about what has shaped theirs. this week, when israel has been remembering the victims of the massacres of october the 7th, and when the world is holding its breath to see if the middle east descends into all out war, tzipi hotovely has been the voice of her country. israel's ambassador to the uk was hand—picked by benjamin netanyahu when he saw her make her points in characteristically robust style on a tv talk show. he asked the self—proclaimed religious right winger to go first into politics, and then to abandon that and make the transition into diplomacy, becoming one of the country's leading diplomats. we recorded this interview on thursday before yom kippur, before the events that may even now be developing in the middle east. ambassador hotovely, thank you very much

indeed forjoining me on political thinking. hello. i'm very happy to be here with you, nick. we're speaking after a week of events to remember the victims of the massacre of october the 7th. you have done a whole series of interviews. do you feel like israel is still, in many ways, reliving the trauma of october the 7th each and every day? no doubt. yes, of course. i think the 7th of october was a watershed moment in israeli history. there is no doubt we won't be the same people. we will have a different security strategy after the 7th of october and just starting, maybe from my personal point of view, i was in israel at the 7th of october, it was a jewish holiday, we came for a nice family gathering. we were planning to celebrate the day in a synagogue and 6:30am, i remember the first sirens came

and then when at 8:00, we had a second barrage of rockets, i realised that we're in something that is called a war, that my generation experienced for the last time at the second lebanon war. and for my parents generation, it gave a, i would say, a historic memories from the yom kippur war, this feeling that in the middle of a jewish holiday, you get sirens and something really bad happening to your country. and you, as i said, a religious person. yes i am. your mobile phone would not normally be on on shabbat. so exactly what i want to say, that the situation was that in the second sirens i realised something is really wrong and something is happening. and i think... we had a friend, a neighbour that came to say that there is an invasion into south, and i was looking at my husband and said, we're in a war, and i'm going to turn my phone and we're going to start working, because that's what we do in diplomacy. i will share with you that most of the year my phone

was open on saturday, as opposed to my regular detox, my favourite digital detox of shabbat. now you've got three young daughters. i do. under the age of ten. yes. on that day, since that day, have you tried to explain what happened? and do they do you think understand what happened? it's maybe the hardest part of being a parent to young children when so many young children were killed barbarically and so many young babies and children were kidnapped to gaza. so i'lljust share with you a story just from last week. so, as you know, i live next to swiss cottage. in swiss cottage you can see the posters of the young people and the older people that are still in gaza, and... the hostages? yes, the hostages. and my six—year—old keeps on asking what happened to the biba's children because they became so iconic that we had kfir and ariel biba's.

we had the youngest baby that was kidnapped to gaza, one year old baby. and she keeps on asking me what happened to them and just answering to her, like, why did it happen, why did they kill them, why did they kidnap them? i think it's harder than any bbc interview. and of course, there are echoes in those questions of the questions that people have asked ever since the holocaust. why did it happen? do you feel... do you fear that many non—jews don't understand the unique horror of what happened on october the 7th? they say yes, it's awful that life was lost, that terrible violence was committed, that people were taken hostage, but don't perhaps understand what i suspect you feel, which is the echoes of the holocaust. you're absolutely right about the echoes of the holocaust. i don't think there is one person in israel that didn't felt like history repeats

itself in the most barbaric way, and unfortunately, hamas did had a very similar ideology to the nazi ideology, because for them, they wanted to kill each one of us if they just could. and i'm afraid this echo, i think for many people in this country, people understand that the holocaust was a horrible thing that happened to thejewish people, but i'm afraid at the same time, they don't connect the genocidal ideology still exist out there, that anti—semitism is notjust a word that describes people that, you know, are screaming on dues, but also people that don't want a jewish country to exist. and i think this is where they lose that sympathy to israel. and i think they are. this is a modern... yes. do you worry that as israel's ambassador to the uk, that you're losing the argument?

