Category Archives: Articles

Articles

Failure to support Israel against Iran could end in war

Article published in The Times, Monday 12 February 2018.  © Richard Kemp 

At 4.25am on Saturday the Israel Defence Forces shot down an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace, then destroyed its command post and attacked 12 Iranian and Syrian air defence targets in the largest offensive launched by the country in Syrian territory since the 1982 Lebanon war.

All this for a drone? Although a serious act of aggression by Iran, the drone is the tip of the spear. Iranian leaders have long made clear that they intend to annihilate the Jewish state. As I have seen on the ground in the region last year, and during years studying secret intelligence on Iran, they put their money where their mouth is, financing and directing Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza and the West Bank, building an arsenal of 150,000 missiles in southern Lebanon and funding terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world. According to Israeli intelligence Iran has 82,000 fighters under its control in Syria. It is building a permanent military presence there to establish a corridor via Iraq to Israel’s borders.

This is part of a wider Iranian plan not just to besiege Israel but also to achieve ascendancy over the Sunnis, including de facto control of Lebanon, increased dominance in Iraq, the destabilisation of Yemen, attacks on Saudi Arabia and aggression against international navies in the Gulf. Iran’s project has been largely facilitated by President Obama’s Middle Eastern policies, including his nuclear deal, which emboldened the ayatollahs and released billions of dollars to fund their aggression while paving the way to a nuclear-armed state.

Iran’s latest aggression against Israel could well lead to another conflagration. The IDF is braced for retaliation, mobilising forces and reinforcing air defences along the Syrian and Lebanese borders. Israel is not looking to escalate but Iran could be and a mistake or misreading by either side could trigger open war.

For years Israel has warned of the consequences of Tehran’s aggression, which could result in civilian deaths on a huge scale. Although President Trump is holding Iran to account, Israel’s warnings have been largely ignored by the West and the United Nations. Britain and the European Union could play an effective role in containing Iranian aggression but their answer is appeasement. Instead of sanctioning Iran and supporting Israel they mouth platitudes about restraint by both sides, which further emboldens Tehran. They prioritise saving the flawed nuclear deal that provides cover for their unprincipled trade links with Iran over saving the lives of innocent people.

Articles

We must end this appeasement and ban Hezbollah

Article published in The Times, 23 January 2018. © Richard Kemp 

Hezbollah is the most powerful terrorist organisation in the world. Yet Britain has proscribed only part of it: its military wing. This Thursday the MP Joan Ryan will lead a parliamentary debate aimed at designating the whole organisation, as the US, Canada and the Netherlands already do. Her chances are slim. The film Darkest Hour has reminded us of British ministers’ penchant for appeasement and, like Churchill, that is what she’s up against.

Hezbollah, the creation of Iran, emerged onto the world stage in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 US Marines and 58 French paratroopers in the most devastating terrorist attack before 9/11. Since then it has attacked in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East and planned strikes from Cyprus to Singapore. Last summer US authorities charged two Hezbollah terrorists with planning attacks in New York and Panama. Hezbollah is fighting to keep Assad in power in Syria and maintains an arsenal of 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, pointed at Israel.

During the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hezbollah was involved in Iranian-directed bombings that killed well over 1,000 British and US servicemen. Despite this, in Britain and elsewhere in Europe Hezbollah can freely raise funds for terrorism. Its supporters flaunt their assault rifle-emblazoned flags on our streets. They maintain sleeper cells in this country: planning, preparing and lying in wait for orders to attack.

When I worked for the Joint Intelligence Committee I monitored Hezbollah’s activities. I knew there was no division into peaceful and warlike elements. The regional states don’t buy it either; the Arab League designates the entire organisation. Even Hezbollah’s leaders don’t make any such pretence. In 2009 its deputy secretary-general confirmed that it was one unified organisation. Continue reading →

Articles

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Why No Peace?

