As Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is set to arrive in the UK today for a three-day visit, Britain finds itself shamefully out of step — not only with its own values, but even with a growing number of European governments.

While some EU states have begun to restrict their ties with Israel, Britain is preparing to roll out the red carpet for the man whose words gave political cover to mass killing and starvation in Gaza.

Herzog is not a neutral guest. In October 2023, as the bombs began to fall, he declared that “an entire nation” of Palestinians was responsible for October 7. In that single statement, he framed every Palestinian man, woman, and child as culpable — an entire population recast as legitimate targets.

Since then, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, and Gaza deliberately starved. Herzog may not issue military orders — the Prime Minister and war cabinet wield that power – but as president, his rhetoric carries symbolic and moral weight both domestically and abroad.

His words have served as a shield of legitimacy for a campaign of collective punishment that leading jurists and UN experts now describe as genocide.

Across Europe, there has been hesitation, half-measures, and plenty of silence. But two countries — Spain and Slovenia — have gone further than others, showing at least a willingness to translate outrage into action.

Spain has imposed a total arms embargo, alongside port and airspace bans on Israeli........

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