not you personally, but israel is losing the argument in this country. and there's an irony in that, isn't it? the british armed forces have supported israel in defence of itself against iranian missiles. this was the first country to make a public commitment to create a homeland for the jewish people. and yet, when you look at the polling, israel is losing the support, the sympathy of many british people, not all of them. why do you think that's happening? so tell, first of all, what i'm worried about. i'm worried about the fact that there were young people and people standing in the streets of london that were supporting the massacre. i mean, how can you support a barbaric action, totally unprovoked, of killing people in their bed, raping women in a music festival? how can you support that? i mean, i don't understand. just coming from humanity values. i mean, you call yourself a liberal, how can you support that? this is the first thing that i want to ask. it's a tiny minority, isn't it?

i mean, most people went to the centre of london to protest and protesting against what they see, to use your word as genocide in in gaza. we'll come to that a little later. i want to say again, i sawjust this week people standing in london with the signs, "i love hezbollah. " there aren't just thousands dying in gaza on a scale that was unimaginable a year ago. there are thousands looking like they will die now in lebanon. and there is the prospect of what your prime minister now calls a war of revival. he's rebranding this war as an all out conflict with iran. and they don't back you in that, do they? so actually, this is exactly where i kind of look at the bbc sometimes, and no offence, i know this is the national broadcast services for most people take their information from the bbc, but sometimes i just feel like so much distortion is going on because you tell the story from the middle. i mean, you're a journalist, you know, you should tell the story from the beginning, and the beginning

is very clear. at the 8th of october, hexbollahjoined hamas, they were firing on israel nonstop. we had to evacuate 60,000 people from their homes. i keep on comparing that to liverpool and manchester, i don't know if it's the best comparison, but definitely cities. iconic cities in the north, like kiryat shmona and metulla were evacuated from people because we knew that the end of the day, if they will stay there, we'll have massive killing of civilians. and just yesterday we had a young couple, they were just walking with their dog and they didn't have enough time to go to a shelter, and they got brutally murdered by a rocket attack. 12 children in a football game. do you believe, do you believe any like rational government would have just tolerate that and not respond? the point i was making to you... ..is that the prime minister of israel has widened and deepened the war. let's talk about why i think there is a widening and deepening of the war. the prime minister, prime minister netanyahu,

said at the cabinet on october the 7th that it was time to rebrand the war to turn it into the war of revival. it is clear that he is trying to persuade the united states to take the war to iran. as we're recording, that hasn't happened. it is perfectly possible, by the time that many people i can guarantee you... that we will make sure that iran will pay the price for its brutal attack on israelis. understood. and the question is what that's about. and let's if we could do what this podcast tries to do, which is try to get the story behind the story, the story of you. you are not merely a spokesperson for your government. you're a person who

was a politician who's had your own views. now, back in 2009, you said that the whole free world had to be involved in taking down the iranian regime. you believe, don't you, that you are at war with iran? that is not a war that everyone has yet signed up to. but is that the war that you think now has to be prosecuted? i'll tell you where we stand this week. we stand this week that you're the head of mi5, a very respected british official was speaking about the threat of iran to your country. ijust brought his speech because i think what he's saying is something that every british person should think about it seriously. so he said, since the killing of mahsa amini in 2022, we've seen a plot after plot here in the uk of unprecedented pace and scale. since january 2022, with our police partners, we saw over 20 attempts to kill british civilians. so iran is a threat to you. let's talk about what you thought way before october 7th, what you thought, what benjamin netanyahu thought and why i think he chose you. is it true, the story that he picked you out, having seen you on television? no, it's actually much more simple. so i was a journalist. i was in one of israel's political, uh, it's like it was almost like me to,

like, meet the press and then one day, i got a phone call. it was the head of the opposition, and he invited me to come, and i got a lecture about iran. and he said a very famous quote from netanyahu. he said, the year is 1930 and iran is getting closer to have nuclear weapons. so basically it was comparing them to the nazi regime with their aspirations. and i think that i remember very well this conversation. and after a while there was election in israel, and he offered me tojoin the likud party, and i decided, i was i was 30 years old i was the youngest member of parliament back then. and i decided to become to to turn my activism in the media to activism and political. you called yourself, and it's interesting that you used the phrase, because i would have been very wary of using it if you hadn't used it yourself. you called yourself