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 17 January 2018. © Richard Kemp 

The critical question of why the Middle East seems unable to achieve peace has just been rigorously considered again, this time by Michael Calvo, an international lawyer, in an important new book, The Middle East and World War III: Why No Peace? It is worth being read by all political leaders, academics, journalists, students and anyone who wants to understand why there is no peace and what may happen.

The book analyzes why the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab/Muslim conflict has not been resolved, in spite of the Oslo Accords and many years of active involvement by the European Union, individual European states, the US, Russia and the United Nations.

The long-term Palestinian use of terror, for instance, looked at chronologically:

to achieve Palestinian political goals, to influence Israeli politics, to favour a given Israeli candidate for the post of Prime Minister, to compel the Israeli government to conceal more land, to prevent a final peace settlement by maintaining a state of conflict that could eventually lead to total war, to erode Israeli and American resolve and to demonstrate to the Arab population that peace is not an option and that the existence of the Jews on their land cannot be recognized.

Some of the attacks occurred just when foreign representatives landed in Israel, ‘to prevent the revival of the peace talks’. Jason Greenblatt should take that into consideration.

There is, according to Calvo, also a psychological and religious preparation for armed conflict with Israel, the manipulation of the media and of minds, the practical preparation of the armed conflict and its planned outbreak, as well as its control by the Palestinian leadership. The terrorists are elevated to heroes and role models. Palestinian policeman, armed individuals, adolescents and adults, sometimes a father or even a mother of young children, are ready to kill Jews by any means and even to blow themselves to pieces for their cause to reach paradise. But they were not born jihadists. They were, and are still being, incited to become jihadists. Continue reading →

Articles

The British Army has always been the best in the world so we should target Call of Duty fans … not Bawl of Duty

Our Defence Secretary needs to act decisively to preserve the British Army’s credibility

Article published in The Sun, 11 January 2018. © Richard Kemp 

Man for man, the British Army has always been the best in the world. Today this proud reputation is under threat.

Numerically at its weakest since Napoleonic times, politicians are now increasingly infecting it with dangerous political correctness.

This includes David Cameron’s decision in 2016 to allow women into the infantry.

Today the Army faces a manning crisis, with 4,000 fewer regular troops than needed and a failure to come close to filling the ranks of the reserves.

How is this being tackled? By even bigger doses of political correctness. The latest recruiting campaign focuses exclusively on minorities.

An MoD insider admitted yesterday that this is all about meeting quotas for black, Asian, minority ethnic and female recruits.

It is right that the Army reflects the make-up of the society it fights for.

But that is very much secondary to the overriding need to be fully manned by battle-ready combat troops. While these adverts may have a marginal effect on recruiting minorities, they will not appeal to the majority of potential recruits.

These are young people who want challenge, action and adventure and who are willing to fight for their country.

What will appeal to them are images of tough military training, troops leaping from helicopters, skiing, sky-diving and mountaineering. Continue reading →

Articles

ARMY RECRUITMENT

Letter to the editor of The Times, published 11 January 2018. © Richard Kemp

The British Army’s new recruitment campaign is about meeting quotas for minorities, as an MoD source quoted in your report (Jan 10) admits, rather than dealing with its manning crisis (“It’s fine to cry, Army tells new recruits”, Jan 10).

The army should reflect the composition of society, but that is secondary to the need to have a fully manned, battle-ready force. These adverts may have a marginal effect on recruiting minorities but will not appeal to the majority of potential recruits, who are willing to fight, seek adventure and are attracted by images of a combat force in action. There is no shortage of such young people out there, including among minorities. What prevents them from joining up is not concern about whether they can pray or will be listened to but the army’s overly bureaucratic, “civilianised” recruiting organisation that places undue focus on political correctness and too often acts as a barrier to enlistment.

