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The British soldier who won't stop defending Israel

Colonel Richard Kemp explains how he came to be one of the UK’s most strident advocates of the IDF

January 20, 2020 11:25
Col Richard Kemp
5 min read

On Richard Kemp’s Twitter biography are the words “Keep attacking” — a mantra which could sum up this military man’s life.

He is an anomaly in British society, a soldier down to his bootstraps, who uses every public platform he can to speak well of the Israel Defence Forces, which he describes as one of the most moral armies in the world. And he has received plenty of hatred for his stance. 
But he refuses to change his position, arguing that he was “taught right from wrong” when he was growing up, and believes that fundamentally, the Israeli army and the British army are on the same side, fighting the same enemies of terrorism and extremism.

Colonel Kemp — his rank when he left the army in 2006 — was born in Essex and went to school in the garrison town of Colchester. 
His father, he says, was in the army towards the end of the Second World War, but was not a professional soldier. But Richard Kemp, the second eldest of four siblings, always wanted to join the services. “I was always going to do this. So I left school one day and entered the army the next.”

And what drove him towards the army? “I wanted to fight,” he says, simply. “I was patriotic, I wanted to serve my country. It wasn’t a bloodthirsty desire to kill people. But I was physically tough, and I wanted to engage.”