a religious right winger. what did you mean by that? i think, it's a it's a wrong translation from hebrew. 0k. well, you are religious. no, no. arguably, you're on the right wing. politics of religion is what is called in american language, modern orthodox. so modern orthodox being translated from hebrew as religious zionist. so it's just. . .. let's talk about you and where you lived and your parents and so on. the roots that you had to try and understand your views about this. you grew up quite close to tel aviv. a little town called rehovot or a city called rehovot. it's sometimes said that there is a change that's happened in israel in recent decades. israel, to people looking from the outside, often was seen as the country of the kibbutz movement. it was seen as the country of openness, of welcome, arguably of the left and increasingly to a younger generation, israel is seen as the country of the settlement. it's a very, very interesting because i do want to speak about changes that israeli society has been through. and for me, kibbutz

and settlement, it's the same thing because the kibbutzim were basically communities were sitting on the border to defend israel. and we have the same with the settlement. the settlements are a part of our eastern border. we believe that this is part of the land of israel, just like the kibbutzim believe that they were part of the land of israel. and the settlers called themselves the modern kibbutzim. so actually, the settlers and the kibbutzim, in a way, are expressing a very similar mindset, in my opinion. but if you said that to the original kibbutzim, they'd be horrified. no. they'd be horrified. the world... i'll tell you why they won't be horrified. for people who are listening, what the world calls the west bank, and you do not call the west bank because you insist that that area is part of greater israel or eretz israel, to use the hebrew term. many kibbutzim would say,

this is not our land this is occupied land. so i tell you why the comparison is in place. because when you hear the way the palestinians are referring to all those communities in the south that were attacked, they call them settlers, because for them, the whole israel is one big settlement. the majority of israelis today, they believe that what the government is doing at the moment, which is fighting two terror organisations on our border, is the right thing to do. you don't get to hear the leaders of the opposition attacking netanyahu for doing the operation in lebanon. you don't get to hear a sentence. i don't dispute that for a second. and there is a reason to it because they understand, and i think this is the lesson we learn from october 7th, that we cannot live with jihadi ideology on our doorstep. i still want to get a sense of where your views come from. your parents, as i say, came from soviet georgia. you had a religious upbringing. did you grow up believing that thejewish people had a right to all of the lands that israel currently occupies?

i think my political views, and obviously as a diplomat, i don't carry my political views, i carry the government. as i told you before, i represent a different government. so i think today the majority of israelis agree on most of the things. but you're asking me where my views are coming from. very simple. for my grown up years as a high school kid in tel aviv, after the oslo accords, israel experienced the worst terror wave we ever experienced. tel aviv was a dangerous place to be in, buses were exploding. i had a very, very personal experience of the fact that if this is what the palestinians are rewarding israelis for signing a peace agreement, i was starting to doubt how much the palestinians really want to have a peace with us. so it's coming from a very pragmatic point of view of understanding what's the other side is interested with. did you have direct experience of those suicide bombings? yes. i think every israeli back then had. i lived injerusalem when coffee shops exploded two minutes from where i was standing in the street, we lost friends

in terror attacks. of course, terror was part of our grown up living experience. did you grow up knowing many palestinians? in my political years, definitely. as a child? no. as a child, definitely. most israelis experience meeting with palestinians as a child, definitely. most israelis experience meeting with palestinians through, but hardly army service, hardly any. palestinians live in the city i grew up in. i think its 0.3% of the population ar arab. we normally... i think i think most of the grown up israelis before the oslo accords grew up with having a lot of meetings with palestinians. because we lived, we lived in much better coexistence. we began this conversation by reflecting on not just the death, notjust the kidnapping, but also the maiming, the rape of people on october the 7th. yourjob, of course, is to make the case for israel. but as a human being, as a parent of three daughters, do you dwell on the deaths elsewhere, the deaths in gaza,

the deaths in lebanon? do you think about that? i'm human. i'm human, of course. we didn't want this war. nick, one of the things people forget that the 6th of october, there was a complete cease fire. israelis lived their life peacefully. they wanted to celebrate a jewish holiday that, in the end of the day, turned out to be barbaric attack on people's homes, living rooms and bedrooms. but forgive me, ambassador, i'm asking you about the dead in gaza... and i gave you... ..and you're asking me with an answer about the deaths in israel. i gave you a very sincere answer. the answer was yes. we didn't choose this war, we didn't wanted anyone to die. but there are choices made, aren't there? it simply isn't the case that you're either with or against israel. it may be that you believe in israel's right to defend herself, but don't believe in the tactics that are being used, the choices that are being used, which are leading to the deaths of tens of thousands

