The Jerusalem Post has a very optimistic article about Great Britain’s new incoming Prime Minister, Theresa May. Here’s for hoping that they are right about her, although if their optimism is only based on a speech she gave two years ago when visiting, I’m more a pessimist. As regular readers of this blog know very well, I do not take such speeches very seriously. They are no more true than film scripts.
Theresa May, a ‘long-standing friend of Israel’
The parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel issued a statement saying that “Israel can rest assured that a UK led by Theresa May will be there in its moments of need.”
…May, according to former ambassador to London Daniel Taub, “has been a long-standing friend of Israel and the Jewish community.” He said that as home secretary, May was very supportive of “our efforts to deepen British- Israel ties in the area of homeland security, and also very receptive to the concerns of the Jewish community regarding anti-Semitism and violent extremism.” Her ministry was responsible for Britain’s MI5 intelligence service, and as such was both aware and appreciative of the close intelligence and security cooperation between the two countries.
…May’s only visit to Israel was in the summer 2014, when the bodies of the three kidnapped youth from Gush Etzion were discovered. In a speech in September of that year to the Conservative Friends of Israel, she discussed that trip, and that speech provides a glimpse of her outlook on Israel.
“The murder of those boys – and the loss of life among Israelis and Palestinians in the subsequent military operations in Gaza – is a sad reminder that the Arab/Israeli conflict is not just an abstract debate argued over the pages of Western newspapers and television screens,” she said.