The toughest job in Israeli diplomacy awaits in London - opinion

ByGIL HOFFMANJULY 31, 2026 20:59A month before the 2013 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked a softball question in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt.“If we look at all the threats that Israel faces, why would anyone in the world want your job?” asked interviewers Cornelius Tittel and Clemens Wergin. “It seems to be the toughest job in the world.”Netanyahu laughed as he answered it, apparently pleased that he got such a question he would never be asked by any Israeli media outlet that existed back then.“It’s a good question, but apparently not enough people are asking it because quite a few people would like to have [my job],” Netanyahu said.He then used the question to remind German readers about the Holocaust, segue to Iran, and then warn about the dangers of the narrative war.PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials stand at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)“In our history, including on the soil of Europe, we had a regular pattern,” he said. “First the Jewish people were maligned, then they were attacked. And the maligning, the vilification served as the legitimization for the attacks that followed. In many ways, this is what is happening to the State of Israel. It is vilified again and again in public opinion, including in European public opinion, to prepare the attacks. And people don’t know the facts.”What Netanyahu said back then rings true even more today, as the maligning and vilification that reignited after Oct. 7 rages on.But I disagree with the interviewers. I think there is a job even harder than Israel’s prime minister: Ambassador of Israel to the UK.And that job is held now by… technically, no one. Tzipi Hotovely left the post nearly a year ago, and the role is not expected to be filled any time soon.Netanyahu tried to gift the job to his loyal chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, and the cabinet approved the nomination in September, but the appointment is on hold indefinitely, as British authorities will not approve it while a legal cloud hangs over Braverman’s head.Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara said she intends to indict Braverman, pending a hearing on charges of obstruction of justice, fraud, and breach of trust in the Feldstein-Bild Affair. He is also suspected of having altered the stated time at which Netanyahu first received an update on the morning of Oct. 7.A new ambassador will not be appointed until the next government is formed after the Oct. 27 election – and, perhaps, as is looking increasingly likely – after another election or two after that.Seasoned diplomat began as charge d'affaires at London embassyTHE GOOD news is that meanwhile, a new chargé d’affaires arrived at the embassy on Monday, and he is a seasoned diplomat who speaks English. He is Christian Cantor (yes, Christian), and he has served as ambassador to Colombia and in diplomatic postings in Australia, Guatemala, and London, where he was a political counselor for five years at the embassy that he will now head de facto.Cantor will be in charge of representing Israel to the new government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham, dealing with the scourge of antisemitism, and impacting the dangerously biased British media. Each of those responsibilities ranges from extremely difficult to borderline impossible.Shortly before becoming prime minister, Burnham apologized for his Labour Party’s policies on Israel and Gaza, and pandered to his progressive wing in an interview with The Guardian, a biased, anti-Israel newspaper.“I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right, and I am sorry about that. The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better,” he said.“We’ve got to do more to put pressure on the Israeli government… Yes, we have taken some important steps… But let’s be honest, the UK was too slow to call for a ceasefire. And we must now do more to strengthen our approach.”Upon becoming defense secretary, Wes Streeting immediately accused the IDF of falling short of UK military standards. Writing in The Jewish Chronicle, Andrew Fox, who served in the British Army for 16 years, compared what the IDF did in Gaza to what the British did in Afghanistan, and pronounced Streeting guilty of slander.Burnham’s new solicitor-general, Andy Slaughter, has been accused of showing sympathy for Hamas after pictures resurfaced from 2010 of him smiling with its leaders alongside Jeremy Corbyn. And even outside the government, Green Party leader Zack Polanski has displayed an unhealthy obsession with Israel, even though he’s Jewish.London Mayor Sadiq Khan told Channel 4 News that Britain would enforce the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Netanyahu, saying that “anyone accused of genocide must face justice” and that he would work with Burnham to “enforce the law” if Netanyahu comes to London.Sounding like the equally confused mayor of New York, he added: “People who commit genocide are not welcome in London.”Khan, however, does not take action to stop London’s streets from being filled with weekly antisemitic hate marches. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign claims that more than 100,000 marched on Downing Street, demanding that Burnham immediately stop arms trades with Israel and impose sanctions.Rising explicitly anti-Zionist incidents in UKThe Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in Britain during 2025, the second-highest annual figure since the CST began recording, and more than twice the 1,662 incidents recorded in 2022, the last full year before Oct. 7. In at least 1,766 of the incidents, the motivation was explicitly anti-Zionist.Two Jews were murdered in the antisemitic terrorist attack at Heaton Park Synagogue in Burnham’s Manchester, last Yom Kippur. The intent was the same in April 2026, when two Jewish men were stabbed in London’s predominantly Jewish Golders Green neighborhood.Campaign Against Antisemitism polling reported in February 2026 that 96% of British Jews felt less safe than before Oct. 7, 59% avoided displaying visible signs of Jewish identity, and 61% had considered leaving Britain during the previous two years due to antisemitism.The CST recorded 272 university-related antisemitic incidents in the 2023-2024 academic year, compared with 53 in 2022-2023, an increase of more than fivefold.“There I was, an 18-year-old on my first day of university, crying on my bed. I could not understand what I had done to deserve such hatred,” Students Supporting Israel President at King’s College Tali Smus wrote in a heart-wrenching article in The Telegraph about how she was persecuted for not hating Israel.As for the media, there had been hope that the BBC would become less biased against Israel following the long-awaited firing of Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness in November, and the introduction of compulsory antisemitism training for staff. But it’s not getting any better.The first article for Cantor to deal with could be the awful one in last weekend’s Sunday Times with the headline “My son was on my wife’s lap when the IDF shot him dead,” and the sub-headline, “In a land besieged by settler terror, baby Sam is one of 259 Palestinian children killed since the atrocities of Oct. 7.”Media watchdog HonestReporting called out The Guardian for adopting Palestinian propaganda by writing in a headline that on Tisha B’Av “Jewish extremists stormed al-Aqsa mosque compound.” The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis slammed The Guardian for referring to Hebron as Islam’s fourth holiest city while failing to mention that it is Judaism’s second holiest.It has only gotten harder since Netanyahu lamented European public opinion in that interview with Die Welt: “Can they seriously tell us you have no connection to these areas? These areas where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked, where my ancestors walked, where Jews have been for thousands of years?”Christian Cantor will have to deal with all this and so much more. Good luck, Christian! No one envies you. The writer served as the chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post and executive director of HonestReporting, and has lectured about Israel in all 50 US states.Follow us on Google