JNS.org – Earlier this month, the United Kingdom announced that it is imposing an “immediate” weapons embargo against Israel. The announcement came on the same day that American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, all of 23 and one of the six hostages recently executed by Hamas, was buried in the Jewish state.

The British government thought it appropriate to punish Israel on a day the entire Jewish nation around the world was mourning six of its murdered innocent civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the move as “shameful.”

According to the Gatestone Institute’s Robert Williams, the U.K. suspended around 30 licenses for items used in the current conflict in Gaza, which go to the IDF, allegedly due to Hamas-induced fear that they “might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

At the same time, Williams noted, the United Kingdom willingly continues to support Hamas.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government announced in July that it was going to “restart funding to UNRWA in order to get aid as quickly as possible to those who need it in Gaza” as a “moral necessity in the face of such a catastrophe.”

Starmer’s blind insistence on continuing to fund UNRWA comes even after Israel has provided evidence that the so-called aid agency is enmeshed with Hamas, with roughly 10% of its members proven to be terrorists or to have ties to terror groups. UNRWA schools and hospitals were knowingly used to facilitate terror and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

Williams said Starmer seems “unperturbed” that all funding goes straight to Hamas and not to the needy civilians of Gaza, who are shot if they try to approach the trucks carrying aid supplies.

Williams mocked Starmer and his government for “taking away the annual winter fuel allowance for British pensioners” and instead sending £21 million ($28 million) to Hamas.

The Daily Telegraph defense editor Con Coughlin noted that the embargo is only the latest in a string of anti-Israel moves by the United Kingdom.

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s “first act was to withdraw the British government’s official objection to attempts to persuade the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges,” Coughlin wrote.

Then came the decision to restore U.K. funding to UNRWA. Its suspension of arms contracts with Israel followed soon after.

The embargo includes, according to Lammy, “important components which go into military aircraft, including fighter aircraft, helicopters and drones, as well as items which facilitate ground targeting.”

Williams noted that in his announcement of the embargo against Israel to the House of Commons, Lammy claimed that “this government’s priority … [is] to advance the cause of peace … .”

Then Lammy admitted that although the British government cannot verify whether or not Israel is, in fact, committing any war crimes, it is still going to enforce the embargo.

“In many cases, it has not been possible to reach a determinative conclusion on allegations regarding Israel’s conduct of hostilities, in part, because there is insufficient information either from Israel, or other reliable sources to verify such claims,” Lammy said. “Nevertheless, it is the assessment of His Majesty’s Government that Israel could reasonably do much more to ensure lifesaving food and medical supplies reach civilians in Gaza in light of the appalling humanitarian situation.”

‘Pure racist perfidy’

Williams also recalled that in March, the former U.K. government, led by Rishi Sunak, reportedly conditioned continued arms supplies to Israel on its allowing the Red Cross or international diplomats to visit the detained terrorists of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force. The foreign secretary at the time, David Cameron, had even warned Israeli officials that Europe as a whole would impose a weapons embargo on Israel.

According to Williams, the U.K.’s arms embargo “appears to represent nothing so much as pure racist perfidy.”

Lammy “completely ignores the extreme lengths to which Israel has gone to avoid civilian casualties, as well as the huge amounts of humanitarian aid it has facilitated into the Gaza Strip,” he added.

Williams quoted the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, John Spencer, who wrote, “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Richard Kemp, a former British Army officer and commander, has echoed these sentiments supporting Israel and the IDF.

According to Coughlin, Lammy’s “blatant anti-Israel agenda will place the U.K.’s long-standing strategic alliance with Israel under intense strain.”

Unfortunately for Israel, Britain is not alone. Sadly, Germany and Canada have also felt it is appropriate to sanction Israel by imposing an arms embargo exactly at a time when Israel is trying to fight Islamic extremism that is already rising in those countries.

Germany, under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, has delayed nearly all of Israel’s requests for arms sales since the start of the war. Sales to Israel in 2023 amounted to more than 300 million euros and, in 2024, they allegedly dropped to just 14 million.

But when juxtaposing these policies against Israel alongside other countries, the hypocrisy becomes clear.

Astonishingly, Germany has massively armed Qatar, which, alongside Iran, is the most significant backer of Hamas, and one of the main sources of evil in the world today.

“In the first half of 2024, the federal government approved arms sales worth just over 100 million euros to the rulers in Doha, who are probably the most important supporters of the terrorist organization Hamas,” Bild journalist Björn Stritzel noted.

