Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s most feted post-war prime minister, was fiercely pro-Jewish and a powerful enemy of antisemitism.
But she was never afraid to call out Israeli war crimes, and did so repeatedly.
When the Israeli army stood by in September 1982 as Christian Phalangists slaughtered Palestinian refugees and Lebanese citizens in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps, she described the massacres as “an act of pure barbarism”.
And, as historian David Cronin has exposed in an illuminating article for Declassified, she wrote to then US President Ronald Reagan of “an urgent need for a balanced policy”, adding that “unlimited support for Israel can only lead to growing polarisation and despair in the Arab world”.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who flew into Tel Aviv to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 19 October, loves to present himself as the heir to Margaret Thatcher.
This is nonsense.