of innocent civilians. so actually here i can tell you how much my sympathy goes to every loss of life, because i don't want to see anyone losing its life in a war. but then i'm asking myself why we don't blame together, hamas, for creating this situation where civilians are in, in the centre of all the terror storage. why they turned unwra schools into a rocket storage, why they turned al—shifa hospital to their main headquarter of terrorism. those are the main questions we need to ask. so they created a situation that no other army in the world could have handled it better. and actually... really? i have yes, i have a quote from the un. you like this as well, right? so let me, quote, let me quote nowthe un. the un said that the average ratio for a war is one combatant to nine nine civilians, and israel created a ratio of one to one. professor andrew roberts were defending israel in parliament, saying he's never seen a war operated better than the way

israel was operating. one to one firgure is not.. it is from israel. of course in the end... no, but that data is contested. no, no, no. the data that is contested is the fact, you are quoting hamas as if it's a data. where are you bringing your data from hamas? i haven't given you any data at all. you've given me some data. i have a data. and you... no, no, you can choose. it's israeli propaganda, and you know it is, ambassador. no it's not. yes it is. i must say, i'm really disappointed that you prefer not to believe to a democratic country. and you prefer to believe to a terror organisation. no, i don't believe a terror organisation. there's no particular value in arguing about numbers. the numbers are horrific. whatever the proportions are and whatever the numbers are, what's i think interesting to reflect with you is how much the world has changed since you got yourjob. when you started as ambassador to the uk.

you talked of a feeling that something new was happening in the middle east. you talked about the fact that despite the fact that your scene is quite a hard liner, i think you've confirmed that in this interview that you saw it as yourjob to make friends with arab ambassadors here in london. have you changed at all or is itjust the situation? we all changed. we all changed at the 7th of october. but i want to go back to the abraham accords. one of the biggest achievements, i believe, in the last years in the middle east, i think that the abraham accords was a moment of a shining light for the future of israel. i'm sure the bbc listeners know, but the abraham accords was the peace agreement signed between israel and the gulf countries. bahrain, uae, morocco joined and i want to say that the friendship that was created here with the arab ambassadors was something that i understood

how much we have so much in common. and when i'm saying something in common, i'm not speaking just about mutual enemies. we actually have a serious regional issues to solve together, and they know that israel is an asset to the region. and i want to tell you something, nick. i believe that the 7th of october attack happened because we were very close to have another deal with saudi, and hamas wanted to prevent that. so there were people in the middle east want to prevent peace, and there are people in the middle east that want to achieve peace. and israel has a proven record to be in a country that wants peace and knows how to achieve it. i still want to understand if i could the end point. are you really saying that the people surrounding israel will then say, "hey, let's forget the tens "of thousands of casualties, let's make peace with these guys"? all peace agreements are based on the idea that in a certain point we had that with egypt. after the yom kippur war. the yom kippur war was one of the deadliest wars

we had in the region. and then after a few years after, you know, that a peace agreement was signed by the way, by likud leader menachem begin. so it means all israelis want peace. it's not a matter of right or left. and i believe that only after eradicating the radicals, basically by, you know, removing the infrastructure and the terrorists, this is where more opportunities open. if you are stuck with ideology that doesn't recognise your right to exist, you won't have any chance for peace. so actually, i believe, i believe that there will be more to say... the palestinians don't have the right to a state which you. believe, which, benjamin netanyahu? i think all israelis know that we never doubted the need for coexistence. we never said the palestinians

shouldn't be there. we never said that. we always said we need to find the right structure to work together. and by the way, i always thought it's a very it's a very narrow minded thinking to think there is just one formula to fix a problem. just to be clear though, you think not a state, not a palestinian? no, i think i think that by using this formula, in a way, you're making your life easy because you don't ask the hard questions. how do we build educational system that is not radicalising those young people? israelis are raised on the idea that peace is possible and peace is a desire. young palestinians are raised on the idea that dues can be dehumanised and be killed in their beds because they�* re not humans. this is something you cannot tolerate after the holocaust. this is anti—semitism. you need to make sure that the palestinian educational system is not raising young children on anti—semitism. i want to end with the job you do of being a diplomat. you know that when you got chosen for the job, there were plenty of people, the britishjewish community, who said, she's too extreme, she's too much the politician, she's not a diplomat. but people who know you in this city and i know you a little say that you're remarkably good

