A former British army colonel, Richard Kemp, contends that Israel’s war with Hamas is not merely a regional struggle, but a broader fight for the security of the West as Hamas’s genocidal ideology spreads across the world. 

Colonel Kemp emphasizes the centrality of Israeli intelligence to American and British national security interests. This cooperation is being put on the line today, he said in a conversation on Thursday with the Sun’s publisher, Dovid Efune, as the international community questions the legitimacy of Israel’s right to self-determination in the face of Hamas’s war against the Jewish state.

“Israel’s on the front line of the fight,” Colonel Kemp tells the Sun, “but the fight affects us all. The ideology of Hamas is also infecting the UK, it’s infecting the US, it’s infecting the whole of Europe.” He quotes the former Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, who once said that “if Israel goes down, we all go down.”

Colonel Kemp, during his 30-year career in the British Army, worked with Prime Ministers Blair and Brown fighting terrorism and insurgency. He commanded British forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Northern Ireland, the Balkans and elsewhere, and his name was found on an Al Qaeda “kill list” in 2013. 

Israeli battlefield medical technology is a crucial example of this cooperation. Colonel Kemp recalls visiting an 18-year-old English soldier who was seriously injured in Afghanistan and was administered an Israeli blood clotting agent. “He owed his life to that.”

“I saw first-hand,” Colonel Kemp says, “how much we benefited from Israeli intelligence, how many British lives were saved, whether it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Britain itself, and other countries, by intelligence passed by the Israelis.”

Colonel Kemp flew to Israel a couple days after October 7 and has spent the last few months visiting IDF soldiers in and outside of Gaza. He seeks “to play a small part in countering the lies and the propaganda and the malice against Israel,” given“the spotlight of the world that’s on every single thing every IDF soldier does.” 

At the International Court of Justice, South African prosecutors have scrutinized the Jewish state over allegations that its siege and bombings of Gaza constitutes genocide, a claim which Colonel Kemp calls “an obscenity” and “a gross inversion of reality.”

“They are deliberately exploiting the Jewish history of being subject to genocide,” Colonel Kemp says, “and making the Israelis, the Jews, even more evil because they have been victims of genocide themselves and now they’re perpetrating a genocide.” In reality, he adds, “Hamas are the genocidists.”

Look no further than October 7 for a sign of genocidal intent. Hamas’s attacks that day were the culmination of tactics meant to catch Israel off-guard. “The IDF and Israeli intelligence was subject to a very sophisticated military deception plan by Hamas,” Colonel Kemp says, “with the hand of Iran behind it.” 

Israeli officials had become convinced that Hamas had no intention of aggression against Israel and was solely focused on the economic development in Gaza, Colonel Kemp explains. Hamas, for example, decided to not partake in a series of rocket attacks launched against Israel by Islamic Jihad just before October 7. Israel therefore discounted reports that Hamas was training soldiers in preparation for an attack.

Adding complexity to the challenge of Israel’s fight in Gaza today is the coastal enclave’s large civilian population, the 132 hostages remaining there, and its tunnel network running hundreds of miles long, “bigger than the London underground,” Colonel Kemp says. “Every soldier knows that an urban battlefield is the most demanding battlefield you can ever find yourself in.” 

Despite these challenges, “I don’t think any country in the world has ever put so much effort into preventing the loss of civilian life on the enemy side as Israel is doing today in Gaza,” Colonel Kemp says. He explains that the coverage of Gaza by Israeli intelligence far exceeds what the British knew of Afghanistan, enabling Israelis to understand the dispersal of civilians throughout Gaza. 

Israel also takes effort to notify civilians before an attack whenever and wherever such a warning is possible, in accordance with the laws of war, in the forms of millions of phone calls, text messages, and leaflets detailing safe exit routes. They then maintain extensive surveillance over the targeted areas, Colonel Kemp explains, to ensure that civilians have evacuated before deploying a strike. 

“The vast majority of serving and former members of the British Army feel exactly the same as I do,” he says. “They have huge admiration for the IDF.” A similarity between IDF soldiers and those in different militaries around the world is “a sense of humor,” he says. “People who have been in battle understand exactly why that is so necessary.”

Israeli soldiers are bound by a national determination to put an end to Hamas. “There’s never been a time since the state was recreated in 1948 when Israel hasn’t been under threat from some form or another,” Colonel Kemp says. “People know that if the country is to survive, then at times like this, they have to do their bit.”