(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Wednesday, 17 February 2016), met with British Cabinet Office Minister Matt Hancock. Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Tobias Ellwood, British Ambassador to Israel David Quarrey, an all-party delegation from the House of Lords, and MPs also participated in the meeting.
 
Prime Minister Netanyahu: "I want to welcome you and your entire delegation. You come at a propitious time.
 
The experience of our people is this, that antisemitism has been perhaps the world’s oldest and most enduring hatred. For centuries the worst slanders were leveled at the Jews. The Jewish people were accused of being the source of all instability, the well-poisoners of the earth, the deliberate murderers of children and drinkers of their blood.
 
That habit did not die. In modern times, modern antisemitism not only attacks individual Jews, but attacks them collectively, and the slanders that were hurled over centuries against the Jewish people are now hurled against the Jewish state.
 
We are once again being accused of being the source of all this tremendous instability around us that is plaguing the entire world; we’re accused of being deliberate murderers of children and so many other slanders.
 
The best example of this anti-Israel obsession is in the United Nations Human Rights Council, that devotes 60% of its country resolutions, 60%, not against Syria, not against Iran, not against North Korea, or Libya, but against Israel, the Middle East one and only democracy.
 
So in this context that I want to commend the British government for refusing to discriminate against Israel and Israelis and I commend you for standing up for the one and only true democracy in the Middle East."
 
British Minister Hancock: "It's a great pleasure to be here and to not only engage in a trade delegation which I brought with me, and to see the very vibrant and innovative and exciting opportunities that there are to further trade between our nations - our trade is at a record level - but also to be able to announce today that we are publishing new guidance for public authorities in the UK that makes clear that discriminating against members of the WTO, including Israel, is wrong and it is illegal and it must stop.
 
And we do this because we believe in an open and free trade and we believe that discrimination is not appropriate and should be stood up to.
 
I look forward very much to talking to you about these changes that we’ve made. Also the wider security and in particular cyber security agenda for which I have responsibility in the UK, and to hear from you the further steps that you will be taking to secure the peace that everybody wants to see.
 
So I'm very grateful for this opportunity and look forward to our discussions."