Contrary to her combative image, Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, is softly spoken and seems slightly anxious. The night before this interview, she appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored, where the host shouted at her about the body count in Gaza. The embassy is wary of a rematch.

So I put her at ease by calling Piers “history’s greatest monster”, causing her to laugh and relax. The problem with coverage of Gaza is that emotions run so high, every discussion ends up feeling like an interrogation – and the Israelis push back with force. What outsiders often forget is that beneath the rhetorical fireworks lies a deep pain.

Speaking at her embassy, flanked by UK and Israeli flags, with a bust of Golda Meir (the fourth prime minister of Israel) watching in the corner, Hotovely tells me “everyone in Israel is traumatised” by the events of Oct 7 2023. On that date, Hamas – which controls Gaza – invaded southern Israel, murdering and kidnapping more than a thousand people.

“We, as Israelis, have been through terror attacks in our coffee shops, on our buses, on our streets, but never in the past did we feel like our houses were not safe.” This is their new “vulnerability: the feeling that you cannot protect your own children”.

But foreign governments – even allies like Britain – are concerned about the safety of Palestinian children too: used as human shields by Hamas, and some killed in Israeli airstrikes.

How do you fight a terror group that rejects all the accepted rules of war?

‘October 7 was a watershed moment’

Hotovely, 46, wears regal purple and leans forward as she speaks, injecting urgency into the conversation. Her parents, Gabriel and Roziko, migrated to Israel from the former USSR and raised Tzipi in Rehovot, an attractive city south of Tel Aviv. Conservative and religious, she studied and practised law before gaining attention as a pundit. In 2009, she was elected to the Knesset – its youngest deputy at the time – as a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, and went on to serve as minister for transport, science, foreign affairs and settlements. She lives with her husband, Or Alon, and their three daughters.

When she was appointed ambassador to London in 2020, some British Jews objected, labelling Hotovely too controversial for such a sensitive role. But perhaps that was the idea. Many states are shifting their diplomatic style from emollience to advocacy. Since October 7th, Hotovely has become a formidable presence in the media and on campuses , vigorously defending her government against accusations she often describes as “a blood libel” – against Jews as well as Israelis.

I begin by asking the mood of her citizens 19 months on from the Hamas pogrom. “I think that October 7th was a watershed moment… all across Israel. No one can say in Israel that he’s the same person after.” She sometimes finds “less sympathy among people around the world” – some governments still live in the mentality of “October 6th” – but Israelis have been shown “that if you have a jihadi, Islamist terrorist group that wants to destroy you on your doorstep, at the end of the day, it’ll end up in a massacre.” Think of it as living next-door to the “Third Reich”.

“Just this morning, we heard about […] a 15-day-old baby who died in a terror attack”: Israeli Ravid Haim, born by emergency C-section after his mother, Tzeela Fez, was shot and killed. Around 58 hostages remain in Hamas’s hands. To recover them, the Israeli army has launched “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” – aiming to seize control of the Gaza Strip, push the population south and cripple the enemy’s military.

“The aims of the war are very clear to Israel,” explains Hotovely, “Hamas shouldn’t exist as a political leadership and with military power after we finish.” Hamas “doesn’t care about human life […] doesn’t care about their own people’s life”.

Hence it has embedded its fighters in a network of tunnels “six floors down […] bigger than the London Tube”, and deliberately located beneath civilian areas. “They wanted to make sure Israel will be blamed” when civilians are killed during Israeli attacks. “We don’t call it collateral damage. We really care about human life. We don’t want anyone who’s innocent to get killed. That’s why we make sure that all Palestinians can move to a safe zone.”

But the UK Government has condemned the civilian impact of “Gideon’s Chariots”. Israel imposed a blockade on humanitarian aid and commercial supplies on March 2 – now lifted – that Foreign Secretary David Lammy called “morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and counterproductive”; he cancelled talks on a trade deal and summoned Hotovely to the ministry to explain her government’s actions.

Lammy, she says, was wrong: “Israel’s policy from the beginning of the war was to deliver aid to Gaza.” Some “25,000 trucks of aid got into Gaza. This is not a starvation programme, this is actually a flooding Gaza with aid programme […] The reason why it had to stop was because it was being looted only to feed the terrorists” or “to sell the aid that people were supposed to get for free”.

I ask whether this is an example of Israel alienating its friends with such brutal logic. Hamas steals food – that’s bad; anyone would want to stop it. But if Israel cuts off food altogether, isn’t the outcome even worse for innocent civilians?

“If there is lack of food,” Hotovely replies, “I can understand your argument”, but the Israelis calculated that there was enough aid already within the Gaza Strip to pause deliveries while they build a “new mechanism” for distribution, not overseen by the UN. This would be the American-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, now operating in Gaza – accused of being partisan and insufficient, and there have been riots at its deliveries. “That was just the first day,” she corrects, “it’s been improving and I keep on monitoring it as ambassador.”

