Opinion
Take Pride! UK and Israel have never been closer
An exciting new trade deal will strenghten bonds between friends with the same values
June 17, 2022 11:21
3 min read
An exciting new trade deal will strenghten bonds between friends with the same values
June 17, 2022 11:21Where else in the Middle East would you rather live or bring up a family?” That’s the question we should put to the anti-Israel obsessives. That’s the challenge politicians, students and protesters who hate Israel and hold it to standards never applied to any other country should face.
More than 400 million people live in two dozen countries across the region but none of them enjoy the freedoms every citizen of Israel — whatever their background, ethnicity or religion — take for granted.
And nothing could make this clearer than the party I went to in Tel Aviv last Friday.
I spent a week in Israel promoting trade and business links with the UK and had the huge privilege of joining our brilliant ambassador Neil Wigan and his fantastic team on the UK embassy’s float in the Tel Aviv Pride parade.
It is, by the way, a measure of the relationships the embassy has forged under his leadership that the UK is the only country allowed to have a float in the parade. Embassy staff throw out flags and T-shirts as they show the UK’s support for equality and diversity. It was an incredible sight. Some 170,000 young Israelis and tourists from all over the world, marching, dancing and singing in an extraordinary celebration of freedom and equality. Where else in the Middle East could that happen?
Pride parades have been organised in Beirut and Istanbul but on nothing like the scale of those in Israel — and certainly not with official support. In 2018, the organiser of the parade in Beirut was arrested and forced to cancel events or be prosecuted. Pride marches in Istanbul have been banned by the authorities on several occasions. Organisers have been arrested and face years in prison. Police have attacked participants.
Same-sex relationships are illegal in many of the region’s other countries — and in Gaza, where gay people face up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Groups campaigning for gay rights have been banned in the West Bank. Hundreds of gay Palestinians have fled to Israel.
Earlier in the week, I visited EV Motors in Netanya, which is importing electric taxis made by LEVC in Coventry. Such is the vehicle’s popularity with Israel taxi drivers that the company can’t import enough: every cab is sold even before it rolls off the ship at Haifa.
The company is working with GenCell in Petah Tikvah. Trade Director Matthew Salter and I toured their offices and factory, which is developing revolutionary new ways of producing electricity from hydrogen and ammonia. The technology, which is genuinely unique, could generate electricity in an entirely carbon-neutral way. Fingers crossed, we’ll help bring it to the UK to create good new well-paid jobs and cut carbon emissions. Up in Haifa, we visited Electriq Global, which is generating electricity from hydrogen, and in Jaffa I saw Eco-Wave’s new technology, which is generating electricity from waves. All of these technologies could help the UK go green.
At Start-up Nation central, I learnt how Israel now has more tech start-ups per capita than any other country. And when the picture of Israel presented on so many campuses is often hostile and sometimes violent, it was fantastic to meet Israeli academics who have won British Council awards to develop new technologies and lifesaving treatments to tackle long-term diseases such as cancer or dementia.
This is the true picture of the relationship between the UK and Israel. Cooperation in trade, investment, technology and innovation is stronger than ever. Hundreds of businesses and thousands of jobs depend on the relationship between our two countries.
We already export clothes and cars, power generators and aircraft engines, medical equipment, scientific instruments and pharmaceutical products. Now we’re going to build on this with a new trade deal. It will create good, new, well-paid jobs in both countries by opening up trade in sectors like financial services, infrastructure, technology, life sciences, AI and cyber security. It will also remove or lower tariffs for major UK exports such as food and drink.
Of course, Israel isn’t perfect. Which country is? But instead of a perpetual debate about the conflict, let’s start trumpeting the good news and huge benefits to Britain that flow from our relationship with the Middle East’s only democracy. And next time someone tells you how terrible Israel is, ask them what other country in the region has a stronger relationship with the UK – or in which country they would rather live.
Lord Ian Austin is UK Trade Envoy to Israel
