Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UK “the Islamic Republic of Britain”, given that it is increasingly being led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, the United Kingdom is leading a coalition of 12 countries to restrict trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Portugal, Spain, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, and Sweden joined the UK in a joint statement targeting settlement expansion. It is likely that the US and Israel will impose sanctions and other measures on those nations.
Israel already ordered the closure of the British Consulate General in East Jerusalem, and terminated British training programs for Palestinian Authority security forces and removed UK representatives from a southern regional coordination center. The Jewish state also banned British individuals—including several MPs and Jeremy Corbyn—from entering the country.
The US federal government under the Trump administration has formally rejected the UK’s September 2026 decision to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee strongly criticized the British policy on The Independent, calling the sanctions "an irrational action" and "discrimination against the Jewish people".
Individual US states have also emerged as vocal opponents, spearheaded by Florida. This is the first and most explicit state to openly threaten the UK with economic retaliation. Florida Representative Randy Fine publicly warned that under Florida's anti-boycott laws, any British company complying with the UK government's trade ban would be legally barred from doing business with state or local government entities in Florida.
While Florida has taken the public lead on this specific incident, a total of 38 US states have active anti-BDS laws or executive actions designed to automatically penalize companies that boycott Israel. Organizations like the Conference of Presidents and Ambassador Huckabee have noted that multinational or British firms complying with London's new trade bans risk triggering anti-boycott enforcement mechanisms across these 38 states. This could restrict their ability to secure state contracts, public procurement, or state-level investment nationwide.
Technically, any sovereign nation can be targeted by another state's sanctions. Countries adhering to a woke communist ideology seem not to have yet realized that the world will change very rapidly in the next decade.