at the diplomacy. you make friends. you do have friends who are arab ambassadors. how have you made that transition? i think i love people, i truly love people. i truly believe that change is possible. you know, we were talking that this is before yom kippur. yom kippur is the one day in the year where we reflect and we believe that we can change and transform as human beings. and this is myjewish reflection on this. tzipi hotovely, israeli ambassador to the uk. thanks forjoining me on rolitical thinking. thank you very much. the ambassador doesn't much like the language of israel making the war deeper, wider, longer. but in truth, it's clear that she does now see israel as being in a conflict with iran, notjust with those she sees as its proxies in gaza, in lebanon, and in yemen. and she believes that britain that you should be supporting her, that we should, as she often says in private, be more like churchill

and less like chamberlain. do subscribe to political thinking on bbc sounds and you'll hear other interviews that i've done, including one with the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, the british barrister karim khan, who is arguing that charges for war crimes should be brought against both israel's leadership and the leadership of hamas. you'll also hear an upcoming episode with the head of the palestinian mission in the uk. thank you for watching. hello. it's been an unsettled start to the weekend, with low pressure pushing several bands of rain southwards across the uk on saturday, but we did manage

some spells of sunshine between these successive areas of rain. it was a mild day, particularly across southern areas of england and wales. top temperatures reached 17 degrees, but in cardiff we've got a drop of four degrees celsius on the way as we head into sunday. low pressure then clears off out of the way. a ridge of high pressure follows, bringing a better day for many of us on sunday. however, it is going to be a chilly old start to the day underneath these clearing skies, temperatures are dropping like a stone at the moment. we've got a few showers coming and going across the far north coast of wales, parts of coastal cheshire and into northern areas of scotland, but otherwise it's dry. lowest temperatures heading into sunday morning, about minus threee degrees celsius. so, a cold start to the day then for sunday. but underneath this ridge of high pressure, a lot of fine weather and for some a fine sunrise, some of this high cloud in the west getting illuminated by the rising sun. through the day, well, there probably will be a few patches of rain getting into northern ireland and western scotland, but nothing particularly heavy in the afternoon. and for the most part, i think temperatures will probably reach around ten

to 13 celsius. well, that takes us into sunday night and we're looking at a more substantial pulse of rain as a weak area of low pressure scoots its way eastwards across england and wales. scotland and northern ireland having largely dry weather with a few mist and fog patches and again a few patches of frost. into monday, the worst of the rain will clear away from central and eastern england, but it might well stay damp, even into the afternoon, for some. the best of the weather on monday for scotland and northern ireland, where it should stay dry with spells of sunshine. if anything, temperatures coming up by an odd degree or so, and generally getting close to or a little bit above average for the time of year. tuesday looks like being a drier day for all of us. however, there's likely to be quite a lot of low cloud first thing. some mist and fog patches around as well. probably see a few bright or sunny spells breaking through that, particularly to the north of high ground, so northern scotland might be one of the sunniest places. it's turning milder, though, 14 degrees for glasgow and edinburgh, a 17 for cardiff and for london. it gets even milder into the middle portion of the week, could hit 20 degrees in london,

but the week's often going to be quite wet and at times really quite windy. bye for now.

live from washington. this is bbc news former first minister of scotland alex salmond has died suddenly at the age of sixty—nine. the un says a fifth peacekeeper has been wounded by gunfire in southern lebanon — but officials don't yet know who is reponsible. us presidential hopeful kamala harris

releases her medical records — accusing former president donald trump of a �*lack of transparency�* for not doing the same. it is obvious that his team, at least, does not want the american people to see everything about who he is. hello, i'm carl nasman. alex salmond — the former leader of the scottish national party, who led scotland to the brink of independence in the 2014 referendum — has died at the age of 69. he reportedly collapsed after speaking at an event in north macedonia earlier on saturday — this is one of the last pictures taken of him at that event. mr salmond was a formidable campaigner

for independence in scotland — and led the snp to power