite the recent rise in hate speech against minorities, including Muslims, in Britain, Muslims still prefer life there because it remains one of the most accommodating and welcoming countries to minorities in general, offering the widest margin of freedom for practicing religious rites compared to other nations. Netanyahu and Trump see this as a potential threat to the power and stability of Europe as a whole. They try to convert Europe into their backyard to advance their interests in corporate capitalism at the cost of human lives, livelihoods, and the well-being of the planet. The concept of an “Islamic State” is part of their constructed narrative, based on their ideological orientation to suit their imperialist-Zionist advances.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect (North London News) editorial policy.
