Even Laura Kuenssberg can’t stomach vile Israeli crybully

On 13 June, Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran to distract from its ongoing genocide in Gaza. Claiming that it launched the assault because Iran was developing weapons of mass destruction (which Israel already has many of itself), the apartheid state’s justification mirrored that which the US and UK used to pardon their illegal invasion of Iraq. The difference between now and 2003 is that no one is buying it anymore, and this means that even the usually compliant BBC has to question the narrative:

Tzipi Hotovely justifies the genocidal Israeli regime launching an unprovoked attack on Iran because she claims there was an imminent threat of Iran getting nuclear weapons.#bbclaurak points out the head of US national intelligence says Iran was not building a nuclear weapon pic.twitter.com/OBdXXL5Fn9

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) June 15, 2025

A history of dehumanisation

Tzipi Hotovely is Israel’s ambassador to the UK. As The Canary reported in December 2023:

The Labour Muslim Network has written to leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer outlining an expectation “that no further engagements be made or platforms shared by Labour Party representatives with the current Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely”. …

Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom Hotovely made clear in a Sky News interview last week that Israel will never accept a Palestinian state. When pressed on the question of an independent Palestinian state in the future, Hotovely answered without equivocation “the answer is absolutely no.” A two-state solution has been the policy of the Labour Party, the UK, and has had international consensus, for decades.

Moreover, Hotovely is considered to be far-right politically by many people. She has repeatedly denied Israel is causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Hotovely also repeated the lie that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies on 7 October.

When Israel made Hotovely the ambassador in 2020, the Guardian described “outrage as hardliner is chosen as next Israeli ambassador to UK”, writing:

The appointment of a hardline supporter of the annexation of Palestinian land as the next Israeli ambassador to the UK has dismayed sections of the British Jewish community, with some calling on the UK government to refuse to accept the nomination.

Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s settlements minister, has been named by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the successor to Mark Regev, who stepped down as ambassador to the UK last week.

She has described herself as “a religious rightwinger” and rejects Palestinian claims to any part of the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. In a speech in 2015, she said Israel had tried too hard to appease the world. “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

The Canary also covered Hotovely attending the Labour conference in 2024, with Hannah Sharland writing:

If the new Labour government signalled one thing indisputably at its party conference this year, is that it’s an unrepentant apologist for genocidal war criminals. This was particularly apparent at a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) official fringe event. There, cabinet members – half themselves funded by the pro-Israel lobby group – welcomed Israel’s hard right genocide-mongering ambassador with open arms. Obviously, this was in sharp contrast to its violent repressive reception towards activists protesting for Palestine at conference.

Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely’s disgusting genocidal rap-sheet has been hard to miss. But it didn’t stop Labour’s top-dogs hobnobbing will Hotovely anyway

“Every school, every mosque, every second house” in Gaza is a legitimate target for Israel, Hotovely told LBC.

She told Sky News that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza” as Israel imposed an unlawful blockade.

Why is this war criminal at the Labour conference? https://t.co/JgoZC2WK2K

— Hamza Yusuf (@Hamza_a96) September 25, 2024

In 2022

Tzipi Hotovely said this.

She’s also on record as saying that Jews should be educated to not marry non Jews.

Furthermore, in 2012 she called for annexation of the entire Palestine territory. https://t.co/UK4Y85RmhO

— ℹ️ Not The Torygraph 💚 #SaveOurNHS #ScrapNHSBill (@TweetForTheMany) September 26, 2024

‘There was no imminent threat’

Speaking to the BBC‘s Laura Kuenssberg, Hotovely explained Israel’s convoluted reasoning for why its unprovoked assault was actually “an act of self-defence”, explaining:

Now, we are in a point where president Trump gave sixty days of negotiation to the Iranians to give a diplomatic solution, and the Iranians didn’t really [want] to have any diplomatic solution. They were actually – when the IAEA published this report that was clearly showing that Iran was misleading the international community, enriching uranium – and we saw with our intelligence abilities, that they were racing fast to get nuclear bombs with the combination of enrichment and weaponization. When all this happened, we had to move fast to operate against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

We criticise Kuenssberg most weeks, but in this instance she did clearly point out the following:

But let me tell people… what the director of intelligence of the United States said very clearly – recently – [was] ‘we continue to assess that Iran is not yet building a nuclear weapon’.

Israel has faced ongoing threats from Iran for many years. There was no imminent threat.

While Kuenssberg is simply stating the obvious, those of you who are old enough to have lived through the invasion of Iraq (or are aware of the BBC‘s clear pro-Israel bias) know that we can’t always trust our media to do the absolute bare minimum.

The ‘crybully’ technique

The term ‘crybully’ is defined as follows:

A person who intimidates, harasses, or abuses others yet, esp. following resistance or disagreement, claims to be a victim of ill-treatment

The Israeli government is the greatest crybully on the planet, and its representatives like Hotovely are masters of the technique. This is how the crybully tactic manifested in the interview, with Hotovely saying:

Actually, what we are seeing is targeting communities in the centre of Israel. My parents live in the city that was hurt yesterday. Now, I was talking to my father and to my mother – 3 o’clock in the morning Israel time – and their whole house was shaking. And – and they had to go to to their shelter. They’re in their seventies.

Once again, Kuenssberg didn’t let her get away with it, cutting Hotovely off to say:

That is retaliation to strikes by Israel. That is retaliation from Iran.

Hotovely has been the ambassador to the UK since 2020, which is more than long enough for her to have heard the phrase ‘chat shit, get banged’, and in this instance Israel did far more than just chat.

Dragging us all into hell

What Israel has done to the Palestinians – with Western support and participation – is one of the greatest atrocities of this or any other century. Now, in what seems to be an attempt to draw its supposed allies into a much larger war, Israel is purposefully starting a conflict with Iran.

We all need to be very clear about this.

We will not support any involvement in this war, and we should immediately stop providing Israel with the weapons and other assistance it’s using to commit these atrocities.

As grim as things seem, though, we are at least optimistic that the tide is turning. After all, when even Laura Kuenssberg can’t help but challenge the bullshit, it’s obvious that no one can.

Featured image via BBC