‘A clash of civilisations’

What about Labour’s other charge – that “Gideon’s Chariots” has driven up the death toll? I cite the case of Dr Alaa al-Najjar, a Palestinian doctor whose home was hit in an Israeli strike, killing nine of her 10 children. “How does that make you feel?”

“I’ll tell you how it makes me feel. It makes me feel how tragic the situation is that Hamas built this infrastructure that is hurting his own children. I have a lot of sympathy to human life. As a Jew, as an Israeli, we value life very much. Unfortunately, our enemies don’t […] I think it’s a clash of civilisations […] I find that Western people find it very hard to believe that on the other side, there are people who are using their own children as human shields,” but they do.

Dr al-Najjar wasn’t using her own children as a shield though, was she? “No, I didn’t say that, but I said Hamas built all its terrible infrastructure within the population, in the schools, in the hospitals… Are we doing our best to make sure that population civilians will be out of harm? Yes, we are. We give them messaging before we strike… Now, think about it. Do you think the UK would have continued living next to a terror organisation that is a threat to your children in Kent? Or in London or in Liverpool? I don’t think so.”

I point out that it isn’t just non-Israelis who are turning against the war. Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister of Israel, and formerly member of Likud, is now at odds with Netanyhu, writing that the conflict is one of “devastation, indiscriminate, limitless, cruel, and criminal killing of civilians.” He has concluded that his country “is committing war crimes”. What does Hotovely say to him?

“It is a lie. Yes, it is. It is a pure lie.” The Israeli Defence Forces “work with all the mechanisms of our international law experts” and the country is “fighting with one hand tied behind our back” because it always defers to lawyers. “Olmert is completely doing a political statement to hurt the government… It’s coming from very political reasons, not to do with what’s happening on the ground.”

So why are the families of hostages – and even a former hostage – protesting against Netanyahu? At a demonstration this week, Keith Siegel, who was once held prisoner by Hamas, declared: “Our families have become the victims of cheap politics at the hands of the prime minister. Instead of ending the war and bringing everyone home, his allies prefer to occupy the Gaza Strip than to save the hostages.”

Hotovely says: “I have sympathy to every hostage family for being so worried about their loved ones, I cannot put myself in their shoes. At the same time, I must say, they need to remember Israel said yes to any framework offered by the Americans” for a ceasefire: “This is the leverage on Hamas, the military pressure together with the American diplomatic pressure, and if Hamas is saying ‘no’ and saying ‘no’ again and again” to hostage release “what else can we do? We can just carry on with the pressure.”

Following our interview, it was reported on Friday that Hamas appears to have rejected a ceasefire deal orchestrated by the Americans and accepted by the Israelis.

Recognition of Palestinian state ‘a reward for terrorism’

Lammy’s condemnation of the embargo was, says Hotovely, “the wrong timing” because it was issued “the same day the [Netanyahu’s] cabinet made the decision to let aid in”; plus the “wrong message because, I’m sure you heard the head of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, saying: ‘when Hamas is praising you’” – as Hamas praised the UK – “‘then you need to check whether your politics is the right policy’.”

“We are expecting the international community, including the UK Government, to be very vocal about the fact that Hamas is holding our hostages and it must release them.”

Britain and Israel are “fighting mutual threats. I know how much the UK is concerned about Iran’s influence in the region, and you need to remember that this war Israel has been fighting is a proxy war with Iran […] We’ve seen how most of the weapons being found are produced in Iran, how Iran was training the terrorists.”

As for a French-Saudi initiative, scheduled for mid-June, to discuss the recognition of Palestine as an independent state: “This is probably the worst timing ever to go this path […] this is a pure word for terrorism and sends the wrong message to the region […] What did October 7th prove? First of all, unfortunately what we’ve seen is big support among Palestinians towards the massacre.”

One poll, she claims, found 86 per cent of West Bank residents sympathised with the pogrom. Gaza previously voted for Hamas, “so recognition basically means Hamas” and would be a “reward for terrorism”.

I ask if this means the concept of a two-state solution is off the table and she replies in the affirmative. “It was rejected by the Palestinians again and again. Israelis had hope [in it] in the 1990s and were willing to compromise, but […] every time there was some type of negotiation, there was more terrorism […] So Israelis are no longer willing to jeopardise their security any longer.”

This is a critical point – one that many Britons don’t grasp. Governments like Labour talk about the two-state solution as if it were genuinely on the table, but the two sides gave up on it years ago. In that case, what does the Israeli government see as the future of the Palestinian community?

