'We have been funding our enemy' - Jacob Rees-Mogg says Iran is behind conflict in Israel

And shortly after this great tragedy, the State of Israel was born. But Saturday's terrorist attacks on Israel saw more Jewish people murdered in a single day than has happened since the Holocaust.

Hamas has massacred over 700 Israelis, as many as 5000 rockets were fired into its territory.

But perhaps most disturbingly, Hamas terrorists broke into the country and killed countless Israeli citizens in cold blood. A festival filled with young people was ransacked and 250 people were killed. Roughly 100 hostages have been dragged back over the border into Gaza.

And tragically, unbelievably, a wheelchair bound grandmother who was a survivor of the Holocaust has been taken as a hostage. The context of the call of Holocaust is crucial to understanding this conflict.

The Holocaust was the culmination of hundreds of years of European anti-Semitism, perhaps best embodied by the fabricated text known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an early 20th century work published in Imperial Russia which characterised the Jewish people as the drivers of a global conspiracy.

It was written amidst the backdrop of the Russian pogroms and was eventually taught as fact in Nazi Germany.

The Hamas founding Charter in 1988 endorses the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So this is what Israel is facing, Not resistance or rebels or militants, but Nazi inspired Islamist terrorists, whose main aim is to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth.

And yet, in spite of these facts and in spite of these recent events, the BBC continues to refer to Hamas as militants. This is shameful, and it seems to suggest that kidnapping elderly Holocaust survivors or murdering young people at a festival in cold blood is some sort of legitimate military tactic. It is not.

But it's also important to remember this conflict extends far beyond the boards of Israel.

Hamas is an Iranian puppet whose strings are being pulled to obstruct a US brokered peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Major Fisher of the Middle East remains the Saudi Iranian conflict. Hence the Iranians encourage Hamas to launch the act of terror to scupper the Saudi peace deal.

It is essential to remember the importance of Iran behind this conflict. Iran hates the West as much as it hates Israel. And unfortunately, we have been funding our enemy, as last month the Biden administration handed $6 billion to the Iranians in a prisoner swap deal.

We have allowed ourselves to appear to be weak since the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and softness to Iran has encouraged the Russia Iranian axis.

Now we must show strength. Israel is a fundamental important ally of Britain, and indeed of the broader Western world. We owe it to this ally to help it to restrain Iran's aggression.

Israel is the beacon of freedom in a democratic desert when it currently faces an existential crisis. Now more than ever, it needs our support.