The son of Israel’s prime minister has been robustly criticised for suggesting that sovereignty of the Falkland Islands be handed to Argentina.
In a post on social media last week, Yair Netanyahu referred to the islands as “Las Malvinas” – the Spanish term for the British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic.
Netanyahu’s comments were labelled “cretinous” by the pro-Israel former trade minister, Sir Conor Burns.
The former Conservative MP for Bournemouth West wrote on X: “It has been a lonely time to be a friend of Israel of late. This stupid tweet by the PM’s son will make it even harder.”
Burns also asked Conservative Friends of Israel Chairman Greg Smith MP to make clear “how cretinous this intervention is and how damaging to Israel’s cause on the right”.
Smith agreed with his erstwhile parliamentary colleague, saying: “The Falkland Islands are British, absolutely no question. Anyone suggesting otherwise is just plain wrong.”
The remarks by the pro-Israel Conservatives led Eylon Levy, a former Israeli government spokesperson, to reflect concern about how the comments were received by the British right-wing.
“Are you aware that the entire British right has been talking about Yair Netanyahu in the past 24 hours, and not in a good way?”, he asked on X.
Netanyahu subsequently suggested he was attempting to make a point about British policy towards Israel, rather than alienate friends in the UK.
“You got offended by my comment about the Falkland Islands – a bunch of rocks 8,000 miles from your shores? Good,” the Israeli prime minister’s son wrote on X.
“Now imagine how we Israelis feel about your government’s recognition of ‘Palestine’ over our ancestral heartland of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], its denial of our sovereignty over our capital, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, and its constant meddling in our internal affairs and bashing of our country.”
He continued: “These lands are in the heart of our country, which is already roughly the size of Wales – not lands 8,000 miles from our shores.
“Your government criticises our country’s response to October 7 in Gaza, while it is clear that if your country had been invaded by a terrorist group that killed, raped, tortured, and kidnapped thousands of Brits, while firing thousands of rockets at your cities – as we experienced on October 7 – your response would have been much harsher.
“Britain flattened Germany during World War II, killing millions of German civilians. The casualties caused by British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq were also much higher than those in Gaza, despite the fact that neither of those countries had attacked Britain or posed a direct threat to Britain.”
However, Andrew Fox, a former British Army major in the Parachute Regiment and associate fellow at the centre-right think tank the Henry Jackson Society, responded bluntly, referencing the fact that Netanyahu had resided in Miami during Israel’s war with Hamas following October 7.
“Oh look! The war-dodging… coward has an ancillary opinion,” he wrote.
“How fascinating. I too have an opinion. It’s about people who stay and party in Miami while their country is in an existential war (until they get threatened and come running home, of course).”
During the 1982 Falklands War, triggered by Argentina’s invasion and occupation of the islands, which saw a British task force recapture the Islands, 649 Argentine and 258 British servicemen were killed.
Since their discovery by Captain John Davis of the English ship Desire in 1592, ownership of the Falkland Islands had transferred between Spain, France, Britain and the United Provinces.
Argentina claims that its sovereignty over the islands was usurped by Britain in 1833, when British rule was re-established.
In a referendum in 2013, 99.8 per cent of the Island’s residents voted to remain as a British Overseas Territory.
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