They must be re-educated. “It’s a good lesson to learn from the Second World War,” when Germany and Japan were beaten: fascism “didn’t end in one day, there was a whole process of denazification, a whole process of rebuilding the institutions to a democratic country. The Palestinians, when they were offered to have democratic elections” – in January 2006 – “they ended up with having an even worse dictatorship that doesn’t believe in any human rights.”

She implies that if fresh elections were held again in Gaza, we’d see Hamas victorious again, so she says “we need to build the path not just for peace as a formal peace but a real peace, people to people, like the one we have with the Gulf countries via the Abrahamic Accords”, as negotiated by Donald Trump.

‘We never deny the rights of us to live next to our neighbours – they deny our rights’

Surely there must be some give and take between communities, I suggest? In that case, the Israelis must cease building settlements in the West Bank – 22 of which have just been recognised by Netanyahu.

“There is a myth about settlements I never understood,” says Hotovely, “because when Israel [dismantled its] settlements in Gaza” – when it physically withdrew the strip in 2005 – “we didn’t see anything that has improved in the Palestinian attitude.”

When Palestinians are asked “what is the main problem,” she tells me, they never say the settlements but instead demand “the right of return,” which means “bringing people from all around the Arab world to move into small Israel.” I suggest that, on the contrary, they are protesting against Israelis settling on land that even Israel officially recognises as Palestinian – and Hotovely disagrees.

“Definitely not. I think that it’s clear for Israelis when we’re speaking about Judea and Samaria [better known as the West Bank], and we’re speaking about Jerusalem, we’re speaking about the Golan Heights, we’re speaking about the Jewish historic land.”

In conservative Israeli rhetoric, the term “Judea and Samaria” implies that the West Bank is Israeli as bequeathed by the Bible. “We’re talking about some places that Jewish people have been connected to for thousands of years,” says Hotovely. Yes, I reply, and Palestinians have been connected to them for a very long time, too. “We’re not denying that. That’s what’s nice about our attitude,” she says, “we never deny the rights of us to live next to our neighbours – they deny our rights.”

We turn to the subject of anti-Semitism – on May 21, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, staffers at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, were shot and murdered outside a Jewish museum. The killer cried “free Palestine.” Can Hotovely see a line between anti-Israeli protest and a rising level of threat against Jews across the world?

Israel has been targeted by an unprecedented barrage of hypocritical claims and denunciations.

Synonyms for hyperbolic include “distorted, excessive, extravagant, fabricated, false, farfetched, inflated, magnified, melodramatic, overblown, preposterous, pretentious and unrealistic.”

Take your pick because any one of these definitions more than adequately describes the outpouring of vicious venom streaming forth from a myriad of individuals and groups this past week.

First off, the starting block was the gang of twenty-three.

Led by Starmer of the UK, Carney of Canada and Macron of France, these so-called defenders of human rights were shamefully joined by Australia and New Zealand as well as eighteen other countries.

I watched a live televised debate from the UK House of Commons. Noticeably absent were the UK Prime Minister and the Conservative Leader of the Opposition. Leading the “bash Israel” charge was the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy. Frothing in apparent righteous wrath and abandoning any semblance of restraint, this senior member of the Government unleashed a stream of accusations.

The most potent libel hurled against Israel was an unsubstantiated claim made by a UN official that within forty-eight hours, 14,000 babies in Gaza would die unless aid was immediately forthcoming.

Like sheep, most of the assembled parliamentarians bleated “shame, shame, shame” as Lammy enumerated each and every dastardly deed being allegedly perpetrated by the perfidious Israelis. Following his virtuoso performance, it was the turn of MPs to ask him questions. These followed a predictable pattern, with each one more extreme anti-Israel than the other. Lammy bobbed up and down, answering them with a sense of increased viciousness.

No doubt, the UK Labour Government feels it must show Macron and company that when it comes to selective lessons of morality, the British are in the lead. Well and truly buried, of course, is the fact that the UK and France have nothing to be proud of when it comes to past and current colonial policies.

It came as no surprise when, a day or so later, both the UN and the BBC admitted that the original blood libel of the imminent death of Gaza babies was incorrect. Of course, by then, the damage had been done as the fake news had gone viral internationally. The denials sank without a trace, and no doubt millions of the public remain convinced that Israel is complicit in a “genocidal” campaign.

This is how the big lies germinate after being planted in the addled minds of ill-informed masses. It is an old technique made more virulent by the power of today’s social media and other purveyors of evil intent.

Did any of the members of parliament who shouted “shame” and condemned Israel for unspeakable atrocities apologise and withdraw their claim? Not a single one of them did so. Lammy clammed up, and his boss doubled down by pillorying Israel again.

The French do not need any lessons when it comes to hypocritical hype against Israel, which is why they are the leaders of the pack in efforts to recognise a fake Palestine.