Colonel Richard Kemp
Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, London SW1

Articles

Iran is the Greatest Threat to World Peace

Interview published in Majalla, 3 November 2017

by Mustafa El-Dessouki and Yasmine El-Geressi

Colonel Richard Kemp spent most his 30-year career fighting terrorism and insurgency, commanding British troops on the front line of some of the world’s toughest hotspots, including Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. In 2003, he was sent to Kabul to take command of British Forces where he helped to disarm local warlords, trained the fledgling Afghan army and police and played a part in preventing a coup d’état against President Hamid Karzai. Continue reading →

Articles

Israel as a Strategic Asset of the West

Hanit is the Hebrew word meaning spearhead. That word explains why Israel is a vital strategic asset not just to Great Britain, but to the West as a whole. Hanita is also the name of a settlement established in the western Galilee in March 21, 1938. Geographically, Hanita is literally the spearhead of Israel, hard up against the front line with Lebanon. It lies about 15 kilometres northeast of Nahariya.

The story of Hanita encapsulates Britain’s longstanding and too often dishonourable relationship with the Jews of Palestine and the state of Israel. When the establishment of Hanita was proposed, the British administration vetoed it and then did everything in their power to prevent it going ahead.

Despite many obstacles thrown into their path, the Jews persisted and the tower and stockade village was eventually built. This was during the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936-1939), and on their very first night at Hanita the young pioneers had to fight off wave after wave of savage attacks by hundreds of Bedouin raiders intent on their massacre.

Two years later, in 1940, the very same British authorities that had forbidden the settlement came to Hanita for help. Britain planned to invade Syria to prevent the Vichy French government there from allowing a German army to build up and threaten the Mosul oilfields and the Suez Canal.

An Australian force was to enter Lebanon from Palestine, using the forbidden Hanita as a base, and from there to advance into Syria.

Bridges over the Litani River were vital for the operation, and because of their familiarity with the wild and unchartered border country, the Jews were asked to capture and hold those bridges to prevent their destruction by the Vichy forces.

Having suffered over fifty percent casualties, fifty young Jewish farmers from Hanita held the bridges for seven hours and repulsed ten mass attacks before the Australian regular troops eventually arrived. In the final onslaught, the Jews fought off their heavily armed attackers with knives, bricks, crow bars, revolvers, and when out of bullets, with their bare hands. This was the operation in which Moshe Dayan, later Chief of Staff, Defence Minister and Foreign Minister of Israel, lost his left eye.

On a different level we saw a similarly duplicitous game played out again only at the end of last year. In a speech in London last December, British Prime Minister Theresa May strongly asserted the value that Israel has to Britain. She said:

Israel will be crucial to us as we exit the EU.

We have common values; we work together, on health, counter-terrorism, cyber security, technology; and we can help each other achieve our aims. Continue reading →

Articles

Iran ‘Will Always Hate America,’ Has Attacked US ‘Time and Time Again’ Through Proxies Like Hezbollah

Article published by Breitbart, 30 October 2017

by John Hayward

Retired British Army officer Col Richard Kemp, a counter-terrorism expert and veteran of Afghanistan, joined SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Monday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about the imminent danger of a new war in the Middle East.

Kemp was involved in a creation of a recent report on the subject entitled Hezbollah’s Terror Army: How to Prevent a Third Lebanon War.

‘I think President Obama made some very, very fundamental errors in his foreign policy, one of which was to seek to encourage Iran to be the greatest power in the Middle East,’ said Kemp. ‘Essentially, he abandoned other US allies in the region – including Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, and to an extent Israel – in favour of Iran.

‘The problem with Iran, of course, not only does it threaten many, many states in the region, particularly in relation to its Shia – of course, Iran is a Shia state and it really opposes most of the other states which are Sunni states,’ he continued.

‘I think above all we shouldn’t forget that the Iranian revolution was founded to a very large extent on anti-Americanism,’ he warned. ‘They hate America. They always have hated America. It’s what the revolution was all about, to a large extent. They always will hate America, and we shouldn’t forget that Iran, through its proxies such as Hezbollah, which this report is about, has attacked the United States and United States forces time and time again, including in recent history.