Likewise, Canada has also decided to punish Israel over baseless and false accusations of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

For the past several months, Ottawa has not approved new arms export permits to Israel, halting about 30 such permits, including a deal between the Canadian subsidiary of American company General Dynamics and the U.S. government, according to a recent announcement by Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly.

“First and foremost, our policy has been clear since Jan. 8, we and I have not accepted any form of arms export permits to be sent to Israel,” she said.

She also said that she asked her department “to look into any existing permits of arms or parts of arms that could have been sent to Israel.”

Alan Baker, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada and current director of the Institute for Diplomatic Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JNS that Canada’s decision is “absurd.”

“I wouldn’t call the policy in and of itself antisemitic, but it is certainly misguided,” he said. “It is based on ignorance or naivete, and not on an understanding of the situation.”

Baker called out Joly, “who seems to be completely persuaded that Israel is involved in a genocide. She doesn’t want to understand the facts and get down to the true situation.”

Baker pointed to hostile anti-Israel organizations based in Quebec that “seem to be influencing her whole policy.”

“What’s sad about this is that she seems to be pulling the Canadian prime minister by the nose when he should be sufficiently responsible to rein her in,” Baker said.

“You expect someone who has been prime minister for so long to be somewhat more circumspect and to consult and take into consideration those who perhaps have a less politically driven point of view and a more facts-based point of view,” he added.

Baker noted that the previous Canadian premier, Stephen Harper, gave a speech before Israel’s Knesset toward the end of his term and said that Canada will always have Israel’s back. He said it is inconceivable that Canada could ever act against Israel’s interests.

“But here we are,” said Baker. “Canada is being held hostage by an irresponsible foreign minister who seems to have great influence on the prime minister, based on political assumptions that are fed by propaganda that has no relation to the truth.

“Rather than trying to ascertain the facts and being in contact with those elements, whether in the United States or Israel, that are conversant with the statistics and the truth and genuine data, she and Trudeau prefer to base themselves on the accusation of genocide. And they come to the wrong conclusions.”

Canadian aid organizations have called for a complete embargo on military exports to Israel, warning that it is impossible for them to provide basic support to Palestinians while Israel operates in Gaza.

Clueless of facts on the ground

Canadian news outlet The Maple interviewed Dalia Al-Awqati, head of humanitarian affairs at Save the Children Canada (SCC).

“We don’t believe that the government of Canada should continue to provide weapons that are likely being used in violation of international humanitarian law against civilians and particularly against children,” Al-Awqati said.

Among other willful deceptions, lies and false accusations against Israel, Al-Awqati also claimed that SCC “has been present in Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1953.”

Unfortunately for Al-Awqati and her effort to smear Israel, from 1949 to 1967, Jordan controlled the so-called West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not maintain a presence in those areas until the 1967 Six-Day War.

The sole occupier at the time was Jordan, which illegally annexed the West Bank in 1950. Only the United Kingdom and Pakistan, and possibly Iraq, recognized the move.

This is just one small but important example of how blatantly anti-Israel—or completely clueless of facts on the ground—that so-called aid organizations like SCC truly are.

In March, the Trudeau government said it would pause authorizations of new permits for exports of military goods to Israel. However, this measure did not apply to approximately $95 million worth of export permits approved before Jan. 8 or any goods that flow to Israel via the United States and other third countries.

According to documents published by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (FAAE) in July, there were 210 active military export permits for sales of goods to Israeli end users, including Israeli arms companies. Some of those permits had expiry dates as late as the end of 2025.

Then, in August, the U.S. government announced that a Quebec-based company would be the principal contractor in a “possible” $61 million U.S. sale of high-explosive mortar cartridges and related equipment to Israel.

Following that announcement, civil society organizations, including SCC, wrote a letter to Joly warning that Canada risks being complicit in the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza through its ongoing transfer of military goods bound for Israel.

The signatories also claimed that Canada’s military exports to Israel could violate Canada’s obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits the government from permitting military exports if the goods are likely to be used to commit serious violations of international law.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Israel is fighting a just war against radical Islam and has gone to great lengths to save the Palestinian civilians Hamas wants dead.

The embargoes wrongfully placed on Israel by the U.K., Germany and Canada accomplish one thing only: They feed into Hamas propaganda and help isolate Israel while emboldening and encouraging Iran.

As Williams states, “Arming Israel’s enemies, whether through UNRWA or Qatar, while limiting Israel’s ability to defend itself, is setting up a disaster that is likely to end up in Europe, on the heads of Starmer, Trudeau and Scholz.”

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