Not to be left behind in this chorus of hypocrisy, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Australia unleashed an unexpected tirade against Israel.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister who has not bothered to visit Israel and see facts on the ground pontificated that “Israel has gone “far too far in its response to Hamas terrorism.”  Presumably he would have told Churchill the same nonsense as the allies pounded the hell out of Nazi Germany.

The end result of all these barrages of negative accusations and ill-informed advice is the implanting of hate against not only the Jewish State but also Jews in general.

The best proof that this gang of 23 Israel bashers has struck the jackpot was provided when Hamas spokespeople congratulated them for their support and cheered their collective condemnations of Israel. One would have imagined that this blatant endorsement by a proscribed terror group might have jolted their missing conscience. Not a chance of this happening, unfortunately, because they have already succumbed to a mass moral collapse.

Just as the mobs in pre-war Germany and Europe were incited to violence and delegitimised Jews, so are today’s same mindless masses poisoned to act accordingly. Chants of “globalize the intifada” and “free Palestine from the river to the sea” are the latest clarion calls to eliminate Israel, Jews and Zionists. Some, whose heads are still in the sand, might believe that these chants are harmless, but last week’s murder of two Israeli diplomatic staff in Washington proves otherwise. Attacks on Jewish communal buildings and individual Jews are now a common occurrence.

Following the murder of the couple in Washington, the outpouring of sanctimonious and hypocritical rhetoric from politicians who just a short while ago eviscerated Israel was sickening. These same people who have no hesitation in making Israel guilty of every imaginable crime against humanity refuse to see that it is their naked animosity that fuels the resultant mayhem.

The stable door is wide open and the horses have bolted.

Expressions of horror at the murder of Israeli diplomatic staff ring hollow coming from the same lips that blame Israel on a daily basis.

I watched a demonstration of solidarity with Israel which took place in front of the Israeli Embassy in London immediately after the Washington murders. The Jewish commentator remarked on the absence of any Member of Parliament and representatives of the BBC, SKY UK and other media outlets. Their obvious lack of interest in reporting a gathering of Jews and non Jews in support of Israel underscores the rampant hypocrisy now an embedded feature of daily life not only in the UK but elsewhere as well.

It has been reported that Hamas and their willing accomplices are now using artificial intelligence to generate fake photos and news.

Recycled photos of alleged victims of Israeli actions are circulated to demonstrate ongoing crimes. Hamas deliberately puts civilians in the midst of terror sites in the hope that collateral damage will enable them to tar Israel with inevitable criminality.

This is the same technique used in previous generations, whereby pictures of Jews poisoning wells and killing Christian babies to make unleavened bread for Passover circulated throughout Europe and precipitated pogroms. Today’s techniques may be more sophisticated but they have the identical desired results.

Daily depictions of doctored horror photos combined with tendentious reports of Israeli “atrocities” issued by the terror groups themselves are now a feature of what passes for informed news.

It is no wonder, therefore, that even hitherto sympathetic supporters of Israel find themselves wavering and doubting. The field is wide open for confusion and conflicted feelings, given the absence of a consistent and coherent Israeli counter-response to this intentional disinformation.

Certain clear facts need to be forcefully articulated.

The plight of the kidnapped hostages has been erased from the memory of those currently condemning Israel.

The refusal of Hamas and associated willing partners to free each and every hostage, alive and dead, is the sole reason for the ongoing war.

The terrorist groups know that all they have to do is parade more “atrocity” stories and the pressure from the international community against Israel will increase.

Embittered Israeli politicians who love nothing better than to besmirch and accuse are embraced by the leftist media and fuel increased enmity against Israel and Jews. They provide fuel to the anti Zionists and self-loathers whose righteous indignations are confined solely and exclusively to the “crimes” of the Jewish State.

Hamas feels it is on to a winning formula having sensed the morally bankrupt hypocrisy of the democracies and knowing that the likes of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are supportive.

Hamas has as its central objective the complete destruction of Israel and the elimination of a Jewish sovereign presence. Fatah and the PA profess to be “moderate” but in actual fact they give a wink and a nod to this plan of action.

Creating a country called Palestine will not usher in an era of peace. It is merely a recipe for increased terror and incitement against Jews.

All those participating in demonstrations at universities and on the streets of cities who scream “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” are endorsing the genocide of Jews.

Nowhere in the annals of armed conflict against an enemy dedicated to one’s destruction has it been mandated for the intended victims to feed, sustain or succour the enemy. That is why the current fetish compelling Israel to do so is the height of hypocrisy.

Aid which continues to flow into Gaza is hijacked. Widespread famine narratives are promoted to whip up hate frenzy which in turn is fanned by vested groups.

As one of the released hostages told the French Government recently, “it is either them or us.”

Beating about the bush and refraining from articulating the raw truth may be diplomatically correct, but it is a losing strategy when battling rampant ignorance and prejudice.