‘They are, without a doubt, the enemies of the United States, which President Obama was doing what he could to encourage. They are the greatest threat, I believe, to world peace today. Above all, that threat comes from the prospect that they will gain nuclear weapons Continue reading →

Articles

Devastating for morale – and a threat to life

Article published in The Daily Mail, 17 September 2017. © Richard Kemp 

The news that officers aboard a British nuclear submarine on active patrol threatened to resign, because both the captain and his second-in-command were alleged to be having affairs with female crew members, is terrifying – but not surprising.

It is impossible to imagine a more serious setting for a crisis in morale than HMS Vigilant, one of the four Vanguard subs that form our country’s round-the-clock Trident nuclear deterrent at sea.

But it was sadly inevitable, given the Government’s insistence that men and women must serve alongside each other wherever our Armed Forces are on duty – on battleships, on the front line, from the first day of training, and even in submarines.

I am quite certain we’re hearing this story only because of the seniority of the ranks involved. Commander Stuart Armstrong and his executive officer [XO], the boat’s No 2, have both been removed from their posts. It is unprecedented for both the commander and the XO of a nuclear sub to be suspended simultaneously. But affairs between lower ranks are commonplace, and they can have equally catastrophic effects on morale and unit cohesion.

The situation is so bad that, in the two years up to last December, 36 Army recruits became pregnant during basic training. So did 15 RAF and ten Navy recruits. That’s about one young woman per fortnight.

It is not a new problem. More than 100 servicewomen were evacuated from Iraq during the years following the overthrow of Saddam because they were pregnant: Military rules forbid expectant mothers from active duty in a war zone. It was a similar story in Afghanistan – though in September 2012, quite unbelievably, a Lance Bombardier gave birth at Camp Bastion in Helmand province. Four days earlier, the Army base had repelled a Taliban attack.

Every pregnant soldier is a loss to her unit, in an Army already undermanned and compromised by defence cuts. But the effect on morale is incalculable. Soldiers have to be able to trust each other with their lives. The camaraderie of an active unit is crucial – and it can be ripped to shreds by the petty jealousies that simmer when two of the squad embark on a relationship together.

There is no more certain way to damage a tight-knit team than with sex. But put men and women together, especially in the pressure cooker situations of a combat zone or a submarine on active duty, and sex will be the result.

Politicians obsessed with political correctness are desperate to impose gender equality everywhere, including the Armed Forces. They ignore the fact that the Army, Navy and Air Force are like no other employer. There is nothing comparable to being a combat soldier. Continue reading →

Articles

This is a very different kind of war

Article published in The Sunday Express, 17 September 2017. © Richard Kemp 

FRIDAY, when London was hit by the latest terrorist outrage, was also Battle of Britain Day.

This is a very different kind of war.

But if our political leaders showed just a fraction of the courage of the RAF in 1940, they could end this onslaught.

Here is what they must do:

● DENY re-entry to the UK by anyone who has fought with the Islamic State or any jihadist group. They represent the greatest danger.

● STOP unregulated movement from EU countries to the UK, even before Brexit. Under EU rules we cannot even prevent those known to be involved or previously convicted of terrorism from entering.

● VET all those entering the UK from countries where violence is rife, including refugees from countries like Syria. Our humanitarian obligations must not take priority over protecting our own people.

● DEPORT all non-British citizens involved in extremism or radicalisation. Today, we prioritise their human rights above those of their victims. This must stop.

● THROW OUT and ban from their mosques all preachers who contaminate young minds with their murderous messages of hate.

● SET UP special courts to hear evidence based on secret intelligence that cannot be revealed in public.

● SEGREGATE and if necessary isolate terrorist convicts and others who try to radicalise their fellow prisoners.

● TAG those involved in extremism that cannot be deported or imprisoned so their movements can be more effectively monitored. Continue reading →