"We saved many, many lives on British soil," former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen revealed Friday in an interview with "The General and the Journalist," a podcast produced by Britain's The Times. He added that the British government was wrongly attacking Israel, saying, "I think that the UK has to be super supportive of the State of Israel, as we had been to you when you had suffered terrorism on your lands."
Cohen, who served as Mossad chief from 2016 to 2021, criticized the British government's efforts to distance itself from Israel. Last month, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham publicly apologized for the Labour Party's actions in late 2023, saying, "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."
At the same time, he said he intended to consider sanctions against Israel and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government should be held accountable, accusing it of trying to make the two-state solution impossible. Cohen responded that "criticism is OK, but opposing what we’re doing is not OK. The State of Israel never initiated this war in Gaza. The terrorists did, Hamas and Islamic Jihad did."
Scene of a terrorist attack in London last April
(Photo: Hannah McKay/Reuters)
The fact that Britain and Israel have shared intelligence for many years is no secret, but it is rare to hear a senior official discuss it publicly. On the podcast, Cohen said: "I quote your former director of MI5 who said, ‘Yossi, you deserve the Oscar for what you did here. You have disrupted a huge quantity of terror activity inside the UK. Thank you very much for doing it’. I think that the UK government should do exactly the same."
The former Mossad chief said, "The UK government should understand that we read what they do. And you do have a huge local problem in the UK today. It is not safe to walk on London streets or in Manchester if you’re Jewish."
"So I do understand politics," he said. "And when your prime ministers are communicating to your own audience, saying, ‘Yes, we will counter Israel and they’re doing genocide in Gaza, blah, blah, blah’, this is eventually super poor politics.
"It is not respecting what the State of Israel is actually doing, not only for us, but for UK citizens too," he added. He noted that no British prime minister had accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. In 2025, lawyers representing the British government said they had seen no evidence that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza or deliberately targeting women or children. He also said there was evidence that Israel was taking steps to limit incidental harm to civilians.