Britain Could Be Thrown Out of F-35 Fighter Jet Program for Sanctioning Israel, Former Trump Official Warns

Britain could suffer American retaliation for sanctioning Israel, including possibly by cutting it out of the F-35 fighter jet program, a former White House official in President Trump’s first term is warning.Richard Goldberg, who served on the White House National Security Council, tells The New York Sun that Mr. Trump should target the United Kingdom in response to the sanctions announced Tuesday. Britain, he says, has become “ground zero” for a growing political alliance between Marxists and Islamists. “This should be the moment for the president to give the Treasury Department, State Department, National Security Council, the green light to go full-court press on cracking down on all the Muslim Brotherhood fronts throughout Great Britain.”Mr. Goldberg said that Britain could be thrown out of the program to build America’s advanced fighter jet, the F-35. Most British-Israeli cooperation in the arms arena is in parts for the F-35. “If Britain in any way tries to harm Israeli participation in the F-35 program, then Britain should face suspension from the F-35 program. That would be appropriate and commensurate.” Washington and several U.S. states are poised to join Israel in retaliation against Britain and 11 other European countries that have imposed politically motivated sanctions on the Jewish state. Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, announced on Tuesday a number of measures meant to arrest what he called Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank, an area that the U.K. government recognizes as the “state of Palestine.” While the sanctions specifically target what the secretary called “illegal settlements” in Judea and Samaria, they also include cancellation of British arms sales to Israel that “contribute to the occupation,” Mr. Miliband said. The move was coordinated with other European countries led by left-wing governments. France, Iceland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Finland, Canada, and Sweden also joined Britain in sanctioning “settlements.”The American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, indicated that Washington could impose countermeasures and said the U.K. sanctions are “like throwing a stone without knowing where it will land. Britain is a sovereign country, and it can do what it wants, but the United States is also a sovereign country.” America has a number of laws that authorize the administration to act against entities and countries that boycott Israel. Those include the Ribicoff Tax Reform Act of 1976, which targeted American taxpayers who cooperated with the era’s Arab League boycott of Israel. It was amended several times since to also target entities and countries.Several states enacted laws targeting boycotters of Israel as well. Florida, for one, can now “ban any British company forced to comply from doing business with any state or local government in Florida,” Congressman Randy Fine wrote on X. Florida is “one of Britain’s largest trading partners,” Mr. Fine wrote. “They should understand that their vanity project in support of Muslim terror could cost them billions of dollars.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to comment on Mr. Huckabee’s threat of countermeasures. He noted that Britain had informed Washington in advance of Mr. Miliband’s announcement. “We don’t want to see some uptick in violence or an uptick in conflict or tensions in the West Bank at a very tenuous time in the region,” the secretary told reporters Tuesday, adding that Mr. Trump has yet to make a comment. “The message to every government that harms us is clear,” Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said. “Whoever acts against Israel, Israel will act against them, and they will lose their influence and relevance in this region.” The Labour government’s current measures, the foreign minister said, reminded him of London’s policies during the British mandate of Palestine in the 1940s. “Punish the Jews by striking at their pockets,” Mr. Sa’ar quoted the British military commander in Palestine at the time, Lieutenant-General Evelyn Barker, as saying. Mr. Sa’ar announced several initial retaliatory measures, including shutting down the British consulate in East Jerusalem, which caters to Palestinian affairs, and the eviction of British officials from the American-led headquarters at Kiryat Gat of a group overseeing the ceasefire in Gaza. London would be unable to monitor the strip firsthand. The Labour government is “acting without prudence,” the Tories shadow foreign minister, Tom Tugendhat, told Parliament. The sanctions “won’t actually target settlers,” he said. Instead, they will be “stretched to include all Israeli and Palestinian businesses, leaving many without opportunity, including the pharmaceuticals that keep many British patients alive.”Mr. Miliband, hoping to fend off allegations that targeting Israel will exacerbate already high British antisemitism, highlighted his Jewish background. He noted that his grandmother escaped the Holocaust to Tel Aviv, and that he has fond memories of picking oranges in an Israeli kibbutz. He also said that Britain is committed to Israel’s right to defend itself, which, as Mr. Sa’ar noted, contradicts the sanctions on arms sales. Britain could be harmed by an arms embargo. This year Israel became the world’s seventh largest arms exporter, surpassing the United Kingdom for the first time. Israel is second to America as the largest arms exporter to Britain, while British weapons sales to Israel add to less than one percent of the Jewish state’s arms import.

Britain Could Be Thrown Out of F-35 Fighter Jet Program for Sanctioning Israel, Former Trump Official Warns

Britain Could Be Thrown Out of F-35 Fighter Jet Program for Sanctioning Israel, Former Trump Official Warns

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